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

[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.

Alternate Headline

[wjc_25]

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

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: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.

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

[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

[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: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:-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