Here’s a quiz for you: Say you’re sharing a bottle of wine with a friend, or your spouse, after dinner. A glass and a half later, you feel you’ve had enough—you’re pleasantly buzzed, and any more might leave you sleepy or fuzzy in the morning. Still, there’s more wine in the bottle. Do you A) finish what’s left—what the hey, it’s not that much, plus you hate to waste, B) re-cork it and put it in the fridge for tomorrow, or C) forget it about it altogether, leave it uncorked on the counter and dump it down the drain the next morning.
A supermarket in the U.K., Morrisons, seeks to end the drink-it-or-dump-it dilemma by introducing smaller bottles of wine, in the hope that people will actually drink less. During a recession, particularly, people are hesitant to waste, and will tend to drink all the wine in a bottle rather than dump it.
Sainsbury’s introduced the smaller bottles last year, but Morrisons is the first retailer to use the smaller-size bottles to promote responsible drinking.
The new bottles will hold 50cl—or 6 units of alcohol–as opposed to 75 cls,–which contain nine units–making it easier for people to keep to the government’s recommended limit of 14 units a week for women and 21 units a week for men.
Professor Ian Gilmore, chairman of the Alcohol Health Alliance UK says, “People grossly underestimate what they drink at home, particularly during holidays…On holiday, most people drink more in two weeks than they usually do in three months and this seems a good way to start tackling that consumption.”
We want to know…do you think smaller wine bottles can actually reduce alcohol consumption?
I’m one who tends to gauge my drinking by how much is left in the bottle, which is why boxes don’t work well for me. I’d be all for smaller bottles if price was adjusted accordingly.
There’s no doubt that when my husband opens a bottle for one glass, I feel compelled to drink too because it’s now been opened and heaven forbid it should go bad without having been enjoyed.
I would just end up buying (and drinking) more than one bottle…
It’s just like icecream and canned tuna. They are just trying to save money like everyone else but I think the cost of producing smallers bottles will only increase the price….like everything else.