Researchers create AI tool with a nose for fraudulent wine

Machine learning used to analyse compounds in a bottle of wine and trace them back to estate

Fraudsters who pass off ropey plonk as a high-end tipple may soon have artificial intelligence on their case; scientists have trained an algorithm to trace wines to their origins based on routine chemical analyses.

Researchers used machine learning to distinguish wines based on subtle differences in the concentrations of scores of compounds, allowing them to track the wines back not only to a particular vine-growing region, but to the estate where the wine was made.