A Pint of Wine? Britain Plans to Bring Back an Old-Fashioned Measure.

In 2024, the Brits will be able to drink like Winston Churchill again.

The government announced on Wednesday that it would allow stores and pubs to sell pints of wine, famously said to be the former prime minister’s favorite quantity of champagne.

What? But also, why?

It’s a side effect of Brexit, Britain’s official exit from the European Union in 2020, after which, among other things, the country no longer had to conform to European rules about weights and measurement.

In the announcement introducing pint-size wine bottles on Wednesday, Britain’s Conservative government boasted that the move was part of the country’s “new Brexit freedoms.”

Buckle up, because the numbers are about to get a little weird.

Beer, wine and liquor are sold across borders, and while the liquids may not change from one country to the next, their containers sometimes do, according to measurements set out centuries ago by governments trying to regulate their sale. Most standard bottles of wine hold 750 milliliters, or about five glasses, but there are several not-so-standard options as well.

Britain’s traditional imperial system of measurements was codified in 1824, when the British Weights and Measures Act standardized the use of units, including the gallon, pound and yard. The British government began to introduce the metric system on a voluntary basis in 1965, but after the country joined the European Economic Community, manufacturers had to display metric measurements in addition to the traditional imperial ones.

The imperial pint — 568 milliliters, or just under 20 imperial fluid ounces — was one of Britain’s cherished traditional measures. (Not to be confused with the American definition of a pint, which is 473 milliliters, or 16 U.S. ounces and will not feature any more in this article.)

Its closest approximation during the E.U. years was the 500-milliliter bottle, which is two-thirds the size of a standard bottle and holds about three glasses of wine. Those bottles — less than two ounces smaller than the pint-size ones — remain common in British stores, as do a few other sizes.

What’s behind those 68 extra milliliters