"Daddy, why did they name the bar the Hogshead?" Cole asked as we listened to Harry Potter on a recent car ride.
As any Dad knows, when you don't know an answer, you make one up. But I wasn't satisfied with my answer, and decided to Google "Hogshead" when we got home. As is often the case, the omnipresent indexer of all things web sent me to a Wikipedia entry. There was a good one about the Harry Potter bar, but an even better entry that returned an even more useful answer.
Turns out a Hogshead is a unit of measure equal to 2 barrels of wine. It's an old English measurement established hundreds of years ago.
Funny thing about those old measurement schemes. They don't always make a lot of sense in today's world of standardization and government regulation. Turns out a Hogshead of one liquid wasn't the same as a Hogshead of another, or even from a different County. This from the Wikipedia entry - "For example, the OED cites an 1897 edition of Whitaker's Almanack, which specified the number of gallons of wine in a hogshead varying by type of wine: claret 46 gallons, port 57, sherry 54; and Madeira 46. The American Heritage Dictionary claims that a hogshead can consist of anything from 62.5 to 140 (presumably U.S.) gallons. Eventually, a hogshead of wine came to be 63 gallons, while a hogshead of beer or ale is 54 gallons." And there's no reference at all as to what a Hogshead of Rye might have been.
But if a Hogshead is still insufficient to slake your thirst, try buying your wine by the "Butt." That would be the equivalent of two Hogsheads, or 126 gallons of wine. Or by the "tun", which is 2 Butts (4 barrels, or 252 gallons), or almost enough to get you through your next Bacchanalia.
Cheers!
Dave Chambers, Wine Merchant
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