Nuclear Testing Helps Identify Fake Vintage Whiskey 366
Hugh Pickens writes "Industry experts claim the market for vintage whiskey has been flooded with fakes that purport to be several hundred years old but instead contain worthless spirit made just a few years ago. Now researchers at the Oxford Radiocarbon Accelerator Unit have developed a method that can pinpoint the date a whiskey was made by detecting traces of radioactive particles created by nuclear bomb tests in the 1950s. '"It is easy to tell if whiskey is fake as if it has been produced since the middle of the twentieth century, it has a very distinctive signature," says Dr. Tom Higham, deputy director of the facility. Nuclear bomb testing in the 1950s saw levels of carbon-14 in the atmosphere rise around the world so the amount of isotope absorbed by living organisms since this time has been artificially elevated. Whiskey extracted from antique bottles is sent to the laboratory where scientists burn the liquid and bombard the resulting gas with electrically charged particles so they can measure the carbon-14 in the sample. In one recent case, a bottle of 1856 Macallan Rare Reserve was withdrawn from auction at Christies, where it was expected to sell for up to £20,000, after the scientists found it had actually been produced in 1950. "So far there have probably been more fakes among the samples we've tested than real examples of old whiskey," says Higham.'"
Taste (Score:5, Insightful)
Shocking. (Score:5, Insightful)
Business Opportunity...? (Score:5, Insightful)
But really, who needs anything better than a 16 y.o. Lagavulin, anyway? F'ing Snobs.
Re:Taste (Score:5, Insightful)
What? They can't tell the difference by tasting it?
I suppose they can, but telling the difference is not the same as proving it. You need some kind of proof to accuse somebody of making fakes, not just its subjective taste.
Re:Taste (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taste (Score:5, Insightful)
If you spend 20,000 pounds on a bottle of whiskey, you're going to taste the difference, even if there isn't one. Belief can have as much an impact on perception as reality.
Penn & Teller did a great experiment in an episode of their show, Bullshit. In one episode, they serve hose water in fancy bottles with fantastic stump lines about how great and rare each different bottle of hose water is. Most of the diners tasted a difference between the various bottles of hose water.
In another, they had a prop design guy use (extremely) cheap ingredients to create tantalizing foods. The waiter would convince diners that stale bread was an exotic french import, receiving rave reviews in the process.
Advertising is all about perception, and a lot of our consumer economy is based on it. My girlfriend works for a high end cosmetics chain... You wouldn't believe what a rip off that stuff can be.
It makes me wish I was in the cosmetics business.
Re:Such a waste (Score:3, Insightful)
This can likely be done on the order of uL.
Re:carbon 14 useless after 1945 (Score:2, Insightful)
Worthless? (Score:3, Insightful)
Anything "high end" is generally a rip off (Score:1, Insightful)
Another clue (Score:3, Insightful)
Re:Taste (Score:2, Insightful)
Re:Business Opportunity...? (Score:5, Insightful)
Well here's mine: decreasing the radioactive content of "fake" whiskey to match that of the "genuinely" old stuff!
Well, if you do manage to invent the nuclear damper [wikia.com] and accelerate the 1/2 life decay of carbon-14, let me know. I can think of a lot of people who'd be interested in forcing accelerated decay of stuff like plutonium.
Re:I was bitten by a radioactive whiskey (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Anything "high end" is generally a rip off (Score:3, Insightful)
Do you really think there are $90,000 worth of parts and labor in an S-Class Mercedes...
For someone that likes to call others stupid, you don't know anything about cars, do you? You really think that a Ford Festiva and a Mercedes have the same performance and quality of parts? This isn't a case of "I THINK my car has better parts/performance". You can actually buy mechanical parts that have higher tolerances, better engineering and longer lasting materials. And you can prove it with testing methods.
Re:Taste (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:Taste (Score:3, Insightful)
While the age of the cork doesn't guarantee the age of the whiskey, it might be an indication. Hard to say though.
But the amount withdrawn is going to be in the uL range which isn't even a significant portion of a single drop.
Re:Taste (Score:4, Insightful)
They also had at least one customer call them on how horrible the food was. And let's forget that they shot a lot of footage and only showed you the parts they wanted to (like the various asking people on the street obvious trivia questions shows). Definately a biased sample. But mostly they could have been praying on the people's nature not to cause a fuss, and to agree with authority. After all, if I tell you that the bitterness in Merlot is a Good Thing, you might not like it, but want to appear sophisticated to me (the waiter), so you claim to. In other words, people lie, especially when they worry their fears aren't warrented.