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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 In one recent case, a bottle of 1856 Macallan Rare Reserve was withdrawn from auction at Christies, where it was expected to sell for up to £20,000, after the scientists found it had actually been produced in 1950.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.'"
What? They can't tell the difference by tasting it?
I never would have expected fakes to outnumber genuine articles in a status driven market with poor verification.
It sounds like "real" old whiskies are set to see a dramatic increase in price. Imagine if a rare collectible that fetched thousands of dollars at auction were about to become 50 or even 80 percent rarer. The intersection of the good old supply and demand curve sounds like it's about to jump....
But really, who needs anything better than a 16 y.o. Lagavulin, anyway? F'ing Snobs.
This can likely be done on the order of uL.
And of course assuming that Carbon-14 had never spiked for any reason in the past before we knew what it was and measured it regularly.
No spirit is worthless if it contains alcohol of the appropriate kind.
Do you really think there are $90,000 worth of parts and labor in an S-Class Mercedes (does the S stand for stupid, or stinking rich, or both)? Also, when I go to a restaurant and order a $60 bottle of wine, it makes me feel bad when I see that same bottle in Bottle King for $12...
Another clue to the growing problem of fakes is the supply of hyper-aged whiskey _increasing_. Just a layman's observation.
I was going to say "I think most of us were capable of interpolating that without your assistance", but your current Insightful mod might indicate otherwise. Kinda sad, really ...