Conclusions

Our aim was to evaluate the potential of Raman spectroscopy as a complementary method for authenticating wine bottles. We believe that this tool has a number of advantages that are largely under-exploited. First and foremost, it is now possible to make these devices compact and autonomous. Although fluorescence is a priori a nuisance, this light emission is nonetheless potentially a source of information complementary to that of Raman scattering. The study of bottle glass is a good illustration of this concept, where both types of information can be accessed in a single measurement. Raman spectroscopy is a non-invasive, non-destructive probe, localized to the micrometer scale. This feature can be exploited for pigment analysis, facilitated by the extensive spectroscopic databases currently available. We have also shown that Raman scattering provides, in some cases only because of fluorescence,...