Now, both human and artificial tongues can differentiate between whiskies. Experts at the University of Glasgow have built the miniature taster which can even tell the difference between the same brands aged in different barrels, with more than 99 percent accuracy. It can also distinguish between whiskies aged 12, 15 and 18 years. It could be used not only for quality control but also to combat the booming counterfeit alcohol trade: the method found several hugely expensive bottles of whisky to be fake.
The paper, titled “Whisky tasting using a bimetallic nanoplasmonic tongue,” is published in Nanoscale. Whisky is poured over a chequerboard pattern of tiny pieces of gold and aluminium, which act as “tastebuds”, and researchers then measure how they absorb light while submerged. Slight changes of colour in the gold and aluminium pieces are measured to build up a statistical profile for each of the samples tested.
“In addition to its obvious potential for use in identifying counterfeit alcohols, it could be used in food safety testing, quality control, reusable method of tasting would be useful.” said Annabel Meikle, director of the keepers of the Quaich, a society of whisky experts, as she could identify counterfeit whisky by taste but the technology could be used to replace some of the vast amount of routine human taste checking.
