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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 In one recent case, a bottle of 1856 Macallan Rare Reserve was withdrawn from auction at Christies, where it was expected to sell for up to £20,000, after the scientists found it had actually been produced in 1950.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.
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.
Strawberry Boones farm, Corona extra lime, and Bacardi Limon w/Cranberry?
It's always so sad to see 12 year old girls become alcoholics.
1. The older a whiskey is the more expensive it gets due to rarity, not quality. Many people have a bias toward older whiskeys (whiskies) because they think they are better. Like wine, some whiskeys age well, others don't.
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.
3. Whiskeys in barrels lose about 2% a year due to evaporation, known as the angel's share. That 2% is mostly water in hotter climates, but in cooler ones, like Scotland, what is lost is mostly alcohol. Thus a spirit which is put into a barrel at 60% alcohol by volume (ABV) will be reduced to 50% ABV then 40% ABV as time goes one. This is important because once the produce drops below 40% ABV, it can no longer legally be named whiskey. Thus whiskeys are usually never older than 40 years of age to due the angle's share.
4. Whiskey is how it's spelled in the USA (where I am writing this.) In Britain and Canada it is spelled whisky. Since the article discusses whisky from The Macallan distillery (yes the "T" is capitalized), the article's title and summary misspelled "whisky."
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.
It is better for society if there isn't $90,000 worth of parts and labor in an S-Class Mercedes. The whole point of luxury items is to take a rich person's money and put it back into circulation, in the process reducing the concentration of power that his bankroll represents. The only question is, how much wealth will be consumed in the process?
Selling him a $80,000 Rolex burns about $4,000 in actual wealth to liberate the $80,000. That's efficient.
Him hiring a butler for $80,000 a year burns about $40,000 in actual wealth -- this is the wealth the butler could've created elsewhere, rather than scurrying around making the rich guy feel special. That's not efficient.
So, never criticize super-expensive trinkets; they are far far better for society's total net wealth than servants.
FATMOUSE + YOU = FATMOUSE
> 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'.