Dr Cecilia Muldoon was on a train in Switzerland when she took a phone call from her boyfriend, who had a question. Why was nobody applying optical spectroscopy to wine? It’s not the kind of conversation most people have on the way to work. But Dr Muldoon, a physicist, thought about the question for the next two years. Finally, in 2015, she created the company that is now VeriVin, whose purpose is to apply spectroscopy to wine.