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Echinosum -> RE: Any Shrinkflation in the Wine World? (3/22/2024 2:05:41 AM)
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Precisely because shrinkflation was a problem from about the late 60s or early 70s, the EU legislated against it.
Claret started to appear in 74cl (740ml) bottles, then 73cl. For a brief while, 73cl was the new normal. Then 72cl and 71cl appeared. Then we got to 70cl. I will say, not everyone was doing this, some fine wine stuck to 75cl. But when I was a student in the early 80s, 70cl had become the norm for cheaper wine. Then I saw a 69cl and a 68cl. I think those were German ausleses. But they started to spread.
And that was when the lawmakers struck, specifying particular bottle sizes that must be used. I think they also had half an eye on recycling bottles, which is easier if you have standard bottles. Several European countries have bottle recycling arrangements, where the bottles are collected, washed and reused without remelting the glass. So you can shrink from 75cl to 50cl, but people can tell the difference instantly for a wine like that. I was given a wine in 50cl, where the bottle was the normal height and shape, just thinner. You might have been deceived. But that was a botrytis-affected dessert wine, and I generally buy such wines in halves anyway.
70cl (700ml) is the normal sized spirits bottle here in Europe.
For reasons I should not mention on this forum, Britain has just passed a law allowing some additional bottle sizes. You can now sell a pint of wine! And a number of other sizes recently not allowed. It is a standard imperial pint of 20 fl oz (568ml). But when wine was sold in pints in the past, it was a specific wine pint which was nearer to a US pint. But who's remembering that? It hasn't caught the public's imagination and I have not seen any wine being sold in pint-sized bottles.
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