Detecting Vintage Wine - Professor Creates Method to Do So

The wine industry is a large industry that is continuously growing. Through continued growth comes more and more companies that claim they have the best wine on the market. Many times a wine is associated with tasting good when it falls into the category of vintage. When a wine is greatly aged it tends to taste that much better. However, new and old companies are claiming to sell vintage wine without it actually being vintage. This is because it has been impossible to prove when the wine came from until now.

Graham Jones is a PHD at a well respected university in Australia. He was tired with not being able to tell what was truly vintage and what was not. Jones decided it was time to create a new method for telling the difference. What he came up with was using the past to his advantage. Atomic blasts have led to a lot of radioactive carbon floating through the atmosphere. This carbon was transferred to wine vines through the process known as photosynthesis over the years. What this has created is the ability to use carbon dating to find out the age of a wine plant.

In order to back up his claims Jones needed to conduct his own research in his home country of Australia. He found that the method indeed work through showcasing a sample of twenty different Australian wines ranging from 1958 to 1997. Jones was able to accurately date each wine to the year that it was produced. His results are amazing because it could offer companies a way to prove their wine is legit and worth the extra money that you would pay for it.

The only companies out there who should be afraid of this discovery are the ones that are currently pretending to sell vintage wine. Jones states that nearly 5% of the market currently does this. If a method was not discovered it was most likely obvious that the percentage would continue to climb as technology further developed. This discovery is major because it will help stop the bad companies from offering counterfeit wine.

It is important for the wine industry to maintain some luster when it comes to wines being vintage. Wines that are characterized as vintage tend to sell at a much higher price than other wines. A well ages wine could sell for thousands of dollars and make the producer very rich. Plus, a vintage wine shows that your wine is aged properly and of high quality. The next couple of months will show us what Jones does with this method and what wine companies will be first to adopt it.