Conduct a chemical analysis or taste: how to identify fake wines?

Wine experts constantly have to "clean" the cellars of collectors after questionable purchases at auctions. Some counterfeits to the specialist are visible to the naked eye, others are made very skillfully, and in order to identify them, one must carry out very laborious work. To do this, you need to trace the entire path of the bottle: from the manufacturer to the shelf in the customer's cellar.

Chemical analysis

The principle of chemical analysis of wine is based on historical facts. Since 1945, when the atomic bomb was dropped on Japan, small traces of radioactive elements can be found in the wine.

To pick up the wine for research, the cork is pierced with the finest needle. If the wine does not show traces of radioactivity, then it was poured into the bottle until the last days of World War II.

Then a molecular analysis is made-based on the knowledge of the half-life of radioactive elements, you can calculate the age of the wine to within ten years. The procedure is very laborious and expensive, so it is ordered in exceptional cases, when customers are willing to pay astronomical amounts.

To taste

Manipulations with younger wines are harder to identify - the labels, capsules and glass of Chateau Lafleur in 1982 look to this day as new. And if some "businessman" takes, for example, an inexpensive "Petryus" in 1984 and replaces it with a label for the Great 1982 year - this criminal act will come to light only after the lucky owner of the bottle decides to try the wine.

True confidence in the authenticity of wine can be obtained only in one case - when you open the bottle and taste the wine.

There may be another problem - lack of experience. Not everyone knows what the taste of the Mouton-Rothschild of 1945 is. If a fake is made with the mind, and a red wine with the appropriate flavors is poured into the bottle, then a lot of knowledge of the question will be needed to bring the "craftsmen" to clean water.