| Abstract: |
Wine sellers who try to pass off poor imitations of Australian wine brands to unsuspecting overseas buyers will soon have to step up their game. Scientists from the CSIRO and the Australian Wine Research Institute have been developing new techniques to pinpoint exactly where a wine is from. Wine fraud can have a damaging impact on well-known Australian labels sold internationally. Eric Wilkes from the Australian Wine Research Institute said when developed, the approach could help further protect Australian producers."What we are doing is looking at trace metals and isotopic ratios of some elements in wine to help us identify unique characteristics from different locations," Dr Wilkes said."Probably the difference compared to a lot of earlier projects used to do this for wine is we're not just using one, but looking at range linked to different aspects of where wine comes from."We're looking for things that are contributed by the water that grows the vines, from the underlying geology and from the air that surrounds them." Dr Wilkes said the prominence and reputation of Australian wines around the world can make them an appealing target for fraud."In the case of wine, it can be labelling a product as something it's not — something like a well-known or famous brand — or probably more commonly labelling something as a variety or from a region |
