The carbon-14 method , used by archaeologists and paleontologists to date ancient objects and fossil remains, could also be used to determine the age of a wine , a team of Australian researchers suggests.
The test, invented at the University of Adelaide, measures the difference between two isotopes, carbon 12 and carbon 14, present in the carbon dioxide absorbed by vegetables, in this case grapes. Carbon-12 is stable and very abundant, while Carbon-14 is heavy and radioactive , and its concentration decays over the years after an organism has died.
The presence of carbon 14 in the atmosphere increased especially from the middle of the 20th century with the multiplication of nuclear tests on the surface of the globe, before decreasing from the 60s, explained the researcher Graham Jones, who presented the Sunday his findings before the American Chemical Society . His team measured the carbon-14 levels in the fermented sugar of 20 Australian wines from 1958 to 1997. They then compared the results with radioactive samples from the atmosphere and managed to determine the exact year of each wine.
By establishing the age of the wine with the same rigor as for a fossil, a way is achieved to avoid fraud in the aging of expensive wines , which represent 5% of the market.
