In Great Britain, bigger wineglasses for bigger thirsts
LONDON — It may not surprise anyone who has observed binge-drinking in pub-culture Britain on a Saturday night, but researchers at the University of Cambridge have produced historical evidence to suggest that, if the size of wineglasses is any guide, the British capacity to imbibe has soared since 1700, especially in the past couple of decades.
The size of wineglasses in Britain, the research team found, has increased nearly sevenfold over 300 years, offering a cautionary tale about the amount of alcohol people consume, particularly around holidays like Christmas.
“As we approach the culturally legitimized deviancy of festive drinking,” the researchers said in an article published Wednesday in the British Medical Journal, “we suggest that size does matter: Look at the wineglass in your hand.”
That is not the only social shift. Greater affluence has contributed to a trend toward wine-drinking — once the preserve of the rich — rather than the beer and spirits favored by the less well-off. “We cannot infer that the increase in glass size and the rise in wine consumption in England are causally linked,” the article said, but the size of wineglasses is “an area to investigate further in the context of population health.”
The study was led by Theresa Marteau, director of the Behavior and Health Research Unit at Cambridge, who said in an email that she had not been surprised by the dimensions of 18th-century glasses — averaging 66 milliliters, or 2.23 fluid ounces — when people drank a fortified wine known as sack that was imported from mainland Spain or the Canary Islands.
But, she said, the really steep increase in size came in recent times, almost doubling from 232 milliliters in 1990-93 to a whopping 449 milliliters, nearly a pint, in 2016-17.
The dimensions of the glasses, she said, reflected the overall size of the bowl, rather than the serving size of the wine. But in Britain, portions can appear surprising.
A “large” glass of chardonnay in London, for instance, usually means 250 milliliters, the same amount a French bistro might offer in a carafe to be shared by a more abstemious pair. In Britain, wineglasses also come in medium — 175 milliliters — and small, around 125 milliliters.
But, as Marteau’s report notes, the smallest size “is often absent from England’s wine lists or menus,” despite British regulations requiring bars and restaurants to “make customers aware of these smaller measures.” Just one large glass, by contrast, represents one-fifth of “the weekly recommended intake for low-risk drinking,” the report said.
Bigger glasses, the report says, contribute to higher consumption and bigger profits in bars and restaurants, and the 250-milliliter offering is increasingly prevalent. And wine sold in Britain is stronger now than it was a few decades ago, so larger glasses can mean a higher intake of alcohol.
Historically, the removal of some taxes on glassware in the mid-19th century, coupled with automated glass production could have contributed to gradually increasing sizes. But the big push for bigger glasses may have originated from a desire to derive greater pleasure from allowing finer wines to breathe in airier vessels.
“From 1990 onward, the U.S. market’s demand for larger wineglasses was met by an increase in the size of glasses manufactured in England, where a ready market was also found,” the researchers wrote. Bartenders were not slow to capitalize on the new sizes, and neither were their clients.
“A further influence on wineglass size may have come from people running bars and restaurants,” Marteau’s study found. “Larger wineglasses can increase the pleasure from drinking wine, which may in turn increase the desire to drink more.”