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An artificial tongue can taste subtle differences between drams of whisky and could one day help tackle the counterfeit alcohol trade.

The technology is capable of picking up on the differences between the same brand aged in different barrels, with more than 99 per cent accuracy and can tell the difference between those aged for 12, 15 and 18 years.

“We call this an artificial tongue because it acts similarly to a human tongue – like us, it can’t identify the individual chemicals which make coffee taste different to apple juice but it can easily tell the difference between these complex chemical mixtures,” says Alasdair Clark at the University of Glasgow.


The tongue has two different types of metal tastebuds, which provide more information about each sample and allows a faster and more accurate response. Once liquid is poured over the metals, measuring how they absorb light reveals some of its properties.

Read more: Artificial whisky taster has the palate of a connoisseur

Clark and his colleagues used the tongue to sample a selection of whiskies from Glenfiddich, Glen Marnoch and Laphroaig.

“While we’ve focused on whisky in this experiment, the artificial tongue could easily be used to ‘taste’ virtually any liquid, which means it could be used for a wide variety of applications,” says Clark.

As well as counterfeiting, it could be used in food safety testing and quality control.

Other techniques exist for analysing liquids. The most common involves analysing the weights of the constituent molecules. Another synthetic tongue developed in 2017 uses 22 different fluorescent dyes an analyses how they affect a liquid’s brightness.