Ta1_08

Taste it or date it: authentication of 10-yr and 20-yr fortified wines

Palstra S¹, Meijer H¹

¹University of Groningen, Groningen, Netherlands

Consumers of several fortified wines tend to believe that these wines have matured

on casks for a specific period of time, e.g. 10, 20 of 30 years, because this is stated

on the labels of the bottles. These statements give the idea of additional value and

quality of the product to the consumer. EU-regulations request that claims about the

content of food and beverages on product labels are correct and not misleading. 

In the production of fortified wines it is common practice to blend wines with

different maturation ages to obtain wines that fulfil the defined and verified

requirements regarding taste, smell, looks and several other aspects of matured

fortified wines with a certain age. The real (average) maturation age is however not

verified. 

For one of our customers we have verified the (average) maturation ages for a set of

20 different fortified wines by measuring radiocarbon in the ethanol and sugar

fractions of these wines. In this presentation we will show the applied method and

its verification. We will discuss the results, which indicate that part of the

investigated fortified wines might have younger maturation ages than stated on the

bottle.