[HN Gopher] Using Cesium-137 testing to find counterfeit wine
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Using Cesium-137 testing to find counterfeit wine
Author : bookofjoe
Score : 40 points
Date : 2025-09-27 21:42 UTC (2 days ago)
(HTM) web link (kitchensisters.org)
(TXT) w3m dump (kitchensisters.org)
| frankfrank13 wrote:
| i want a Catch Me if you Can about this guy --
| https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rudy_Kurniawan
| dddgghhbbfblk wrote:
| It's a pretty wild story. Rudy was also very prolific so there
| are a lot of his bottles out there in collections and
| potentially still on the auction market. He had a huge impact
| on the expensive wine collection trade.
| roolgo wrote:
| There is a pretty good documentary about this guy and the wine
| auction: Sour Grapes.
| vzaliva wrote:
| It should be noted that cesium dating works for counterits
| produced in last ~60 years (or less) as Cesium-137 half-life of
| about 30 years.
| avidiax wrote:
| Wouldn't that just mean that the detector needs to be
| increasingly sensitive to detect a late-1940's forgery?
| rtkwe wrote:
| You should also be able to use the presence of the decay
| daughters as another way to detect forgeries.
| philipkglass wrote:
| Cesium 137 decays to barium 137 which is stable and
| naturally occurring, so the cesium daughter wouldn't be
| useful for this case (non-destructive testing of sealed
| wine bottles).
| rtkwe wrote:
| Ah, inconvenient that it doesn't have a longer chain of
| gamma emitting daughters.
| numpad0 wrote:
| Half life is just time until only half of the original amount
| remains. Double that and it represents the time it takes to
| halve again. The actual detection threshold would be separate
| from half life.
| perihelions wrote:
| The idea with cesium-137 is that it didn't exist naturally in
| significant quantities prior to 1945. An airtight container,
| sealed from the atmosphere prior to 1945, should not contain
| any.
|
| It's not like some other radioisotopes using in dating, such as
| carbon-14, which are continuously produced naturally (i.e. by
| cosmic rays initiating nuclear reactions in the high
| atmosphere). In _that_ case, an airtight container had a known
| concentration at the time of its sequestration, and
| radioisotope dating (to oversimplify) counts the number of
| half-lives that elapsed since that point. (Or with the example
| of organic matter--the number of half-lives since a tree was
| felled into lumber--since it ceased metabolizing atmospheric
| gases).
| hadlock wrote:
| Apparently there are companies out there who engineer otherwise
| inert particles, or mixes of particles, that fluoresce under
| specific wavelengths, for example Mobil might add the particles
| to their premium Mobile 1 synthetic motor oil product to find
| counterfeit products in certain markets. By opening a bottle of
| oil purchased off the shelf they can hit it with ~620nm && ~580nm
| and if it does not respond correctly, it is relatively easy to
| demonstrate that it is counterfeit and quickly get it removed
| from shelves. This can also be applied to crude oil and quietly
| tested at the refinery to verify it hasn't been diluted with
| similar product.
| mrexroad wrote:
| > Mobil might add the particles to their premium Mobile 1
| synthetic motor oil product to find counterfeit products in
| certain markets. By opening a bottle of oil purchased off the
| shelf they can hit it with ~620nm && ~580nm and if it does not
| respond correctly
|
| Interesting. I haven't heard they had additives in the oil to
| detect counterfeits. I assume the fluorescing behaves
| differently at 620nm and 580nm? I recall they had issues with
| counterfeits in some countries and have made attempts to combat
| it with packaging (e.g. specific letters on label fluorescing
| under UV, and currently their Scantrust app [0] validation
| tool). I'd be interested to know how it behaves, as having the
| oil itself fluoresce when not labeled as such might be annoying
| when using UV dyes for monitoring leaks. For example, I like to
| run LiquiMoly's molygen every few changes to monitor changes in
| seeping on one of my older cars, but it is only helpful when i
| run the oil w/ dye after non-dyed oil.
|
| [0] https://www.mobil.com/en/sap/our-products/mobil-anti-
| counter...
| analog31 wrote:
| From what I've read, there are also fluorescent compounds in
| the other fluids used in cars. A mechanic can shine a UV light
| under your hood and spot the leaks.
| kayo_20211030 wrote:
| If I buy a bottle of plonk for $20 and it tastes as I except, I
| don't stress about what gamma rays it's emitting. I just reckon I
| got what I paid for. Of course, if I payed $1 million, and I dare
| not open it, I might stress quite a lot. But really, that's for
| other people not me. I sadly don't have a million bucks to spend
| on wine.
| Cthulhu_ wrote:
| At these numbers you don't buy a product, you buy an investment
| with the intent to sell it later on; if it turns out to be a
| fake though, it's worthless. On the other hand, if you get it
| verified, it goes up in value by a lot.
| burnt-resistor wrote:
| Collectable wine is essentially orthogonal to quality and taste
| when blind tasted.
|
| Never pay over say ~$30-40 USD for a bottle of wine if all you
| care about is taste. That's the gist I got from VEN 3 at UC
| Davis. And, always buy budget wine while suggesting to people
| it was "expensive". ;)
|
| People who want to collect expensive wine, more power to them,
| but it seems to me somewhere between a tulip bulb, Beanie
| Babies, and art market.
|
| https://localwiki.org/davis/VEN_3
|
| https://www.caltech.edu/about/news/wine-study-shows-price-in...
|
| https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-017-08080-0
| kulahan wrote:
| Two Buck Chuck was a famously inexpensive and delicious wine
| from... Trader Joe's, I think? Though last I heard it got
| moved to Three Buck Chuck. It's my dad's favorite.
|
| Incidentally, he once went to a wine auction with a rich
| friend. The friend bid on a $1000 bottle of wine (ostensibly
| inexpensive among this crowd) and gave it to my dad as a
| gift, who ended up not drinking it until years later when his
| first grandchild was born.
|
| If I remember correctly, he preferred the Two Buck Chuck.
| HPsquared wrote:
| I suppose it's like rare classic cars. They're usually not
| great to drive, and often aren't ever driven.
| bsder wrote:
| > Never pay over say ~$30-40 USD for a bottle of wine if all
| you care about is taste.
|
| Change that to 30-40 EUR from Carrefour? Sure. In the US, not
| so much.
|
| I do not understand how I can spend a minor fortune on wine
| in the US and not like a single bottle (including many
| imported from France!). By contrast, I can spend very
| reasonable amounts on wine in France and almost never have a
| bottle that I don't like.
| OJFord wrote:
| You've answered it yourself? 'imported from France'.
|
| It's more expensive in the UK too for example, but not to
| the extent it is over there.
| fred_is_fred wrote:
| I wish I could find the study but there was one done where
| people were given the same wine samples and then told how much
| the bottle cost - either a low or high number. People enjoyed
| the "expensive" wine more and rated it more highly. Like you,
| at 1M I might feel more like "why did we waste money on this?"
| gdbsjjdn wrote:
| Insane to see the government resources used to prosecute this -
| it's basically play money for rich guys who want to show off.
| ChuckMcM wrote:
| Pretty wild story. Reminded me of the story of salvaging a Roman
| trade vessel off the coast of Greece. Everyone carefully
| cataloged and managed the various amphorae of trade goods, and
| one of the divers made off with a quarter million dollars worth
| of lead keel weights. :-)
| lacoolj wrote:
| Oh cool this was what they did in White Collar! Good ol' Neal
| Caffery vs. Matt Kessler (I think was his name)
|
| Time to re-watch
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