A taster can be fooled; a molecule can't. Since 1981, SNIF-NMR reads a deuterium signature in wine's alcohol to tell whether the sugar started as grapes or came out of a sack.
To defend Port's honesty, the Marquis of Pombal drew the world's first demarcated wine region — and ordered the Douro's elderberry trees uprooted to stop the faking of Port's color.
The legend says a clumsy waiter destroyed a half-million-dollar bottle once owned by Thomas Jefferson. The truth is stranger — and the bottle may have been a fake.
In August 1975, Corsican nationalists seized a wine cellar over a fraud scandal. The deadly Aléria standoff launched roughly forty years of the Corsican conflict.
The Romanée-Conti vineyard, source of the world’s most coveted — and most faked — wine. Rudy Kurniawan loved it so much collectors called him “Dr Conti.” Via Wikimedia Commons.By the This Day in Wine […]
By the This Day in Wine History Editorial Team • ✓ Researched, fact-checked, and cross-referenced against primary and scholarly sources. Brunello di Montalcino is one of the greatest red wines Italy has ever made […]
By the This Day in Wine History Editorial Team · ✓ Researched, fact-checked & verified · July 2026 · 7 min readIn 1973 one of Bordeaux’s proudest wine houses was caught selling cheap southern […]
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