In a restaurant, tonight, I ordered a glass of wine. House wine, Chilean cabernet. It was a linen tablecloth restaurant, so I knew the glass of wine would cost around $6.50 to $7 . If you consider it, the term "glass" of wine has no real definition. We all can visualize a wine glass, but it has no fixed size or shape.
If we order a glass of beer, it historically came in those eight ounce beer glasses that were sort of "fluted", with a narrow cylindrical part starting at the bottom and expanding slowly to about an inch or so below the rim from whence they flare quickly to a larger diameter at the top--perhaps two and a half inches. You remember. Indeed, if you frequent the right places those glasses are still quite common.
Alternatively, if you order a bottle of beer you understand that the bottle is twelve ounces, unless it's like Coors was in the old days and comes in an eleven ounce can--which was cheating. In the modern, craft beer world of the Pacific Northwest, we now have the pint. A pint is 16 ounces. Well defined, unless you consider the imperial pint of 20 ounces, which is equally well defined. Now I admit that Willamette Week, and belatedly the Oregonian, have reported on "scammer" bars that serve 14 ounce pints. The Attorney General's office has begun moving against them. The glass of beer has a pretty solid legal definition.
Spirits aren't quite as well defended, but they have precedents. A shot of spirits is typically an ounce. The ounce is a well defined measure. Admittedly, a bar isn't clearly required to inform the patron about the precise amount of spirits sold as a shot, or mixed in a drink. All this happens at the bar, largely but not completely, out of sight. Patrons watching the mixing process, and those consuming the drinks are able to form an opinion about the process. Thus, mixed drinks are not closely controlled, and lack the precision of beer service, but at least any scamming is done pretty much on the quiet. Then we come back to wine.
The waitress brought the glass of Chilean cabernet. The house wine costing perhaps the price of two pints of excellent microbrew. It was an eight ounce glass filled precisely half full. This was, then, four ounces of wine, set primly on a linen tablecloth in a borderline elegant setting. I wasn't pleased. My first thought was, this is bullshit. These people are charging nearly two dollars an ounce for a mediocre, house cabernet. Two dollars an ounce is the price of a fine, single malt scotch.
I understand that, in an elegant establishment, it would be better to assume the customer wants to sample a fine wine, not guzzle to excess. It's better, then, to give him a spartan serving to demonstrate the restaurant's understanding of his interest in the aesthetic of wine rather than cater to a crude lust for inebriation. A small portion is, we understand, sophisticated. It's also damned profitable, and cynic that I am, I suspect profit is the motivation. So, I spoke up. I said, "this looks to me like a half glass of wine", which is what is was. My sweetheart, Marianne looked mortified and the others at the table registered concern. The waitress had absolutely nothing to say. Nothing gained.
Still, I had to speak. It's a very small point, people are starving and being butchered (by us even) in vast numbers every day, so my reaction to overpriced wine and the fact that ordering wine by the glass is a "pig in a poke" is trivial in the larger scope. But I'm glad I did it, and I'll do it again. Guerilla actions are good anywhere scamming of whatever sort is going on--whether it's butchery in Iraq, deception over 9/11, rip offs for the rich or just a bit of "skimming" at home, one should speak out. As they say......do something.
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