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

[Archangel Michael]

$400 dollar wine is much like gold plated ethernet cables. Only less so.

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

[jrumney]

In many ways the wine market is similar to the hifi market. If only the butler had opened the wine using the correct polarisation of the Oxygen Free Corkscrew, you might have noticed the difference.

Re:No One Would Notice

[Barlo_Mung_42]

If I spend that much on wine I'm not going to spit it out. That's just crazy talk right there!

Re:No One Would Notice

[KiloByte]

Gold plated wine is absolutely exquisite

No idea about wine, but here's vodka.

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.

Alternate Headline

[wjc_25]

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

The finer things in life.

[voodoo cheesecake]

This is why I only drink Jolt and 151.

Re:The finer things in life.

[Ethanol-fueled]

Man, that's hardcore. Do you shit yourself in your sleep?

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?

Re:Old Enough?

[rnaiguy]

There is a trick that can be used to date things from the 2nd half of the 20th century. Nuclear bomb testing caused a spike in atmospheric C14, which is rapidly decreasing as it equilibrates with the oceans (among other things). The actual radioactive decay is insignificant on this timescale, and so we can get a pretty good idea if the grapes used to make the wine were plucked after nuclear testing began, and if so what year they were harvested. This technique has also been used in biology to date the "birth" of cells in human tissues.

Re:Old Enough?

[rnaiguy]

No, I'm thinking of C14. Which is produced when all the excess neutrons from a nuclear blast smash into atmospheric nitrogen: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Carbon-14

here's the biology reference: http://www.pnas.org/content/103/33/12564.long

these guys pioneered the tech for use in biology, but then it was popularly applied to wines.

Re:Old Enough?

[rgmoore]

No, he's right that it's 14C. Tritium gets incorporated into water, so it gets spread around very quickly and regularly. It also has a relatively short half life (~12 years). 14C released in nuclear testing mostly winds up as CO2, which gets pulled out of the air fast enough to serve as a useful marker but not so fast that it isn't still useful decades after the end of atmospheric testing.

Re:Old Enough?

[geminidomino]

I saw that episode of White Collar too! ;)

Re:Old Enough?

[interkin3tic]

GP isn't completely wrong though. Tritiated thymidine was commonly used to label cells which were actively taking up DNA and were therefore proliferating. BrdU is more commonly used today. Both are somewhat more convenient than utilizing nuclear bomb tests.

I find the article very interesting given the history of adult neurogenesis. Pasko Rakic, who communicated the paper, was initially very skeptical of those results:

At the time, the new technique of labelling a cell with thymidine to determine the birth date of neurons was used in newborns, since adult animals were not thought to create new neurons. But Altman decided to try the technique with adults. He published several papers in the most reputable scientific journals, claiming that new neurons are formed in the brains of adult rats, cats, and guinea pigs–a discovery that Nottebohm later made with canaries. Because the techniques Altman used were primitive, however, they were open to reasonable doubt. It was a classic example of a discovery made ahead of its time. At first, Altman was ignored, then he was ridiculed, and finally, after failing to receive tenure at M.I.T., he moved to Purdue. With no recognition, he was quickly forgotten. The field almost dried up. A decade later, Michael Kaplan, a researcher at Boston University and later at the University of New Mexico, used an electron microscope to supply more compelling evidence that several parts of the adult brain, including the cortex, also produced neurons. He, too, met resistance from researchers who did not find his work convincing. ("Those may look like neurons in New Mexico,'' Kaplan remembers Rakic saying at the time. "But they don't in New Haven.") Kaplan had published his findings in important journals and even suggested a novel way to test the phenomenon in humans, but he, too, was ignored, and he left the field.

source

Rakic has admitted he was wrong, and I think his criticisms weren't unfounded. The immunohistochemistry demonstrating they are real neurons, for one thing, adresses some of the major concerns he had with the previous studies. Still, it's interesting: the "novel way" to test it in humans was look at brain sections of people who had been treated for cancer with BrdU, proposed decades ago, at the time it was considered too difficult. The study you cited does that and also uses nuclear tests to further illustrate the point.

Excellent work.

[deniable]

1. Buy a bunch of expensive wine
2. Carbon date a small sample.
3. Dispose of the rest thoughtfully.

Some days I'm proud to be an Australian.

Re:Excellent work.

[deniable]

Whoosh

Fixed that for you.

Re:Excellent work.

[R3coiler]

I'm going to have to try this with beer. For science, of course.

Re:-1 wine snobs

[Cryacin]

Isn't it funny how wine connoisseurs play this weird guessing game.

"Can you guess what wine it is?"

"Chateu Latour 1986?"

"Nooooo! 1985!!!"

"Damn! So close!!!"

I mean, you don't exactly hear winos on the street going...

"Yes, fantastic vintage!" "About four O'Clock!"
"Goes well with the carcass of KFC, from bin number four..."

More accuracy

[zogger]

Ya know, they'd get way more accuracy measuring these fine wines age if they used oxygen depleted gold plated monster cables on their equipment...

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!".

Re:Dammit

[rgmoore]

"because there's no f-ing carbon in it!".

There are plenty of rocks that contain carbon. Good examples include limestone, marble, coal, and oil shale. The problem isn't lack of carbon. The problem is that the half life of 14C is very short compared to the age of most rocks, so there isn't enough radiocarbon left to date.

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

[GNUALMAFUERTE]

I'm from Argentina. We produce some of the finest wines in the world, specially in Mendoza.
t,
Here, a cheap, average wine that most people drink at home with dinner retails at ~$9 (That is, 9 pesos, or 2.3 Dollars.)

A relatively good wine retails ~$20 (5.2 dollars). At $150 (39 dollars), you can get one of the finest wines you'll ever taste.

The funny thing is, while traveling to the USA, I've recognized bottles that Retail here for ~$35 (9 dollars), with tags of 250 dollars!

So, leaving that aside, yes, you can definitely tell the difference, but it's not all about money. You can definitely tell the difference between any two wines. But, with wine, price is not always = quality. I've tested $200 wines that I didn't like (like the Lamadrid Gran Reserva Malbec) , and $20 (5 dollars) wines that I loved (Like Benjamin Nieto Cabernet Sauvignon)

So, money plays a big role, but there's not a clear relationship between price and quality. It's more of a threshold ... you won't find really good wines very cheap. But above a certain price, there are good and bad wines at a very ample price range

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[m509272]

We have wine nearly every day. There's no need to spend more than $100 and there's plenty of wines under $60. I'm talking wine store not restaurant. The number of wines that I've had over $200 that I've went wow this is amazing is pretty much zero. There were a handful of wines in the $100-$200 and those wines are at that price because they got high ratings which drove them up. Before that they were sub $100. I've spoken to numerous winemakers and quite a number of them say we have to have a >$100 wine because so and so has one and people that know nearly nothing about wine but have a lot of money will buy just on price, that being expensive. Seek out the little brothers of wines like Grange which are considerably less in cost. The same holds true for some of the high end Spanish wines and some of the Italian wines. If the year is a good one for 20-40% of the flagship wine you get a really great bottle and that wine is being made from some of the same grapes in the high end wine. For $15-$30 there's probably a thousand good/very good wines. Yes, there are some really great finds for even less than that and even in a box. For parties, Powers Cabernet from Washington State is quite good. $6 bottle in a box, $13 in glass. Same wine. It boils down to one thing drink what you like regardless of cost but do try others when given the chance because you might be surprised on what you're missing. Go to wine tastings where you can taste the overpriced but more importantly try wines in the price range which you will spend when buying. It really irks me when people go from table to table and just taste the 1 or 2 most expensive wines at a table of 12-20.

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

[CrashandDie]

Mod parent up. The exact same thing is noticeable in France.

I love cooking with wine in quite a few different dishes and styles. I always used the cheapo wines I could find, and in southern France (as in, 30 miles from the Spanish border), a cheap wine is something you get between 1 EUR per 750ml bottle and 3-4 EUR per 5 litre box.

When I moved to the UK, the cheapest I could find began at 6-7 GBP. In France, most people drink (or should I say, absorb) 3 EUR bottles. They'll go for a 12 EUR bottle when they're feeling fancy. You rarely see people going for the 30+ EUR bottles, unless it's a dining party and you have to bring a gift.

The first time I tasted a 100+ GBP was in London. And yeah, sure, it was nice to have a penguin decant it and use a spotless napkin to absorb the couple of drops that would otherwise have hit the tablecloth, but for all intents and purposes, the 12 EUR wine will do just fine.

That being said, I agree with grandparent though. Going for a 4 digit wine is a once in a lifetime experience that people who can afford it should definitely pay up for. Make sure to bring a wine-knowledgeable friend with you that night too, 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.

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:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[frenchbedroom]

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.

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[feepness]

It's not a memorable experience if you have to be TOLD that it's a memorable experience.

Some of my most memorable experiences I can't recall at all.

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[oji-sama]

For sure it's a memorable experience that you've just paid $1000 and can't taste the difference to $20 one. A learning experience as well ^.^

Re:Let me take a pro-expensive wine position

[Glonoinha]

Same goes for hookers.
Or so I've heard.

Re:-1 wine snobs

[Antique Geekmeister]

Oh, my. There was a hysterically funny sketch on Carol Burnett, decades about an alcoholic wine expert who was lured into a final tasting match against another expert. His opponent's failing description included the type of wine, the year, the winery, and the name of the girl who stomped the grapes. But he got the name of the girl wrong.

The alcoholic's winning description was "Isss g-o-o-d".

misleading summary

[SuperBanana]

According to the study, wine experts have estimated that up to 5% of fine wines sold today are not all they are cracked up to be on the label or in the price tag

The carbon dating didn't find 5% of wines are frauds. A bunch of "wine experts" they talked to said it.

Also, it's not based off the age of the carbon in the wine; it's based off the percentage of radioactive carbon from nuclear tests. Unless they have a precise idea of exactly how much radioactive carbon ended up where after each test, the whole thing is a load of crap.

BS Article

[rozthepimp]

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...

You must be referring to Monster Wine

[m509272]

You must be referring to Monster Wine. Uh oh......

Re:carbon dating problems

[Stormwatch]

He mentioned that the last time the French tested a nuke in the pacific (?)

Why the question mark there? FYI, France is notorious for its love of nukes.

Re:Non-news ...

[maxume]

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

Not much data

[blamanj]

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.

'Sideways': Everything you need to know bout wine

[Leemeng]

1. Don't chew gum while tasting wine.
2. Delicate grapes on a vine can be a metaphor for your life / personality, or something.
3. If anyone orders Merlot, leave.

Re:Carbon dating is not accurate by century let al

[compro01]

There are alternate radiocarbon techniques that are much more accurate. Nuclear weapons testing resulted in a big spike in atmospheric carbon-14 levels globally, which is dropping rapidly since the test ban treaty. Biologists have been using these techniques for determining cell ages for a couple years.

More info can be found here

Re:-3.14 Reference Snobs

[Dahamma]

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

Re:Carbon dating is not accurate by century let al

[DavidRawling]

Or, since you HAVE read /. for a while, you could read the article. Which describes the measurement of increased C14 levels due to atmospheric fallout after detonation of nuclear weapons, and their subsequent reduction (dilution) due to fossil fuel burning, which in their testing was enough to narrow down to a specific year.

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.

They've been doing this for years, actually.

[Creosote]

The Australian researcher quoted in the story was co-author of a paper involving forensic use of C-14 dating of wines published in 2004:

U. Zoppi, Z. Skopec, J. Skopec, G. Jones, D. Fink, Q. Hua, G. Jacobsen, C. Tuniz, A. Williams, Forensic applications of 14C bomb-pulse dating, Nuclear Instruments and Methods in Physics Research Section B: Beam Interactions with Materials and Atoms, Volumes 223-224, Proceedings of the Ninth International Conference on Accelerator Mass Spectrometry, August 2004, Pages 770-775, ISSN 0168-583X, DOI: 10.1016/j.nimb.2004.04.143.
(http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/B6TJN-4CDWMNK-F/2/b2a003d44396872bd06d5c80443167cd)

and I'm nearly certain I saw published research in the 1990s using C-14 dating to establish wine adulteration, but as it's 3:40 in the morning insomniac me is not going to run down the reference

Re:-3.14 Reference Snobs

[cc1984_]

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

No it isn't

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.

Re:-1 wine snobs

[purduephotog]

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)...

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.

Re:-1 wine snobs

[D'Sphitz]

I get my wine for $9/box, and it even comes with a spigot.

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.

Re:'Sideways': Everything you need to know bout wi

[natehoy]

4. Always order Merlot. Everyone else leaves, more wine for you!