Welsh brewery wins ‘peint’ pint battle

An independent brewery in Wales has won a two-year battle to be allowed to mark its glasses as Welsh “peints”, rather than pints.

The Cwrw Llyn brewery, which was founded three years ago, has been locked in a legal battle for the past two years over its wish to use the Welsh term ‘peint’ on its pint glasses instead of the English terms ‘pint’, as reported by The Independent. 

When setting up their brew-based endeavour, the directors of the brewery were told they would need to go through “the official channels”, if it wanted to provide peint glasses.

The National Measurement Office (NMO) and Trading Standards Office in Bury later said it would not be able to use the word ‘peint’ in isolation.

The brewery’s efforts were finally rewarding in January after it was given permission to add the an extra ‘e’ to its glasses, as long as it also included the Welsh and international abbreviation ‘pt’ underneath.

Myrddin ap Dafydd, one of 12 of the brewery’s directors, said: “We are really happy we secured this now and that we’re getting to launch the new glasses at the festival. It’s important because people like that diversity when they get local produce.”

Its newly labelled glasses will be launched at the Cwrw Cyntefig Festival on 26 July which will celebrate the discovery of a bronze age brewery more than 3,000 years ago in the Llyn Peninsula in Gwynedd, Wales.

A spokesman for the NMO said: “There is no change from the current legal position. Glasses used for the sale of beer or cider should be marked with their quantity so that consumers can clearly see how much they are purchasing and because the glasses themselves act as capacity measures.

“It has always been possible to mark ‘peint’ as additional information and NMO confirmed this in response to enquiries this year and last year that the Welsh ‘peint’ may be used either alongside ‘pint’ or the abbreviation ‘pt’ so that glasses may be marked ‘peint’ followed by ‘pt’.”