LEAVE the Conservative Party and save your country!

68 ml over 12.2 M bottles will add up.

Quite. I feel like I'm missing something, and in any case, UK-produced wine is still fairly niche, and I can't see them wanting to diverge from a worldwide standard size. It feels like the UKCA thing all over again.

You lot mock Brexiteers, then have this level of chat. The government is allowing more sizes. Manufacturers can then decide what they want to produce. At the moment, the small sizes make no sense as they are different by wine type.

Or how about they export to countries in line with whatever size regs exist there and produce different sizes for the home market where there is demand for those sizes?

How do you know if different size bottles aren't allowed?

That's a choice for the manufacturers.

What is the benefit of banning certain bottle sizes rather than letting the manufacturers decide?

Except that the return of imperial measures was hailed by Bozo circa 18 months ago as a major benefit of Brexit. (Rees-Mogg was also waffling yesterday about it being a shame that the opportunities - unspecified, of course - of imperial measures weren't going to be taken.) This alone makes the subject worthy of discussion. On a more abstract level, any policy announced by the government as a benefit when it's clearly irrelevant that then gets reversed is worthy of discussion as it signifies incompetence and/or desperation.

In reality, wine bottle regulations re size (*) are a purely technocratic exercise, in the same way that bike tyre sizing decisions are. Sizes of bottles should warrant no more discussion than the general preference for 25mm bike tyres over 23mm. i.e. it's the subject of obscure special interest groups, not a matter for government policy!

(*) As distinct from safety standards, which are obviously of key importance as safe products are clearly better than unsafe ones.

I'd tend to agree that outside of health and safety related matters, there's no obvious need for "higher powers" to specify what can and can't happen. The market will decide. Classic example being fruit and veg, where UK supermarket shoppers won't touch stuff that doesn't look right even if it has "Class 1" on the packet.

But that's not the issue in the current debate. The issue is that the muppets in charge were trying to convince us that imperial measures would provide meaningful benefits to the UK and continue to push the supposed benefits of pint bottles of wine. (Which, as an aside, could always have been used whilst in the EU, so long as marked most prominently as 568ml.)

how do you know it'll help if they are?

there're plenty more important things this government should be improving/fixing, instead of wasting time and tax payers' money on yet more brexiter nonsense that clearly has the sole purpose of firing up little englander idiots

There are more important things to do than dictating wine bottle sizes when the market is more efficient at sorting these things out.

I'd suspect what's holding the British wine industry back is a mixture of snobbery, and that (if I recall correctly) it's generally at a slightly higher price point than the average (not too cheap but still quite cheep) plonk that generally goes in my basket...

Being able to package it in a pint might mean the price is more in line with the average 750ml bottle, and in reality a pint is probably enough on a school night.

Will they change standard measures of glasses of wine to suit a pint bottle? 125ml and 250ml work nicely with a 750ml bottle (175ml is more of a pain). Even the Yanks use a 750ml bottle.

A lot of it is of questionable quality.

I think we’ve exhausted that discussion

That could be turned on its head: had we remained in the EU, we could have helped tweak the rules.

But you are correct that this is small beer. Which makes the breathlessness of the announcement all the more cringeworthy.