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Nuclear Testing Helps Identify Fake Vintage Whiskey
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 In one recent case, a bottle of 1856 Macallan Rare Reserve was withdrawn from auction at Christies, where it was expected to sell for up to £20,000, after the scientists found it had actually been produced in 1950.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.'"
And I turned into Whiskeyman. My powers include slurred speech, a drunken lurch, and blackouts.
According to Pizza Hut, no.
I never would have expected fakes to outnumber genuine articles in a status driven market with poor verification.
I never thought it possible but this could be a niche market to rival audiophile products in regards to fraud.
But, if it turns out to have been created last tuesday, then you're only burning a few cents worth.
Who would win this election: Andrew Weiner vs Andrew Weiner's weiner.
They opened the bottle to test the whiskey and my cat disappeared.. where d he go????
Subject says it all, really. After all, alcohol abuse is bad.
Sales of "fake" vintage whiskey at low prices have skyrocketted among the "scientists" involved.
Strawberry Boones farm, Corona extra lime, and Bacardi Limon w/Cranberry?
It's always so sad to see 12 year old girls become alcoholics.
Creationists, however, deny the accuracy of carbon dating. Therefore, all the fake whiskey will be sold to them at full price.
A slashdotter who didn't build his own computer is like a Jedi who didn't build his own lightsaber.
Perhaps you need to hang out at a different bar...
It must have been something you assimilated. . . .
2. Whiskey must be stored in oak barrels to age. Once it is out of the barrel, and in a bottle or steel vat, it no longer ages. So a 10 year old whiskey sitting in a bottle for 50 years is still a 10 year old whiskey.
Are there any other laws of physics that whiskey violates? No wonder there are so many scottish physicists.
You insensitive clod!
"Ahhhh, best laid plans of mice and men... and Cookie Monster." -- Cookie Monster, Sesame Street
Safeway branded tequila. Don't drink it, don't cook with it, don't use it to disinfect a wound. Only good as paint thinner. Maybe. If you somehow had a paint-thinning emergency.
More importantly, if you're willing to pay 20,000 for a bottle of whiskey, you're never going to be drinking it.
Actually, you might, under the right circumstances.
When our name is on the back of your car, we're behind you all the way!
Aging can mean two things. 1) The passage of time. So a whiskey stored in any container gets physically older.
2) But aging a whiskey is a specific process. Whiskey is created by the interaction of a spirit with the wood that it is in contact with. In effect you distill a "solvent" and that solvent dissolves chemicals in the wood. Thus when you remove the whiskey from a barrel you are in effect stopping the "aging process."
When I said "[the whiskey] no longer ages." I mean this specific process (#2), not that the passage of time stops. :-)
PS I do happen to a physicist though...
PPS ...not from Scotland.
In other news, representatives of whiskey maker, Jim Bean Corp. were arrested Monday trying to buy radioactive materials from radical elements in Darfur. Experts disagree whether this was a plot to produce counterfeit whiskey or to produce a nuclear bomb as part of some plan for world domination. Dr. Evil was unavailable for comment by press time.
"I Don't Have Enough Faith to be an Atheist"
> But if you harvest the CO2 from fossil fuels, and do it right, you could blow these tester's minds when they find you have 300 million year old whiskey!
Surely this problem can easily be solved by mixing the fossil-fuel CO2 with post 1950s CO2 until you have the desired Carbon-14 concentration.
I like where this is going. Someone should create a "2000 year old" whiskey and claim it was made by Jesus himself, then market it as 'Holy Spirit'.
Dang. And me with no mod points.
Laissez lire, et laissez danser; ces deux amusements ne feront jamais de mal au monde. - Voltaire
Personally I find that Half Life and Whisky make a good combination, up to a point, then I start fumbling the weapon reloads, missing the enemy, and eventually fall off my chair.
If I had a DeLorean... I would probably only drive it from time to time.