Can you spot a Pinot Noir?

The companies maintain they bought 18.5 million bottles of the wine between 2006 and 2008, from a variety of producers, in good faith. But Gina Gallo has conceded that "pinotgate" was "something of a disaster" for the Californian company. Quite: wine insiders have been chuckling ever since about how anyone could be so dumb as to confuse light, fragrant pinot with muscular, peppery syrah.

Yet in fact this tale shows how conditioned our sense of taste can be. Buyers and consumers alike in pinotgate were told they were tasting pinot - which nudged their taste buds towards believing that lie.

It happens. At a tasting a few years ago, the sommelier of a top London club mischievously asked a leading British wine critic and a top Australian winemaker to guess a mystery bottle (wine geeks get so excited over such parlour games.) The winemaker's speciality was shiraz; assuming the bottle was a nod to that, both he and the critic guessed different Rhône syrahs. I took one sniff and said quietly to a friend - it seemed too heretical an idea to broadcast in such illustrious company - "It's pinot, isn't it?" It was indeed a Gevrey-Chambertin.

The point is that our tasting is always influenced by cues outside the glass. This is why tasting double blind (where you're in the dark not just about which one a wine is from a group of bottles, but where you have been given no clue at all as to its origin) is terrifying. Any wine professional who claims it isn't is lying. So in the interests of varietal purity and correct identification, here are some pinots that no-one, surely, could mistake for syrah.

De Bortoli Windy Peak Pinot Noir 2010, Victoria (Majestic, £9.99 or £7.99 when you buy any two still Australian wines)
Made with fruit from the Yarra and King valleys, this Australian pinot is good value for what it is: rounded, lots of strawberry and cherry fruit, chewy tannins.

Harvey Nicholls Marlborough Pinot Noir 2010 (£16.50)
Made by leading producer Framingham, this is classic pinot from New Zealand's Marlborough district: medium bodied, sweet, fragrant and elegant. One of a good new own-brand range from Harvey Nicks.

Rua Pinot Noir 2010, Central Otago (The Sampler, 266, Upper St, N1 and 35 Thurloe Place, SW7 £16.65)
Pinots from Central Otago, in the interior of New Zealand's south island, tend to be bigger and more brooding than those from Marlborough or Martinborough: this has a fair bit of flesh and backbone, with wonderful purity of fruit

Bodega Chacra, Barda Pinot Noir 2010, Patagonia (Lea and Sandeman, £18.95 or £17.95 as part of a mixed case of 12 bottles)
Argentina is not known as a pinot producer but this one from Rio Negro, in the country's south, is impressive: aromatic, quite light and elegant, dry and savoury with herb and mineral notes.

Weingut Meyer-Näkel Spätburgunder Blauschiefer 2009, QbA (The Winebarn, £23.35, mail order only: www.thewinebarn.co.uk, call 01256 391211 to order. Fortnum and Mason has the slightly leaner 2008 at £32.50 and the 2008 Estate Spätburgunder at £21.50.)
Wonderful minerality and length from this top Spätburgunder (as pinot noir is known in Germany).

The same producer's more affordable Estate Spätburgunder 2009 is lighter but still impressive (£15.25). One of a number of fine Spätburgunders from The Winebarn, the UK's leading German wine specialist.

Louis Jadot Limited Edition Special Cuvée 2009, Beaune 1er Cru (Wimbledon Wine Cellars, Wimbledon, Chelsea and Chiswick, £29.99)
Full, expressive, beautifully balanced red Burgundy from the most attractive recent vintage.

Twitter: @hernehillandy