Wine, mistletoe’s seasonal partner,1 may be a feature of some rather merry Christmas nights, particularly for women.2 As we approach the culturally legitimised deviancy of festive drinking, we suggest that size does matter: look at the wine glass in your hand.

We describe here the capacity of wine glasses in England since 1700, around which time glasses became the more common vessel for wine. This followed the development of lead crystal glassware by George Ravenscroft in the late 17th century, allowing for larger and less fragile glasses. 15

Larger tableware is known to increase food consumption 11 : plate sizes have increased over the past 100 years, 12 likely contributing to the prevalence of obesity and overweight. 13 14 But less is known about glassware’s relation to how much we drink. Studying wine glasses’ capacity over time is an initial step in considering, firstly, whether any changes in their size may have contributed to the steep rise in wine drinking seen in the past few decades and, secondly, whether reducing wine glass size may help cut consumption.

Increased drinking since the mid-20th century reflects greater affordability, availability, and marketing of alcohol products, and more liberal licensing has led supermarkets to compete. 4 6 7 Environmental cues such as the design of drinking glasses—particularly their size—may also have contributed to increased drinking, particularly of wine. 8 9 10

Alcohol’s adverse effects are well documented: it is the fifth largest risk factor for premature mortality and disability in high income countries and the seventh largest worldwide. 3 The amount and form of alcohol consumption in England has fluctuated over the past 300 years, largely in response to economic, legislative, and social factors. 4 Until the later 20th century the forms most commonly drunk were beer and spirits, as wine was for the richer Scrooges rather than the poorer Cratchits. 4 5 Alcohol consumption in general then started to increase, and wine consumption rose almost fourfold during 1960-80, almost doubling again during 1980-2004. 4

The wine glasses studied

We sought to measure the capacity of glasses used for unfortified wine (excluding sparkling wines) with a stem and foot that have been available or sold in England from 1700 to 2017. We searched online and contacted experts in antique glassware, including museum curators, although no single source captured wine glass size over the period of interest. We obtained measurements of 411 glasses from five sources:

The Department of Western Art at the Ashmolean Museum of Art and Archaeology, the University of Oxford (years 1700-1800; n=43)

The Royal Household, where a new set of glassware is commissioned for each monarch (years 1808-1947; n=24)

eBay, the auction and retail website (years 1840-2016; n=65)

Catalogues from Dartington Crystal, an English glassware manufacturer (years 1967-2017; n=180) and

John Lewis, the department store with the largest online selection of wine glasses (year 2016; n=99).

Two of these sources, eBay and John Lewis, were in the public domain. We had to seek access to the other sources to obtain capacity measurements.

We recorded the total capacity of the bowl of the glasses. Glasses from the Ashmolean Museum and Royal Household were measured by calculating the difference between the wine glass’s initial weight and its weight when filled to the brim with water (1 g water = 1 mL water). The capacity of glasses for sale on eBay was already provided for 12 glasses as part of their descriptions, and we requested this from the vendors for a further 82 glasses, obtaining information on 53. From Dartington Crystal we obtained capacity information from its current and archived catalogues, and John Lewis listed capacities on its online platform (www.johnlewis.com, accessed on 24 November 2016).

Wine glass capacity since 1700 Figure 1 shows the capacity of wine glasses from the five sources over time, along with the non-parametric regression fit for the mean (solid line) and the corresponding pointwise 95% confidence intervals (shaded area). Wine glass capacity increased from 66 mL (standard deviation 21.69) in the 1700s to 417 mL (SD 170) in the 2000s, and the mean wine glass size in 2016-17 was 449 mL (SD 161). This increase was gradual until the 1990s, when it became more marked. Fig 1 Wine glass capacity from 1700 to 2017: non-parametric regression curve fit for the mean (95% confidence interval shown in shaded area) The range of wine glass capacities also increased over time, as would be expected given that the mean and variance typically increase together in such a context. Modelling the median shows the same pattern, suggesting that the steeper increase that started in the 1990s was not driven by outliers. Classical and robust regression estimates within each source suggested that wine glass capacity increased in all time periods from 1800 to 2017. Further details of the analysis are provided in supplemental materials. Classical and robust regression estimates within each source suggested that wine glass capacity increased in all time periods from 1800 to 2017

Increasing glass sizes To our knowledge, this is the first attempt to explore changes in wine glass size over time. Our findings suggest that their capacity in England has increased significantly in the past 300 years, including a marked increase since the 1990s. We consider the limitations of these observations, as well as their possible causes and implications. We do not know how representative of their periods the glasses we observed are, in terms of the range of glasses or their popularity. We were unable to obtain sales data on the glasses in our sample. And we do not know whether the trends we observed in English wine glasses would be found in other countries. Smaller wine glasses may have an endurance advantage over larger ones, which could help explain our findings. However, while endurance may have led to non-representative glass size samples in the museum’s 18th century collection and the glasses offered for sale on eBay, it would not explain the trend of increasing size observed in the wine glasses in the Royal Household or Dartington collections. In the Royal Household, all damaged glasses are repaired or remade. In the Dartington collection, sizes were taken from catalogues (current and archived). Further evidence that the observed increased capacity reflects a real change comes from our analyses that show an increase in capacity within the data from each source, starting from the 1800s. This is further supported by historical trends in wine glass production, which we outline below.