Slashdot Mirror
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."
Certain vintages (same grapestock, same vineyard, same winemaster) vary in perceived taste and value from year to year, depending on weather, harvest time, sugar content, etc. 1999 may be great, 2000 shoddy. Is C-14 dating accurate to within one year? Hmm...
That story doesn't leave much to go on, it's pretty low information content. However, it should be noted that a vintage wine can contain up to 15% of its grapes from another year. That would obviously skew any carbon dating results.
I'm French and I mostly agree about your quotes... under 3 €, it's everyday wine, good for cooking or drinking over everyday supermarket cheese. Above 3 € I can be confident that it'll be enjoyable, with a nice meal. But then up from 15€, I begin to wonder if it's really worth it, and that's where you really need to know something about it.
Gold plated wine is absolutely exquisite
No idea about wine, but here's vodka.
The creatures outside looked from Alt-Right to Antifa; but already it was impossible to say which was which.
Actually, my wife and I make our own wine. We compare with other neighbors that do- and sometimes the 'vintages' are expressed in single digits- representing the number of WEEKS it's aged.
(And not all homemade wine is crap. I follow the same processes the big wineries do- even down to a sub-micron filter for clarification and stabilization. I use the same chemicals, same oaks, etc. My wines tend to be very good)...