Wine fraud is sadly not an uncommon occurrence in the industry, so much so that it has even caught the attention of the Federal Bureau of Investigation (FBI) in the United States. With the auction price of rare bottles reaching upwards of $5000, the incentive to create fraudulent wine bottles is great. The current approaches to analyzing and determining the authenticity of a wine bottle require breaking the cork and seal, which significantly devalue the wine in question, thus making it much less attractive to collectors and investors.

After the wine is open, it is subject to a one of several invasive analytical methods, including ultra-violet/visible infrared spectroscopy, electron and nuclear spin resonance, mass spectrometry, and X-ray absorption. Other than needing to break the seal of the wine, there are other negative aspects to using these sorts of technologies, including bottle-to-bottle variation due to glass composition, the requirement of large sample sizes in order to overcome background “noise” issues, or requiring the use of large, bulky pieces of equipment that are not easily moved from place to place.

Recently, a new method of determining the authenticity of wine bottles has been discovered, which is minimally invasive and easily portable, compared to the current, sometimes unreliable methods. By measuring the dielectric absorption of wine at low frequencies, the various constituents in wine create differences between an applied electric field and the resulting dielectric displacement of the wine. These differences are a function of the composition of the wine, which result in a unique “profile” for each wine tested.

The molecular composition of wine varies dramatically due to location, vintage, other local growing conditions, and winemaking techniques, all of which are unique on the molecular level for each and every wine. The presence of a large variety of molecules, ions, and compounds that vary depending upon growing conditions and vinification techniques change the dielectric response when undergoing analysis using the methods of the authors of this study result in a specific wine signature, or wine fingerprint, which may be used to determine the authenticity of any bottle of wine. By knowing the unique fingerprint of authentic wines, and by comparing them to a potential counterfeit wines, it can be determined with accuracy whether or not the wines are authentic or an imposter.

The first study published using this method found that for each and every wine examined; there was a unique dielectric fingerprint. Multiple samples analyzed showed that the procedure was both consistent and reliable. The results of this new method indicate that a new noninvasive, nondestructive technique for determining the authenticity of wine bottles has been established. Provided the fingerprints are available for the authentic versions of the wine in question, this new method may prove to be the superior choice to analyzing potential counterfeit wines, thereby decreasing the frequency of wine fraud across the globe.

For more on this study, please read the article found here.

About The Author
Rebecca Yeamans

Becca Yeamans is the owner/writer of the science-based wine blog, The Academic Wino, as well as the Tasting Room Manager at a vineyard in central Virginia. With a Bachelor of Science in Biology and a Master of Science in Environmental Science, her solid background in science and research allows her to approach wine blogging with a unique style that is both informative to those in the industry, and entertaining for those simply wishing to learn.

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