Pint-sized bottles of wine will be hitting the shelves of Britain’s supermarkets after a recent Brexit review, the Department for Business and Trade announced today.
The UK government claim that the new beverage sets out to boost innovation, increase business freedoms and improve customer choices.
This news comes after a recent report slammed British women for being the world’s biggest binge drinkers.
The study, which was published by the Organisation for Economic Cooperation Development (OECD), left British women labelled as “unattractive” and “classless” for their extreme drinking habits – compared to that of women in other countries.
Several British females have since expressed how they feel pressured to drink, noting that cheap supermarket deals and offers on alcohol for “boozy brunches” have been “targeted relentlessly” towards women in recent years.
According to the UK government, the new pint-size bottle of wine will not be introduced alongside a new set of rules on selling in imperial measures.
Around 900 vineyards across the country are set to benefit from the beverage increase, which will see thousands of new 568-size bottles of still and sparkling wine introduced to shelves, pubs, clubs and restaurants.
With reference to research findings in 2022, the 900 vineyards are now expected to produce more than 12 million bottles of still or sparkling wine each year.
The Chief Executive of WineGB, which sold more than seven million bottles of wine in 2020, Nicola Bates, announced that the company welcomes ” the chance to be able to harmonise still and sparkling bottle sizes and we are happy to raise a glass to the greater choice”.
The ‘pint of wine’, which has been dubbed as “offering more flexibility and choice for customers” by the Conservative government, will sit alongside the 200ml and the 500ml options that are already available.
After the Brexit referendum was passed in 2020, government ministers proposed a new legislation that would change the trading laws that the UK has inherited from the EU.
The trading law makes it illegal for Britain’s traditional weighing system to be used alone. Instead, under the EU laws, the traditional method must be used alongside the metric weighing system.
The government have since announced that, regardless of the new legal opportunities that have come with Brexit, it will not be changing the rules to allow for the unaccompanied traditional weighing methods.
The authority’s decision came after 98.7 per cent of respondents to a consultation admitted that they preferred using the metric weighing system as the main measurement unit for sales.
The government’s consultation received more than 100,000 responses and was published in June last year.
While the new addition has been a shock to the British public, this is not the first time that pint-sized bottles of wine have been introduced to England’s shelves.
According to Historians, British Wartime Leader Sir Winston Churchill favoured pint-sized bottles of Champagne that were sold in supermarkets across the country until the UK joined the European Common Market in 1973.
Kevin Hollinrake, the Minister for Enterprise, Markets and Small Business, noted that the new alcoholic beverage is a way that the UK can capitalise on the benefits of Brexit.
“Our exit from the EU was all about moments just like this, where we can seize new opportunities and provide a real boost to our great British wineries and further growing the economy,” Hollinrake said.
In October this year, the government also announced that it would be scrapping the legal definition of wine next year, which was made under EU rules and inherited by the UK.
Next year, the government confirmed that it intends to lower the minimum ABV, which currently stands at 8.5 per cent, to zero per cent for all types of wine – including low-alcohol bottles of wine.
