The wine was white.

Then somebody made it red.

Not with another wine. With an odourless dye.

In 2001, researchers in Bordeaux gave 54 oenology students a white wine they had already encountered — only this time, part of it had been coloured red.

The wine hadn’t suddenly developed a secret life among the blackcurrants.

Its colour had changed.

And the language followed.

Presented as white, it prompted descriptors associated with light-coloured objects. Presented as red, the same wine prompted the vocabulary associated with red and dark ones.

Which is mildly inconvenient for anyone who likes to imagine the nose as an independent scientific instrument.

It isn’t.

We smell with a brain attached, and the brain has already seen the wine.

Colour, label, price, producer, bottle — they all have an opportunity to get their story straight before you do.

This doesn’t mean tasting is a bluff.

It means tasting well requires a little suspicion. Particularly of yourself.

You cannot remove every expectation.

You can learn to catch one arriving.

Look first. Describe carefully. Judge later.

And perhaps don’t read the label until absolutely necessary.