Bring back the pint of champagne!

When I’m gathered, as my granny used to say, I’d like to be remembered as the man who reintroduced the imperial pint of champagne. I’m not an ambitious creature, by and large. But we all want to leave our mark upon this world somehow, and that’s where I’ve set my sights.

I’ve been trying for over 30 years, and sadly I’m no closer to winning this particular battle. But, as my old granny also said, pointing to a picture of Robert the Bruce and the spider, ‘If at first you don’t succeed…’

The imperial pint makes for a perfect-sized bottle. You get four proper-sized glasses from it — as opposed to six from a bottle, or three from a half-bottle. Champagne is designed to be shared, preferably with one other person. Six glasses between two are — if you’re carrying on to another bottle with dinner — too much. However, three glasses are certainly too little to share between two people: one for me, one for you, and a dribble for us both to finish? That’s just mean, and the one thing you should never associate with champagne is meanness.

The imperial pint was Churchill’s favourite way of drinking his beloved Pol Roger — there’s even one proudly displayed in the Cabinet War Rooms (which we supplied from the Berry Bros & Rudd private reserves). I also associate the pint with Duff Cooper. In 1953, in his memoir Old Men Forget, he writes: ‘I ordered an imperial pint of champagne, that admirable measure which like so many good things has disappeared from the world.’ He is remembering a bleak Sunday night in the early stages of the first world war, when he was dining alone at his club, due to return to his army training camp and overcome by ‘a great cloud of depression’.