The most expensive bottle of whisky ever sold was a Macallan Fine and Rare 60 year old 1926. It sold on Thursday, October 24 2019 for a whopping £1.45 million at auction. With whisky commanding such jaw-dropping prices, it’s no surprise that fraudsters are trying to get in on the action. In this post, I will go over promising new findings in identifying fake whiskey. New techniques include the artificial tongue, laser spectrometry, and vibrational spectrometry. Click here to read about current methods to detect fake whiskey.
1) The Artificial Tongue
Like many other quality goods industries, the scotch whisky industry has issues with counterfeits and adulterations. Luckily, there’s a team at Glasgow University working to make it more difficult for fraudsters to sell fake whisky bottles. This team is working on an artificial tongue that can “taste” whiskey.
The tongue is made up of 2 million tiny nano-scale squares that act as artificial taste buds. There are six different types of these squares. Three types are made of gold and the other three types are made of aluminium. One of the gold and aluminium type squares are left bare, while the other types are coated in different chemicals. When liquid is added to the tongue, the different metal squares absorb light differently creating unique fingerprints for every whisky. Researchers can use these fingerprints to distinguish between different whiskies.
“You could train your particular ‘tongue’ to know what one of these whiskies ‘tasted’ like, so that when the fake stuff came along it could identify it and when the real stuff came along it could confirm that it was the real stuff”
Dr Alasdair Clark, the lead author of the research from the University of Glasgow.
In other words, the tongue “tastes” many different brands of real whiskey and makes a whiskey profile database. Later, if you want to test if a whiskey you have is real, you can compare its profile to the profiles that are already in the database to check if it matches up.
The team used the tongue to sample a selection of whiskies and it was able to pick out the subtle flavour differences between the same whisky aged for 12, 15, and 18 years. It was over 99% accurate.
2) Laser Spectroscopy
Whiskey is a chemically complex mixture comprised of thousands of compounds. These compounds contribute to the colour, flavour, and aroma of the beverage. This is why so many techniques (carbon dating, gas chromatography, the artificial tongue) require testing a small sample of whisky to determine whether the whisky is real or counterfeit. One drawback of these methods are, quite obviously, that you must open the bottle to get a sample of whiskey. The act of opening the bottle greatly depreciates the bottle’s value.
Researchers at the University of St. Andrews have developed a new technique to measure the authenticity of whiskies which doesn’t require opening the bottle. The team used a method of laser spectroscopy to shine laser light through a bottle to analyse its contents. Whiskey will scatter light into different colours. The exact colours of the scattered light will depend on the chemical make-up of the whisky.
A decade ago, researchers at St. Andrews proved that laser spectrometry could detect counterfeit whisky. However, the existing process involved taking a liquid sample from the bottle, which posed a limitation since glass refracts light too. Whiskey bottles vary in type and thickness, lacking standardization. Consequently, researchers had to revise their methodology to ensure the glass types and different thicknesses of glass bottles were accounted for and would not impact the test results. This adjustment ensured that the test results of the liquid were not affected by the glass bottle’s properties.
New Laser Spectroscopy Method
In this new method the team used a glass element to shape the light to produce a ring of laser light on the bottle surface, and a tightly focused spot within the liquid contents. Since the signal from the bottle and the signal from the liquid are in different positions, a detector can be placed to record only the signal from the liquid. This means that the bottle contents can be assessed without ever opening the bottle.
3) Vibrational Spectroscopy
Similar to laser spectroscopy, vibrational spectroscopy does not require that a bottle be opened and sampled from. Vibrational spectroscopy is the measurement of the interaction of infrared radiation with matter by absorption, emission, or reflection.
Infrared radiation is a type of radiant energy that is invisible to human eyes, but we can feel as heat. All objects in the universe emit some level of IR radiation. Two of the most obvious sources are the sun and fire.
The interaction between IR radiation and matter can be used to study and identify chemical substances in solid, liquid, or gaseous forms. Vibrational spectroscopy actually includes several techniques, but the most important are mid-infrared (MIR), near-IR (NIR), and Raman spectroscopy. MIR and Raman spectroscopy provide characteristic fundamental vibrations which can be used to determine molecular structures inside a compound.
How does this help us detect fake whiskies? Well, the alcohol concentration of genuine spirits in the UK is tightly controlled. For example, Scotch Whisky must contain the level stated on the bottle to within 0.3% (v/v). Forgeries do not typically have this level of quality control, and the alcohol content is often lower than what is stated on the label.
Additionally, methanol and many higher alcohols and heavy metals have regulations prohibiting their presence in spirits to certain maximum concentrations. This helps to ensure safe consumption. These standards are tightly controlled. Forgeries, which aren’t under this same level of scrutiny, can also have higher concentrations of these undesirables. By using vibrational spectroscopy in tandem with other techniques, we can determine the level of ethanol and methanol level in a bottle of whiskey. Together, these indicators can be used to determine whether a bottle of whiskey is real or fake.
Watch it on YouTube Below
Leave a Comment