This is an extract from an article that appeared in Drinks Business....it looks as if the skills of MWs will soon be redundant!
"Scientists searching for a way to spot cheap wines being passed off as fine vintages have developed a method of carbon-dating wine to prevent forgery. The method involves measuring the trace amounts of carbon released into the atmosphere during atomic bomb testing in the 1960s that have been absorbed by vines and into the wine. The technique allows scientists to pinpoint exactly which year the wine was made, with the levels of carbon in the atmosphere having gradually reduced year-on-year since testing ended.
Speaking at the American Chemical Society meeting in San Francisco, Dr Graham Jones from the University of Adelaide, Australia, said that misrepresenting the vintage is a never-ending problem for collectors, with up to 5% of wines sold globally thought to be fake. He said: “The problem goes beyond ordinary consumers being overcharged for a bottle of expensive wine of a famous winery with a great year listed on the label.
The age of a wine can be accurately measured by comparing the amount of carbon-14, which was released by bomb testing in the 1940s to 1960s, to the amount of carbon-12".
