Tuesday 25 August 2020

barrel, butt, punchon, pipe

We discover to our delight that much like the fanciful names for oversized wine bottles, a buttload is a formal and quantified Imperial unit of measurement—equal to just over a thousand litres (varying widely throughout history) or half a tun, the largest standard in casks and barrels. That’s a lot of wine. This speciality jargon is still used in wine making and the cooperage sectors and is ultimately derived from the Latin buttis for bottle and trade drove the harmonisation of tonnage and shipping containers.