Banning supersize meal portions may help to cut obesity rates. Tax hikes, fewer happy hours, and better education may help to cut harmful drinking. But where’s the debate on supersize portions of wine? Why does wine have to come in 75 cl bottles?
I like a glass of good wine with my supper. But, once two of us have had a glass each, it’s hard to know what to do with the rest. The fridge door is already full of milk bottles, the wine stoppers leak if you lay the bottle on a shelf, and although whites and rosés may not mind sitting in the fridge for another day or two, most reds don’t keep well once open. It’s all too tempting to finish the bottle there and then to avoid waste. Coupled with the news that wine is getting stronger, with 8 or 9 units in a bottle, it’s no wonder Britain’s middle aged middle classes are getting wasted.
The North West Public Health Observatory, at Liverpool John Moores University, reported last year that wealthy towns top the league table for hazardous drinking in the UK. They defined hazardous intake as 22 to 50 units a week for men and 15 to 35 for women. Surrey stood out, with Runnymede first (with 26.4% of its population in this category), and Surrey Heath, Guildford, Mole Valley, Waverley, and Woking also in the top 10. Harrogate in North Yorkshire came second. Other Northern towns and cities topped the league for very heavy drinkers, but the findings from leafy Southern towns were, nevertheless, a bit of a shock. The BMA Board of Science’s new report Alcohol Misuse: Tackling the UK Epidemic confirms that men and women who are higher earners are more likely than the lower paid to have drunk alcohol at all, and to have drunk on five or more days a week (BMJ 2008;336:407, doi 10.1136/bmj.39495.570185.C2). And, while beer remains Britain’s favourite drink, wine consumption rose from 10% of all alcohol in 1970 to 28.8% in 2005.
Wouldn’t reducing wine portions reduce some of this consumption and harm? Easier said than done. My local upmarket supermarket in the Thames Valley has row upon row of good looking wines in 75 cl bottles. It also has a few wine boxes – surely a recipe for excess. But it offers only three wines in half bottles, hides them with the dessert wines that hardly anyone drinks, and bumps up the prices prohibitively. Online UK retailers are no better: search for half bottle and you simply get “half case, six bottles.” It’s no easier to find a decent half bottle in a UK restaurant. Yes, you can buy wine by the glass, but the overpricing means you may as well pay the extra quid and order a bottle. And how many people stick to one glass, even though they’re huge?
Maybe this is a peculiarly British problem. On holiday in France last week I had drinkable wines by the carafe, pichet (small jug), and half bottle in restaurants and cafes, and the local mini market had a good range at 37.5 cl at fair prices. Most French wine websites have a tab for searching by bottle size, and plenty of half bottles to choose from. It’s the same in Italy and Spain, and in many US restaurants half bottles are all the rage, according to trade websites such as Caterersearch.com. For instance, a fifth of diners at Go Roma, a San Francisco chain described as “fast-casual,” order wine and nearly two thirds of them have half bottles. (Admittedly, US diners may want less wine because their restaurants always provide a big glass of iced tap water too. In the UK you have to beg servers to bring tap water and only last month the National Consumer Council reported that one in five people feel “slightly nervous” or even “too scared” to ask for it.)
There are some technical and economic downsides to producing wine in half bottles. A quick web search suggests that wine, particularly good red, is more prone to damage from heat and vibration and matures too quickly in half bottles; small bottles are no cheaper than big ones to make; bottlers have to set up extra production lines and use smaller labels; retailers have to reorganise their shelves; and wine racks are the wrong size. Fair enough. If you want excellent wine to lay down don’t buy half bottles. But some of the best French Grand Cru houses produce half bottles, not least because they want to reach markets that can’t or don’t want to spend more. And none of the disadvantages should rule out the production and sale of youngish, drinkable, everyday wines in half bottles.
Banning supersize meals won’t stop people from buying two regular burgers, and selling half bottles won’t stop some drinkers from simply having two. But there must be at least one supermarket chain willing to give the half bottle market a proper go with a decent range and fair pricing, and to trump their competitors’ hands for responsible, healthy retailing. Come on Tesco, Sainsbury’s, Waitrose, Morrison’s and all—help us out. Cheers.
There must be at least one supermarket chain willing to give the half bottle market a proper go with a decent range and fair pricing