Cava or Champagne? Look at your spectrometer

An interesting article in WS. The terroirists will be happy:

";Cava or Champagne? New Test Can Tell the Difference"; By Lynn Alley
http://www.winespectator.com/Wine/Daily/News/0,1145,2518,00.html

Excerpts:

It’s possible to distinguish between the two types of bubbly without even taking a sip? Yes, according to an article in the New Scientist magazine. Researchers at the University of Seville in Spain reported that they can identify wines from the two regions with 100% accuracy by analyzing the levels of trace metals present in the wines. The technique could eventually be used to help fight fraud in the wine industry, for example, by detecting counterfeit versions of wines from appellations in high demand.

Working on the assumption that the trace metal content of grapes would reflect the trace metal content of the soils where they were grown, the researchers used atomic spectrometry -- a means of identifying chemical elements by their unique absorption of electromagnetic radiation -- to measure and compare concentrations of 16 metals in each of the wines.

The test results add credence to the concept of terroir -- the combination of soil, climate and other factors that make a wine identifiable in taste as being from a specific place.