
Using carbon isotopes to fight the rise in fraudulent whisky - Someone
https://www.cambridge.org/core/journals/radiocarbon/article/using-carbon-isotopes-to-fight-the-rise-in-fraudulent-whisky/75071F4AB4D7A231B714102B0FE8F5C6
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maxander
I wonder if dealers in fraudulent art/whisky/whatever have started purchasing
samples of 13C or 14C to try to fool this kind of analysis. I don't know what
the cost would be, but it would only need very small quantities (and very,
very careful measurement.)

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Animats
That would only help if you wanted to present something old as being newer.

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s0rce
It's been a while since I've interpreted delta 13C measurements but it seems
like adding 13C could mimic older materials, however you are correct about 14C
unless you want to make something modern look like its ~1960s era. You would
need to reduce 14C (either by dilution with depleted ethanol [quick search
doesn't find a source for this] or somehow purify the scotch itself) to make
it look pre-1950s.

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peter303
I have heard of seeding DNA id snippets in materials to prevent
counterfeiting. DNA read and write technology is now robust and cheap.

When I googled 'DNA stability in ethanol' I was surprised to see that it was
being used to store DNA, albeit at cool temperatures. So that might work.

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s0rce
The snippets won't be present in the old bottles. You could just take some
recent stuff (without snippets) and still pass it off as really old.

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Taniwha
The thing is that the age-thing is pure marketing, if someone's making whisky
that tastes the same and has the same amount of alcohol I don't really think
it's a fraud, it's not like you can taste the C14

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_ph_
No, as long as you prepare whisky in the traditional way, as in aging in
barrels, aging is not marketing. Older whiskys tend to be smoother and have
more complexity in their taste. While there are good younger ones, 12 years is
the default for a good whisky with 15-20 years adding quite a bit quality to
that on average.

There are alternative ways to create a whisky, I recently had quite an
interesting burbon, where the barrels would be subjected to pressure cycles
quickly - seems a huge factor in aging is the seasonal changes to the barrel,
with the pressure cycles they emulated seasons in a fraction of the time. They
got the equivalent of a 12 year old burbon in a couple of months.

Also, quite a few large distilleries started whisky editions without a stated
age on the label. There they use a mix of barrels, old and young to achieve
the taste. But, they either don't state an age or the age of the youngest
barrel involved.

In any case, stating the wrong age on the label, is plain fraud.

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ncmncm
Our world-spanning civilization confronts an existential crisis, threatening
collapse and radical depopulation, and they worry about protecting privileged
whisky producers.

This is not actually different from what almost all of us are doing. It makes
me ashamed.

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mirimir
I don't drink much, but when I do, I prefer pure 95% ethanol. It's poisonous
enough as it is, without impurities.

Back in the day, that was spectrophotometric grade ethanol.

