Which of the above is a standard glass of wine? Trick question. They all have the same amount in them. Getting the measure right means you might be wasting wine every time you pour.
Pouring a glass of wine seems like a simple thing. Just fill it up to the line! But this line isn’t actually an international standard. Different brands produce different shapes and sizes of glassware, and with no official measure or legal requirements, what is considered a ‘standard’ glass of wine varies greatly.
A glass of wine is one of the very few drinks consumers can order where the exact quantity poured is often unknown. Even when it is measured, it’s not clear what that measurement is, or whether it is accurate.
In fact, the average glass in venues across Australia has been known to range from 140ml to 190ml, because of individually different standards for measuring a pour. While you may be getting an average of four glasses per bottle, a bar down the street may be getting five.
Potential over-pouring can impact safety, as neither bartender nor customer knows exactly how much is being consumed. For example in 2018, a Qantas flight attendant said free-poured drinks were the reason he ended up consuming almost double what he had intended, subsequently putting him into the hospital.
A customer is likely to know that one shot of spirit is one standard drink, but how many standard drinks are sitting in the glass in front of them?
The amount of wine in the glass also impacts how much a customer may spend at a venue. Current trends of premiumisation show that consumers are opting to drink lesser quantities at higher quality, valuing taste and experience over drinking for the sake of drinking. When intoxication is not the main goal, it’s unlikely a customer will reorder after a poor wine experience.
Vinepair explains that a smaller pour “will enhance your experience of any wine. It allows oxygen to remain in the glass to further open up the wine and give you a rich aromatic impression before the wine even hits your palate.”
With wine, a customer and bartender can look at a glass and have very different ideas on what is a fair pour for the price paid.
If the customer believes its too small a pour, they might not see the value and order a lower priced item or simply not return. Pour too much and you’re wasting wine in every glass and impacting your costs. This all adds up whatever way you look at it – without consistent and fair measurement, there’s a greater potential for loss.
So how do you ever know what the right amount is?
This is a question that Über Bar Tools saw as key to answer in the industry. They believe there’s no reason that pouring a glass of wine should be different to pouring any other drink at a bar.
That means having an easy, standardised measure that can be applied to a glass of any shape or size. Of course, spirits have already tackled this problem with the jigger, which inspired Über Bar Tools to think along the same lines.
They created a larger, multi-functional jigger for use with everything from wine and champagne to spirits. The tool is called ‘WineStepJig’ and has 150, 120, 90, 60 and 30ml marks, all of which have been designed to prevent meniscus mismeasurement and allow easy spill-free pouring.
Without the need for a measure on the glass itself, the WineStepJig makes it possible to finally upgrade bar glassware and provide consumers with the quality they’re looking for.
Be one of the first to trial the Über WineStepJig here.
