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Champagne bottles in standard EU size with 0.75 liters
Photo: Paul Zinken / dpa
Is it maintaining tradition? Or insulted defiance after the Brexit, which was partly disastrous for Great Britain? Around a year after the final break with the European Union, the British want to use their new freedoms to reintroduce champagne bottles with the volume of a pint glass. "Pint-sized bottles were a victim of the EU campaign against imperial units of measurement, which are widely used and known in our country," an unnamed government source told the Telegraph, as the newspaper reported on Friday. "Now that we have left the EU, we can get rid of such rules." The government is working to change them.
According to EU standards, wine and sparkling wine are sold in 0.75-liter bottles; smaller variants are the so-called half-bottle (0.375 liter) and the piccolo (0.2 liter).
According to the report, around 60 percent of the sparkling wine sold in the UK was previously believed to have been sold in pint-sized bottles.
The so-called »Imperial Pint« contains 0.568 liters.
However, there is also a smaller version, the "Modern Pint" with 0.5 liters.
A big fan of the "Pint Bottle of Champagne" was former Prime Minister Winston Churchill, who ruled Great Britain during World War II, among other things.
According to the Telegraph, he is said to have once said of his wife: "Clemmie thinks that a large bottle is too much for me, but I know that half a bottle is not enough to stimulate my brain."
The pint measure is therefore the "ideal size".
Symbol politics of the foreign minister?
Foreign Minister Liz Truss, who has recently been responsible for Britain's relationship with the EU, is said to want to examine several rules and norms left over from EU times.
The conservative politician, who before the Brexit referendum was still campaigning for her country to remain in the European Union, could easily earn plus points with convinced Brexiteers.
Truss is said to have ambitions to replace Boris Johnson on Downing Street sooner or later.
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In the summer, to the delight of Brexit supporters, the British government cleared the way for grocers to use imperial units of measurement such as ounces and pounds to indicate weights. It was also celebrated that the royal crown may again be stamped on pint beer glasses. The symbol, known as the »Crown Stamp«, has been used for centuries as proof of the correct calibration of the vessels, but in 2007 it had to give way to the EU-standardized CE mark.
The new old champagne bottles could be back on the shelves in British supermarkets in the coming year.
Vintner Mark Driver from the Rathfinny Estate in the southern English county of Sussex is prepared for this: Driver had already covered around 800 pint-sized bottles of Cuvée when Brexit became apparent.
The winemaker is also convinced of the size: You can fill four glasses out of it, so the perfect amount for two to share.
The reasoning: You can only fill three glasses from smaller bottles, which is difficult to share, while a large bottle is too generous for couples who are less hard-drinking.
The problem of the lack of drivers
The focus on age-old traditions could also stem from the fact that we have so far not been able to look for significant economic opportunities or positive effects from Brexit.
On the contrary: in the past few months it has been impressively demonstrated what no longer works when there is a sudden shortage of workers from the EU: there were gaps in supermarket shelves and gas stations were left on dry land because there weren't enough people to drive trucks through Great Britain .
At least a situation would be conceivable in which there are pint-sized champagne bottles again - but which do not get into the shops because there are no truck drivers.
him / dpa
