Quote Originally Posted by special_reserve
When did the industry go to metric measurements?

I recently found a couple of bottles of tax stamped fifths of Walkers's Deluxe. In Michigan it is hard to find old bourbon. The bottom of the bottles have a "75" on them, does this have any meaning.

Cost: $7.00/bottle including tax
Status: Unopened (although this will change soon)
The "75" might mean 1975, and probably does if that date is consistent with the other evidence, such as the tax stamp and the non-metric size, which it is.

In 1980, the Treasury Department's Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco, and Firearms (BATF) required distilled spirits bottles to conform to the volume of one of six standard metric sizes. In 1982, President Ronald Reagan disbanded the U.S. Metric Board and canceled its funding, putting an end to metric conversions mandated by the federal government.

Reagan also got rid of the regulatory scheme that put federal agents in every distillery, switching to an audit system. Mandatory tax stamps were eliminated at the same time but many distillers continued to use them until they could convert their bottling equipment to a different kind of tamper-evident cap.