Wine under a microscope

Beaujolais' featherlike appearance under a high powered microscope

A series of strikingly beautiful photographs taken by an American scientist have come to light that reveal what drops of different red grape varieties look like under a high powered microscope. As reported on db.com, Dr Gary Greenberg placed drops of Merlot, Beaujolais and Zinfandel under a microscope and used polarised filers on a camera to capture the results. 

The sugars within the wine make themselves known in a rainbow of colours, while the wine’s individual particles formed an array of shapes and patterns, from featherlike to square. Greenberg took the images to explore the “beauty” of everyday items. He describes his work as “micro photography” in which the worlds of art and science collide.

Drops of Merlot under a microscope

“The extraordinary nature of ordinary objects is revealed when seen through a microscope. Everyday objects take on a new reality when magnified thousands of times, illuminating the hidden secrets of nature,” he said. “There’s an amazing micro world wrapped up inside the ordinary world that we experience through our senses,' he added.

After completing a PhD in biomedical research at UCL, in the ‘90s Greenberg invented high definition, 3D light microscopes used to take his latest series of photographs. In addition to wine, Greenberg has also explored the hidden worlds of flowers, fruit, bones, a human retina and grains of moon sand returned from NASA'S Apollo 11 mission.