Who would have thought there would be a useful scientific connection between whisky and atom bombs?
Turns out there is. Apparently atom bombs have given scientists a way of dating whisky, which allows them to expose swindlers that claim their hooch is 150 years old, when in fact it is less than 20.
I found this interesting information in a summarised article from the science journal Nature. You probably have heard of radiocarbon dating that archaeologists use to date organic materials they dig up like wood or bone. It is effective for dating items up to 50,000 years old. Basically carbon-14 is absorbed from the air by plants during photosynthesis, and then by animals when they eat the plants. When they die, the carbon-14 begins radioactive decay which happens at a known rate. Once scientists measure the amount of C-14 in, say, in a piece of charcoal from an ancient hearth that archaeologists have uncovered, they can calculate how old that charcoal is. Very clever. So they can say: “Ok, somebody made that fire in this cave on the Tsitskamma coast about 19 000 years ago.” Love that. Now University of Glasgow researchers have applied this to working out how old whisky is. The Nature summary says the researchers “capitalised on 20th century atom bomb tests, which added large amounts of the isotope carbon-14 to the atmosphere”. The barley from which whisky is made absorbs the carbon-14. The researchers took whiskey that had a known date of production and measured its carbon-14. Then they took samples from whiskey whose production date was unknown, measured the carbon-14, and “found multiple imposters”. Tests proved that one bottle of whisky that was said to have been made in 1863 was actually made between 2007 and 2014. “Swindlers can make a killing by passing off recently distilled whisky as old and rare Scotch,” they wrote, “but fallout from atom bombs can expose such fakery.” Old whisky is big bucks: one bottle apparently sold in 2018 for more than $1-million. Oh, and the term “moonshine” for homemade whisky came about after the English introduced a Malt Tax in 1725. This forced many Scottish producers “underground” and they made their booze in homemade stills. They worked at night so that the taxmen could not find them by following the telltale smoke from the stills. Hence “moonshine”. Reminded me of one of the most unusual homemade alcoholic drinks I ever tasted called chicha, made from maize that has first been chewed before being fermented. Indigenous South Americans have been making chicha since the time of the ancient Incas. We came across some people drinking chicha years ago in a tiny village high in the Peruvian Andes. They saw us peeping around the door while they played music and danced, and beckoned us in. It took a bit of courage to take the first sip, but after quaffing a goblet we were dancing with our kind hosts in our hiking shorts and anoraks, cheeks red and big grins. Pulling on our rucksacks the next morning was a little tough – but that’s another story.
