WINE

Why is there never quite enough wine in a bottle when shared between two of an evening? We've discussed this many times with other folk and 750ml is not quite enough for that "one for the road".

A nephew pass this fact on to us which is very interesting. However we've altered the spelling a bit as it was in American English.

"In case you ever wondered why wine bottles are exactly 750 ml. and not, for example 1 litre which are not so popular..

In the 19th century the main customer of the French wine producers was the UK. The British unit of measurement for liquid volume is imperial gallon, which is equal to 4.54609 litres.

To simplify the calculations when converting units of measurement, the French transported wine from Bordeaux in 225 litre barrels or exactly 50 gallons, corresponding to 300 bottles of 750 ml. To make it easier for them, they assumed that 50 gallons = 300 bottles.

So, one gallon corresponds to 6 bottles. In fact, this is the reason why even today, wine cases often contain 6 bottles."

No good for us. Bring in the 1 litre bottle

Only reason I can think of is it was from a different year. Plastic will be used extensively in production, storage and transportation whether the wine ends up in a bottle or a bag.
I believe the wines from far afield such as Australia basically come over in bulk, in a giant plastic bag inside containers. They are then put into expensive looking bottles.

Colin

Have you ever had a bag burst on you. Back in summer of 2007, in the glorious Saint-Geniez-dʼOlt, I had one split in the boot of the car. Not a little one, no, 5L of the stuff sloshing around in the spare wheel well that was inaccessible due to a third row of seats in the back of the VW Touran. That all had to come out to mop up the swill. The car stank for ages, but fortunately I like the smell of wine.

Colin

Quote: eribaMotters wrote in post #7

---

Have you ever had a bag burst on you. Back in summer of 2007, in the glorious Saint-Geniez-dʼOlt, I had one split in the boot of the car. Not a little one, no, 5L of the stuff sloshing around in the spare wheel well that was inaccessible due to a third row of seats in the back of the VW Touran. That all had to come out to mop up the swill. The car stank for ages, but fortunately I like the smell of wine.

Colin

---

Two good things did come out of the incident.
A French couple opposite told the supermarket who we had bought it from about what had happened. They were unsure if the box was to blame and gave us a replacement box and a roll of cling film to wrap the other soggy boxes we had.
When we got back to the UK, now realising how to remove the rear in the boot seats, I took them out permanently, only replacing them when I sold the car. As we both know the boot on the Touran was big but it was now massive.

Colin

Yes, the older Tourans, like the older Galaxys, have the benefit of removable rear seats. (OK. seats 6 and 7 on the Touran have to be unbolted). Massive rear boot space. A van with windows.

In saying that, we were able to remove the rear seats of our Focus estate with little effort when we needed space to travel. Not much point in having rear seats if there's only the two of you but easier to drive than a van because of the additional side windows.

Our Kuga doesn't have the volume of the Touran but we've left the seats in, folded forward and there's still plenty of nearly flat cargo space and it has large rear side doors as well as a tailgate. (bigger doors than the Tiguan).The only drawback is the sheer weight of these extra seats being dragged around in the vehicle for no reason.

Randa