Carbon-14 Dating Reveals 5% of Vintage Wines May Be Frauds

Carbon dating isn't used only for such academic pursuits as trying to determine the age of the Shroud of Turin, or figure out how old some rocks are. An anonymous reader writes "Up to 5% of fine wines are not from the year the label indicates, according to Australian researchers who have carbon-dated some top dollar wines."

Comments

No One Would Notice

[geoffrobinson]

I've had a $400 wine before (obtained at a decent price and then aged). The difference between a decent $20-$40 wine and a $400 one is minimal relative to the price.

I doubt anyone without a really refined palate would be able to notice. And even if you did, you would probably chalk it up to poor storage or oxidation or something.

Re:No One Would Notice

[ravenspear]

I agree. While price matters to a certain extent (a cheap $10 bottle from the grocery might not be as good as a nice wine), spending hundreds or even thousands of dollars on a bottle of wine is a proposition with extraordinarily diminishing returns.

When you see how absurd some of those prices are, it's not surprising that you have people trying to fake it for a quick buck.

Re:No One Would Notice

[Bigjeff5]

The refined palate is the key, and while some people definitely have it, most people don't taste nearly enough wine to develop it (and I mean sip-spit, not sip-sip-sip).

For most people a $400 bottle of wine is nothing more than a status symbol, they'd probably enjoy a less complicated $20 wine a hell of a lot more.

Note: personally, I can barely remember which types of wines I like, let alone get all snobbish on age and vinyard.

Re:No One Would Notice

[MishgoDog]

I drink a lot of wine, with a wide range of prices, and disagree.
While it certainly isn't a linear relationship to price, or indeed certain, I have had a lot of very expensive wine which I am more than happy to pay for because I can taste the difference.

I can find a $15 I like and drink, a $30 a love and drink a lot, and a $70 I savour and purely enjoy. The >$300 bottles I've had (not paid for by me, I'm a young professional supporting a student wife!), are usually better than the lot - just not (say) 10 times better than the $30 bottle.

To translate into geekspeak: a top of the line i7 processor might cost 10 times what a midrange 775pin would cost, but doesn't perform the same as 10 of the cheaper processor. Indeed, the majority of users (i.e. browsing & word processing) may not notice the difference.
But some people who are into their computers will definitely notice the difference, and will pay the extra.
I know the metaphor isn't perfect, but you get the gist.

All of that being said - aging wine can be a bit of pot luck unless the conditions are perfect.

Re:No One Would Notice

[Mashdar]

Spitting is only for when you are tasting several varieties and are trying not to get drunk before bottle #14.

Old Enough?

[BobPaul]

As I understand it, carbon dating doesn't work well for young items. Are vintage wines old enough for accurate carbon dating?

Dammit

[__aagctu1952]

Carbon dating isn't all used for such academic pursuits as trying to determine the age of the Shroud of Turin, or figure out how old some rocks are.

The summary writer fails basic science. Carbon dating isn't used, and can't be used for dating rocks. Various forms of radiometric dating can be used, but carbon dating? Hell no. In the words of Youtube's creationism debunker Potholer54, "because there's no f-ing carbon in it!".

Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[Aargau]

It's always more interesting when there are multiple viewpoints on an issue, and I'm happy to take the contrary one. I've tasted 2 buck Chuck (quite good), and tasted $100-$1000 dollar bottles. There is actually a difference that's discernable by I'd guess at least 40% of wine drinkers, and while I'm open to the idea that we can replicate some of the properties of the top wines cheaply, and that certain top wines are counterfeited, I still posit that the top, expensive wines are an experience that are worth paying for, at least once or twice in one's life. To test, I'd recommend splitting among a few friends an Opus One from Costco for around $100, which can be 40% of the retail price. It's consistently a top wine and will enlighten you if you're in that sad, obsessive, minority of folks who care enough to spend crazy money on good wines :)

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[teh dave]

Diminishing returns applies to most products though. Cars, computers, mobile phones, food, houses, clothing... And audio equipment. Most people can't appreciate the quality and faithful sound reproduction of a good audio system, which is a shame because if more people could, then more people would buy better equipment, and consequently, the really expensive stuff wouldn't be as expensive as it is.

Like with wine, I believe that most people would be able to hear the difference between the cheap $0.05 shit that Apple bundles with their products and an infinitely nicer pair of $60-$100 phones, if only they'd actually take the time to listen. Also like wine, being able to appreciate a $2000 set of headphones is not common. And again like wine, you don't know how bad Apple headphones are until you try something better.

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[adolf]

Hmm.

So, it's like beer, cigars, women, clothes, and cars. You often get what you pay for, but if you try a bit, you'll find that you can save a lot of money while getting a lot more.

Nothing to see here, folks.

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[Mr. Freeman]

"that way if it tastes like crap and you don't know if you ought to start shouting, your mate will make that decision for you."

If you don't know whether or not it's crap then how on earth can you say that drinking a $1000+ wine is something that you should pay for EVER? It's not a memorable experience if you have to be TOLD that it's a memorable experience. If you can't recognize the difference between a $20 and $1000 wine by yourself then there isn't any damn point in buying the $1000 bottle.

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[JWSmythe]

    You sir, need to be modded up. :)

    I agree totally. For a while, I was around a cigar smoking crowd. The smoked Cubans. I'd smoke them occasionally, but found some really great cigars just as good for $6/ea. While I won't say every one was a winner, it's a lot more satisfying to experience what's out there, rather than be told "You must do this, because it's the best, because it's the most expensive."

    If I drank my alcohol, dated women, wore clothes, and drove cars strictly on that basis, I'd not only be in debt up to my ears, but really, I wouldn't be all that happy knowing there's an excellent world of variety out there that doesn't cost $1,000/bottle.

    I do remember watching some show, where they spent an absolute fortune on a bottle of wine. It was handled by the [blah, blah] and sold at auction. In the end, they each took a sip and realized they'd just spent a fortune on vinegar. It's a lot better when you can sommelier, "That was terrible, bring me something that doesn't taste like a dog pissed on grapes and then it was bottled." :)

    I'm fairly sure (and have watched auctions that show it) that expensive wine isn't for drinking. It's an investment in a commodity that can be sold later for a profit. It seems they're best intended to never be tasted, and the real loser is the person who finally opens it to find out that they just bought a $1,000 bottle of crap that they can't even sell now.

Re:Non-news ...

[maxume]

I would be astonished if anywhere near 5% of Caterpillar heavy equipment sold in the United States was fake.

Re:-3.14 Reference Snobs

[Dahamma]

So has Monty Python, and it's probably still in the top 10 references on slashdot...

Re:Alternate Headline

[Anonymous Coward]

95% of carbon datings may be inaccurate, says new wine grower-sponsored study.

So they are all fake?

Non-expensive wines

[AliasMarlowe]

In London, I heard a standard rule of thumb that it costs about £100 to get an enjoyable bottle of wine. This breaks down as about £10 for the bottle you actually enjoy, and the remaining £90 for the nine other bottles you bought. Really, there are a lot of nice wines in the £10 price bracket, but they are surrounded by many less nice ones, and it's a matter of taste as to which ones are nicest.

Wine tasting is probably 99% bullshit

[LKM]

Your own experience is subjective. I've seen blind tests where professional wine testers were unable to taste the difference between white wine with red food coloring, and actual red wine. In another test, experts rated cheap wine highly, and expensive wine poorly when the labels were exchanged. Even the background colors influence how wine is evaluated. As far as I can tell, it's all bullshit.

So?

[zippthorne]

What is this, Logan's Run? Just because something is over 30 doesn't mean it's not relevant.

Re:Correction:

[MrHanky]

Hogwash. Tasting the difference between two wines is often very easy. A preference for the more expensive wine might well be induced by knowledge of which wine is supposedly the finer.

Lack of details, other sources of carbon...

[purduephotog]

When I read the article I came up with over a dozen questions, none of which were adequately explained. Thus:

Other sources of carbon in the batch- You've got oak, the toasting process, blending of different types of oak/wines, reuse of barrels, different toasted barrels, different types of oak in the barrel, the possibility of a really old oak barrel (neutral) used for fermentation and combination of items such as StaVin's Oak Cubes or Oak Staves, (two different sources of carbon)...

Oak is aged anywhere from 2-3 years before toasting. Toasted oak could be years different than what the year of the vintage is. Oak Trees are significant sources of variability. (Toasting oak releases sugars and flavours into the wine).

Chaptalization is another source- sometimes wines are started with diluted or various mixes of sugar and water to strengthen the yeast growth. You have a grape must that is a little low in sugar- so add more sugar. Where did it come from? Who knows. Probably not beet sugar, if you know what I mean.

Say you have a stuck fermentation- you take some wine out, dilute it, add more sugar, wine, repeat- eventually bringing up the level until the yeast are strong enough to take back over.

Finally, you have blends. To the best of my knowledge a blended wine doesn't have to state the year or can state the year of the major component - depending on the laws of the region.

All in all... not the best article.

The most expensive wines are undrinkable

[malp]

http://www.decanter.com/news/93359.html
http://www.newluxuryitems.com/top-10-most-expensive-wines-in-the-world.html

People paying 6-figure dollar amounts for a bottle of wine are not buying a quality beverage. They are buying an rare antique. The bottles themselves are filled with vinegar at best. Of course fraud is rampant. Rich people are buying otherwise worthless objects with a cute story behind them.