A jigger for wine? - It's no pour decision!
You are no stranger to a glass of wine, and you would know if you saw a less-than-generous serving of Shiraz.
Or would you?...
Here's a challenge for you. Take a look at the wine glasses above and guess which is the biggest serving.
And the answer is… they’re all the same size!
Apologies for the trick question, but then it is a tricky thing to tell. And if we can get it wrong, then it means a customer might perceive a serving to be the wrong size too.
To make matters worse, there is a flaw in using the white plimsoll line marked on the side of a wine glass. While lines make clear cut boundaries on the sports field or in a car park, the same can not be said for wine glasses, as we discussed in last week's blog; Size Mattters.
Unlike spirits, there is no (in either the USA, or Australia) legal requirement for what a measure of wine should be, just some guidelines. So the question remains, what is a standard wine measure?
Raising the standards?
As if things weren’t confusing enough, the standard varies around the globe – while some countries like the UK use 175ml (6 ounces), many use the 150ml/5 ounce serving as it means five even pours in one bottle.
As Vinepair explains, we should care about the standard pour because it, “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. Putting classy adult goals like enjoyment before old school goals like intoxication.”
But with no legal standard and measuring by eye being a hard task, the customer is likely to worry they are not getting value for money. And no wonder, as one Fairfax experiment found that servings varied from 145ml to 190ml across the ten establishments they visited.
It seems that a standard wine measure is virtually non-existent. Very few glasses of wine are measured and even where they are, in the case of plimsoll lines, we can’t be sure they’re measured correctly.
Commenting on the Fairfax experiment, Consumers' Federation of Australia's John Furbank told Good Food: “A glass of wine is one of the few items that you purchase that you really don't know what you're getting for your money – what quantity you're getting." adding that “ he is not surprised there were differences of up to 45ml and that a broader sample would have found even greater discrepancies."
In a worst case scenario there are even legal implications of not having a standard wine measure, particularly in Australia where Responsible Service of Alcohol (RSA) rules apply. This was illustrated recently when a Qantas Flight attendant claimed in court that his drunken state was due to the bartender's over-pouring.
Measuring Up
If there is no clear cut standard, how do customers know they’re getting value for money? As innovators in bar tool design, this problem stood out to us as one that needs solving, and so we designed the WineStepJig:
This multi-measure jigger has 150, 120, 90, 60, and 30ml stepped volume measures, which makes it a great multi-functional tool for use with wine, champagne and spirits - perfect for cocktails.
It also features our patented trilobal edged design to prevent meniscus and improve ergonomics, to make it easier to pour out liquid from the jigger into a glass without spilling, lessening waste in your bar.
If you want to provide great customer experience, as well as improving your inventory management and lessening waste, perhaps it's time to try jiggering rather than just figuring?
Want to be one of the first to trial the Uber WineStepJig in your venue? Get in touch here.
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