News in Science

Ion beam helps fight against wine fraud

Nuclear scientists in France have unveiled a 21st-century tool for unmasking counterfeit vintage wines, by zapping them with ion beams from a particle accelerator.

The beams, which are directed at the glass not the wine, can distinguish how old the bottles are where they might originate.

"The chemical composition of glass used to make bottles changed over time and was different from place to place," says Herve Guegan, a researcher at the National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS) in Bordeaux.

"We compare the suspect bottles with those that we know come from the chateaux."

Growing problem

The Antique Wine Company in London, which handles more than 10,000 bottles of rare wines every year for thousands of customers around the world, asked Guegan's centre to develop the fraud-busting technology.

"We sell bottles every day for between 2000 and 10,000 dollars," says the company's managing director, Stephen Williams. He adds that an exceptional grand cru can fetch up to $US100,000 dollars.

At these prices, "counterfeiting is something we have to be very diligent about," he says.

France's most prestigious Burgundy and Bordeaux chateaux are notoriously reluctant to discuss fraud or its prevalence, but wine experts say it is a growing problem.

In a recent case, American collector William Koch sued a German wine dealer, claiming four bottles - allegedly belonging to US president Thomas Jefferson - he had purchased for $US500,000 dollars were fake. The case has yet to be settled.

Bottle database

The ion beam technology depends on comparison with genuine bottles.

"We are working with the various chateaux to develop a database of benchmark references," said Williams, adding that more than 120 of Bordeaux's most prestigious house have signed on.

He has also set his sights on the prized Burgundy region in northwestern France, and says a service geared toward wine collectors, wine merchants and auction houses will be available by late November.

While the new test can verify the age of the bottle, it cannot guarantee the quality of the wine.

The ion beam analysis correctly dated bottles of German wine recovered from a German ship, the Deutschland, which sank in a storm off the coast of England in 1875, says Williams.

"The wine, however, wasn't very good. We still had a headache six months later," he says.

To prevent counterfeiters from filling authentic old bottles with ordinary wine, Williams intends to combine the ion beam test with another established method that checks for levels of a radioactive isotope, caesium 137, in the wine itself.

This technique, however, is only effective in identifying wines made in the era of heavy atomic weapons testing in the latter half of the 20th century.

Other technologies developed in the last few years to combat fine wine fraud include water marks and holograms on labels - like those used on bank notes - along with bar codes and UV-sensitive markings.

Australian winemaker Hardys inserts DNA material from 100-year-old vines in tamper-proof neck labels on its top bottles.