Capacities of wine casks were formerly measured and standardised according to a specific system of English units.
The butt (from the medieval French and Italian botte) or pipe was half a tun, or 105 imperial gallons (480 L).
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.
[5] In Edward Bulwer-Lytton's novel "Paul Clifford", Lord Mauleverer states to Lawyer William Brandon "Because he sent me, in the handsomest manner possible, a pipe of that wonderful Madeira, which you know I consider the chief grace of my cellars, and he gave up a canal navigation bill, which would have enriched his whole county, when he knew that it would injure my property.
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.
Closely related to the modern oil barrel, the tierce was half a puncheon, a third of a butt or a sixth of a tun.