Wine barrels
Hey, it's CSI: Wine Country!This is Sandra Tsing Loh with the Loh Down on Science. Give a room-temperature CHEERS! to RÈgis Gougeon, from the University of--wait for it--Burgundy. He placed shots of wine in a mass spectrometer. Which is like using a telescope to read the newspaper. The ultra-high-resolution device zooms in on individual MOLECULES. He analyzed sixty varieties, all from France. The details made his head spin. Each sample had THOUSANDS of chemical fingerprints. They trace back to EVERYTHING used in making wine-- down to the oak BARRELS in which it ages. For example, the composition of wood depends on the conditions in which its parent tree grows-- from soil type to weather. Barrels made from an individual tree leach chemicals into wine in a way that reflects those local conditions. Gougeon compared his snapshots to French geography and pinpointed not only the grape variety and region for every single wine. He also identified the birth forest of the BARRELS used for ageing. Well, as long as they can pinpoint the location of Chateau de Two Buck Chuck, I'm in! And merci.
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