Checking the vintage by the Atom

In general, carbon dating, using the ratio of isotopes of carbon, has been long used and is well established. In this specific case I will reserve judgment until a publication in a journal of high repute that uses peer review appears. There likely are many labs that could do this type of testing - many are in universities. Besides having the needed equipment available, there will be some cost for sample preparation etc. It seems that the test might be most useful for older, expensive wines that appear on the auction market and do not seem right. It is very easy to fake labels these days, so testing before the wine is sold will mean little if someone fakes a label that has a message that the wine has been tested.

There is a detailed explanation about the processs in the book 'Billionaire's Vinegar". More ultra-expensive gimmick than an everyday tool for detecting fraud.

Bi!! wrote on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 09:10:13 -0700 (PDT):

I kind of doubt that radio-carbon dating is particularly accurate for recent (say 2 centuries old) objects since the change in carbon ratios would be very small indeed. It's also true that mankind has been messing around with isotopic content by nuclear testing in the last century.

I think it would be cheaper to cut the bottle and count the rings. ;)

"The method was tested using 20 Australian red wines made from 1958 to 1997 and found it was accurate to within one year."

pk

pk wrote on Mon, 22 Mar 2010 17:02:01 -0000:

I will wait to see what happens when the study is actually published in a reviewed scientific journal not as a presentation at a scientific meeting, even a prestigious one, where only plausibility is considered.

LOL When I read that article I thougth: "Wow, so we have to thank those nuclear tests if we can date wine with this system. But wait, there hasn't been any nuclear atmospheric test in the last years. If these guys want to date current vintages, what will they do? Ask some president to throw another couple bombs to 'mark' the current years?" Probably it was the effect of the lack of lambrusco at supper...

I'm back in lambro-land tomorrow so I'll have many occasions to see if lambrusco is a nuclear deterrent. Last time I was there I picked up what I thought was lambrusco but turned out to be a local chestnut beer - very good.

I'm back in lambro-land tomorrow so I'll have many occasions to see if lambrusco is a nuclear deterrent. Last time I was there I picked up what I thought was lambrusco but turned out to be a local chestnut beer - very good.

Chestnut-beer? Those guys in the breweries are going frenzy with anything they can get theyr hands upon. BTW - a nice one: "Rosso all'Antica" from Azienda Agricola Bertolani, an old style, very acidic lambrusco. Wonderful on a hearthy trippa alla parmigiana or any savoury and succulent dish.

There you have the basic flaw in the system. It only dates from the early 1950's.

Surely Chernobyl must help with more recent vintages? Most of Europe was hit, some areas here in SE France are still inaccessible due to Cesium

Mike wrote on Tue, 23 Mar 2010 16:28:28 +0100:

I'm sure isotope detection it will date wines from the time of the event but the original post concerned Carbon-14/Carbon-12 ratios and very highly priced wines will mostly be older than 24 or so years.