Authentication of Chinese vintage liquors using bomb-pulse (14)C

The older a bottle of Chinese vintage liquor is, the higher the price it commands. Driven by the potential for higher profits, some newly-founded distilleries openly sell liquor whose storage ages are exaggerated. In China, the market for vintage liquor has become fraught with uncertainty and a pressing need has arisen to establish an effective method to authenticate the age of vintage liquors. A radiocarbon ((14)C) dating method is described here that can verify cellar-stored years of Chinese liquors distilled within the last fifty years. Two different flavored Chinese liquors produced in “the golden triangular region” in the Upper Yangtze River region in southwest China, with known cellar-stored years, were analyzed to benchmark the technique. Strong flavored liquors are found to be consistent with local atmospheric Δ(14)C values. A small offset of 2–3 years between predicted vintage years of soy-sauce flavored liquors and strong flavored liquors is found to be associated with the fermentation cycle of certain varieties. The technique can measure cellar-stored years of a wide range of liquors including those with fundamentally different aromas. This demonstrates the strength of our method in identifying suspect Chinese vintage liquors.