New bottle cap thwarts wine counterfeitersAugust 4th, 2008 in
Chemistry / A new cap invented by Argonne´s Vulnerability
Assessment Team can detect fraudulent or tampered wine. By
plugging the cap into a computer through a USB cable, a wine
buyer or auctioneer can determine if the wine inside is genuine.
New generations of the cap will contain a color sensor that
detects a particular tiny section of a tie-dye pattern located
under the cap. Photo by George Joch. (PhysOrg.com) -- When the
Roman historian Pliny the Elder wrote " in vino veritas " – in
wine, there is truth – he must not have been drinking from a
counterfeit bottle. Researchers Roger Johnston and Jon Warner of
the U.S. Department of Energy's Argonne National Laboratory have
created a device to ensure that modern wine connoisseurs can
have faith that they are drinking what they pay for. In the past
few decades, bottles of rare premium vintages have begun to
command tens of thousands of dollars apiece at auction, and
thousands of other wines retail f