Usually to detect fraud or adulteration of whisky it’s necessary to open the bottle. But if its a rare bottle, that can reduce its value. Now scientists at the University of Saint Andrew in Scotland have developed a procedure using Raman spectroscopy to detect bad product.
By shining a laser light into the whisky, it’s possible to determine the specific chemical compounds. Because different whiskies are distilled differently, the colors are different, letting the scientists compare the results to a known batch of genuine product.
The Saint Andrews scientiss have figured out how to shape the laser light into a ring rather than a focused beam. This suppresses the “noisy signal” from the glass. Result: An expensive bottle of rare Scotch can be tested for authenticity without wasting a drop. The same technique can be used to analyze gin and vodka.