The global standard bottle size for wines, spirits and liqueurs emerged as 75cl (750ml). In North America and much of the world it still is. However, in 1990 the European Union (EU) introduced a ridiculous piece of legislation which complicated this by dictating that spirit and liqueur bottles have to be 70cl while wine and soft drink bottles remain 75cl. Follows our guide to standard bottle sizes Bottle size legislation You can work out how many units of alcohol there are in any drink by multiplying the size of the serving (in ml) by its ABV percentage, and dividing the result by 1,000. Just like in other alcoholic drinks, these are ‘empty calories’ with no nutritional value, so don’t benefit your body in any way.

The UK Chief Medical Officers' (CMO) low risk drinking guidelines recommend that it’s safest for both men and women to drink no more than 14 units of alcohol a week, spread over three or more days with several drink-free days, and no bingeing. For a drink to be sold as vodka in the UK, it has to be at least 37.5% Alcohol By Volume (ABV). 1 That means 37.5% of the drink is pure alcohol.

It’s a myth that drinks featuring clear spirits are low in calories. Alcohol contains around seven calories a gram - almost as many as pure fat. 2 So, because vodka has a high alcohol content, it is high in calories too. In fact, you might be surprised to hear that a double vodka and cola made with a 50ml measure of vodka contains around 168 calories. 3 Even switching to a diet mixer will still mean a high calorie drink – a double vodka and diet cola is estimated to have 108 calories. 4 So, drinking more than seven double measures of vodka in a week would put you above the UK low risk drinking guidelines. First, note that cl is the same as centiliters and ml is the same as milliliters. Thus, when you are asking to convert 70 cl to ml, you are asking to

But the alcoholic strength of vodka is often higher – many widely bought vodka brands are 40% ABV or above, and some can be even stronger.

Convert volume: 70 cl (centiliter) to other units

Overly complicated and restrictive legislation forces EU spirits producers to produce 70cl bottles for the EU market and 75cl bottles for export to North America so making it expensive for boutique distillers to export. Obviously the same is true for North American distillers wanting to make their products available in the E.U. A centiliter is larger than a milliliter. Simply put, cl is larger than ml. In fact, a centiliter is "10 to the power of 1" larger than a milliliter.