真假威士忌

As whiskey takes off in popularity around the globe, con artists aren’t far behind. Because their “sham drams”—cheap, blended whiskeys masquerading as expensive single-malt scotches—are hard to ID without a master distiller, teams of chemists have designed all sorts of methods for picking out the fakes. But they require deep knowledge of the liquor’s complex chemical constituents, something your average barfly isn’t likely to have.

如今，威士忌正在风靡全球，造假者也不甘落后。因为他们的“sham drams”将便宜的劣质 的威士忌生产为昂贵的独特的酒，甚至专业品酒师任然无法区分。但是他们需要对酒精的化合物质有着深入了解，有些是普通人难以涉猎的。

So a group of German researchers came up with a simpler approach: using fluorescent dyes to compare different drinks. The dyes, which are synthetically produced, give off different colors depending on the molecular makeup of the brew. Comparing 33 different whiskeys in a head-to-head competition,the team was able to classify the fluorescent signals into groupsbased on country of origin, blending status (single malt or blended), age, and taste (rich or light), the team writes today in Chem. The sensor can’t definitively identify a whiskey, but it can be used to compare a questionable sample to a known one. The same scientists have also used the fluorescent dyes to differentiate between white wines, fruit juices, drugs, and proteins, and they suggest such sensors could be used in the future to weed out counterfeits and impurities in foods, drinks, drugs, and perfumes.

因此，一群德国研究人员想出了一个更加简便的办法：利用 葡-萄糖染色分辨不同的酒水。这种同步生产的染料释放出不同的颜色，完全源于酒精不同的分子构成。将33种不同的威士忌进行比较，心与心之间的竞赛，这个项目能够基于这些酒的原产地鉴定葡萄糖团，发酵的状态（单一地还是发完的），年代，口感（轻和浊），团队将这些写入了化学书。感测器并不能准确地鉴定威士忌，但是它能将有问题的酒和已经没问题的酒进行对比。相同的科学家们也使用葡萄糖染料来区分白葡萄酒，果汁机，药物和蛋白质，他们建议类似的感测器能够在未来从根源上防治失误，饮料，药物等的造价问题。