AS I write this, horsemeat seems to be getting everywhere - even into the wine trade. The wine writer Tim Atkin suggests that one of the main causes of this adulteration is that the supermarket buyers are refusing to pay more at a time of rising costs in raw materials. The same is happening with wines, and he fears that certain producers will be driven to cut corners in an attempt to hold on to their business.

In the wine trade, however, we tend to be less demanding about what appears on the label. As far as most countries are concerned, if you have a wine that is named by its grape variety, it need contain only 85 per cent of that grape. This can have some bizarre results. When Chardonnay was the most popular varietal, one canny Californian winery launched a Blush Chardonnay, created by blending 85 per cent of Chardonnay juice with 15 per cent of Zinfandel, a red grape-juice.

There can be two reasons why such blending takes place. Most wines from Bordeaux, for example, are blends. Over the years, the growers have learnt that they can give more complexity of flavours to their wines by doing this.

The other reason is to lower the cost. I was surprised to learn on my recent trip to New Zealand that certain companies had been importing cheap white wine from Australia and adding it to their Sauvignon Blanc. Apparently this is quite legal, as long as there is no more than 15 per cent of the Australian wine in the blend.

I am more worried about something else that might be appearing in our wine. A laboratory in Bordeaux recently analysed 300 different wines from the south-west of France, and found residues of pesticide in 90 per cent of them.

The chemist who carried out these tests said: "Even though the individual molecules were below threshold levels of toxicity, there is a worrying lack of research into the accumu- lation effect. While, in the long-term, the health of the consumer might be at risk, that of the vineyard worker who applies the pesticides must be more so."

In 2008, the French government announced that the use of pesticides would be halved over the next ten years; but there has been no reduction in the first five years of this programme.

Back to our horses. Wine-lovers do not really expect what they see on the label - if they buy a bottle of Cheval Blanc, they do not expect any equine connection, except for the label; if they select the Burgundy Beaune Clos des Mouches, the wine has not had an infusion of fly-papers, but rather the "mouches" - wasps - come to the grapes of this vineyard, because its favourable micro-climate causes the grapes to ripen more quickly.

One of the two wines I have particularly enjoyed this month is called simply Llebre 2009 (Sainsbury's, £7.99), and comes from the Costers del Segre region of Catalonia. While llebre is the Catalan for hare, it takes its name from ull de llebre, the local name for the Tempranillo grape. My other wine is a great Burgundy for the truly special occasion: Gevrey-Chambertin Vieilles Vignes (65 years old) 2009 Domaine Heresztyn (£28.99).