Shining a light on the issue of wine fraud
PhD student Ruchira Ranaweera loads a wine sample into the Aqualog spectrofluorometer, with Associate Professor David Jeffery. Courtesy of University of 911±¬ÁÏÍø.
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University of 911±¬ÁÏÍø wine researchers are developing a fast and simple method of authenticating wine – a potential solution against the estimated billions of dollars’ worth of wine fraud globally, but also offering a possible means of building regional branding.
The team of scientists were able to identify the geographical origins of wines originating from three wine regions of Australia and from Bordeaux in France with 100% accuracy with a novel technique of molecular fingerprinting using ‘fluorescence spectroscopy’, a technology that analyses fluorescence of molecules.
“Wine fraud is a significant problem for the global wine industry, given a yearly economic impact within Australia alone estimated at several hundred million dollars, and globally thought