We’re not just drinking more wine than our forebears: we’re drinking it from ever-bigger glasses. A team from the University of Cambridge analysed 411 wine glasses and found that the ones we use today are, on average, almost seven times larger than those used in the Georgian era, having grown from 66ml in the early 1700s to 449ml today. Various factors explain the increase, including the end of a tax on glassware in 1845; the rise of automated glass production in the late Victorian era; and a growing fashion in the late 20th century for very large glasses that would allow the wine to “breathe”.

If you go out to dinner and your place setting has a huge wine glass, a “normal” serving of wine looks pathetic in it. If I am serving wine I want to look hospitable and reasonably generous and fill the glasses at least a third, if not half, full. You can thereby demolish a bottle before guests even start to eat.

Yes, you have guessed it! The current fashion for huge glasses has been engineered to sell more wine. Surprise! Surprise! Actually, it is neither potentially good for the guest nor good for the pocket to serve so much alcohol. Unlike most things in life, however, one can do something about it. I have made an executive decision: when we are in the market for new wine glasses they are going to be of modest size.