English wine cask units#Puncheon or tertian

{{wide image|English wine cask units.jpg|750px|alt=Seven barrels, each of a different size.}}

{{Main|Tun (unit)}}

The tun ({{langx|ang|tunne}}, {{langx|la|tunellus}}, Middle Latin: {{lang|la|tunna}}) is an English unit of liquid volume (not weight), used for measuring wine, oil or honey. It is typically a large vat or vessel, most often holding 252 wine gallons, but occasionally other sizes (e.g. 256, 240 and 208 gallons) were also used.{{cite journal|journal=Memoirs of the American Philosophical Society |title=A Dictionary of Weights and Measures for the British Isles: The Middle Ages to the Twentieth Century, Volume 168 |url=https://books.google.com/books?id=0l_k-XMIiQIC&pg=PA375|last=Zupko |first=Ronald E. | publisher=American Philosophical Society |volume=168 |year=1985 |isbn=9780871691682 |quote=Quoting Gras (1918), p. 706}}

{{anchor|pipe|butt}}

The butt (from the medieval French and Italian botte) or pipe is half a tun, or exactly {{convert|105|impgal|l|5}}.

Tradition has it that George, Duke of Clarence, the brother of Edward IV of England, was drowned in a butt of malmsey on 18 February 1478.{{Cite web |url=http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/royalty/dukeac.html |title=Dukes of Great Britain |access-date=2012-09-14 |archive-url=https://web.archive.org/web/20130218093912/http://www.genuki.org.uk/big/royalty/dukeac.html |archive-date=2013-02-18 |url-status=dead }}[https://web.archive.org/web/20070807195747/http://www.biography.com/search/article.do?id=9249149 Biography Channel Duke of Clarence] When James VI and I sailed to Norway in October 1589, his provisions included a pipe of sack.Miles Kerr-Peterson & Michael Pearce, "James VI's English Subsidy and Danish Dowry Accounts", Miscellany of the Scottish History Society, XVI (Woodbridge, 2020), p. 33. In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado", the narrator claims he has received "a pipe of what passes for Amontillado".Sarah J. Hale & Louis Godey, Godey's Lady's Book, vol. 33 (Philadelphia, 1846), p. 216.

{{anchor|puncheon|tertian}}

{{Main|Puncheon (unit)}}

The puncheon is a third of a tun. The term puncheon, shortened to pon in the United States, is thought to derive from the fact that it would have been marked by use of a punch to denote its contents.{{Citation needed|date=September 2023}} The unit was also known as a tertian (from the Latin word for "third").

{{Main|Hogshead}}

Of comparable size to the beer hogshead, the wine hogshead is equal to half a butt or a quarter of a tun.

{{Main|Tierce (unit)}}

Closely related to the modern oil barrel, the tierce is half a puncheon, a third of a butt, or a sixth of a tun.

{{Main|Barrel (unit)}}

The wine barrel is half a wine hogshead or an eighth of a tun.

{{Main|Rundlet}}

The rundlet is a seventh of a butt or a fourteenth of a tun.

Originally, the tun was defined as 256 wine gallons.{{gaps|256|{{=}}|2⁸}} (This was the basis for calling 64 gallons a quarter.) At some time before the 15th century, it was reduced to 252 gallons, so as to be evenly divisible by other small integers, including seven.252 = {{gaps|2²|×|3²|×|7}} Note that a 252-gallon tun of wine has a mass of approximately 2060 pounds,See Ethanol (data page)#Properties of aqueous ethanol solutions. between a short ton (2000 pounds) and a long ton (2240 pounds).

The tun is approximately the volume of a cylinder with both diameter and height of 42 inches, as the gallon was originally a cylinder with diameter of 7 inches and height of 6.The volume, V, of this cylinder may be approximated from the height, h, and the radius, r, as follows.

:

The Queen Anne wine gallon of 231 cubic inches was adopted in 1707, and still serves as the definition of the US gallon. A US tun is thus the volume of a rectangular cuboid with dimensions 36 by 38.5 by 42 inches.

When the imperial system was introduced, the tun was redefined in the UK and its colonies as 210 imperial gallons, meaning the imperial tun remained evenly divisible by small integers,210 = {{gaps|2|×|3|×|5|×|7}} and there was also little change in the actual value of the tun.The imperial tun is only about {{#expr:954.6789/9.53923769568-100round2}}% larger than the US tun assuming current definitions, since {{nowrap|5 imp gal ≈ 6 US gal}}.

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• English sparkling wine
• English wine cask units
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