Particle accelerator helps test wine

Scott Simon, host: Not sure of the vintage of that dusty old bottle of Saint-Emilion sitting in the basement next to your collection of old running shoes? Well, The Antique Wine Company of London may be able to help. They've collaborated with French scientists to use ions generated by a particle accelerator to read the age of the wine bottle without damaging what's inside. Joining us now from Moscow is Stephen Williams who is the managing director of the Antique Wine Company. Thanks very much for being with us.

Stephen Williams (Director, The Antique Wine Company): It's a pleasure, Scott.

Simon: So how can it read the age of the stuff inside without opening the bottle?

Williams: Basically, we fire out of the particle accelerator a very weak but high-voltage beam at the glass of the bottle, and this then emits x-rays. And these x-rays are analyzed so that we can actually see what the process of manufacture was used when the bottle was made. And that gives us a very strong indication of the type of furnace that was used and the age of the actual glass itself. What we're doing at present is we're building up a database of absolutely authentic references that are being provided to us by the various chateaus. We are analyzing wines that have never moved in their history, so that we know that our benchmark dates are as absolutely robust and reliable, against which in the future other bottles will be compared.

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