Pint of wine, anyone? Tories spy 'Brexit opportunity' for measure touted by Burns and Churchill

The poet Robert Burns imagined a man toasting his lover with a "pint o'wine", and Winston Churchill was perhaps the most famous proponent of the pint bottle for champagne.

- Jasper Jolly

Now, Rishi Sunak's government has spied a "Brexit opportunity" to legalise the sale of wine by the pint once more if it can persuade anyone to make them.

Still and sparkling wine can be sold in 200ml, 500ml and 568ml "pint" sizes in 2024, alongside existing measures under new rules, the Department for Business and Trade (DBT) has announced. It said the change was made possible by Brexit.

However, the pint-sized move appears to be the extent of a push toward imperial measures, after a government consultation on allowing more businesses to buy and sell using them resulted in no new action.

The government under Boris Johnson had last year said it was considering bringing back imperial measures such as pounds and ounces for use by people such as shop traders if they wished. A consultation said the government was looking at the change in order to "capitalise on the benefits of Brexit", citing the "totemic" metric martyrs court cases against traders who refused to switch to grams and kilograms.