English wine cask units the mediæval French and Italian "botte") or pipe was half a tun, or 1008 pints. 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. (However, Josephine Tey in "The Daughter of Time" suggests that "drowned in a butt of malmsey" means rather that George, Duke of Clarence, drank himself to death rather than literally drowning in a container of wine.) In Edgar Allan Poe's short story "The Cask of Amontillado", the narrator claims he has received "a pipe of what passes for Amontillado".
English wine cask units denote its contents. The unit was also known as a "tertian" (from the Latin word for "third"). Of comparable size to the beer hogshead, the wine hogshead was equal to half a butt or a quarter of a tun. Closely related to the modern oil barrel, the tierce was half a puncheon, a third of a butt or a sixth of a tun. The wine barrel was half a wine hogshead or an eighth of a tun. The rundlet was a seventh of a butt or a fourteenth of a tun. Originally, the tun was defined as 256 wine gallons;