Wine Spectator’s Award of Excellence Gets Duped
CC licensed image from Flickr user estherase
When I posted about Wine Spectator’s Awards of Excellence a few weeks ago, I noticed something interesting in the selection criteria. Wine Spectator doesn’t visit the restaurants that they’re passing out awards to. They take applications. A restaurant sends in their menu, wine list, and a $250 check and Wine Spectator reviews the list for their criteria and awards accordingly. Feels a little strange, but it can slide considering that it would be impossible to visit all the applicants in the country.
It’s a flawed system, no doubt. I mean, look who I proclaimed to be the the big winner: The Melting Pot.
The Melting Pot, people.
One would think that they could filter the list down to the candidates, then pay people to go visit the restaurants. But who’s counting, right?
Robin Goldstein is counting. Goldstein, who wrote The Wine Trials, made up a fictional restaurant called Osteria L’Intrepido and submitted it to Wine Spectator for consideration. The restaurant won an Award of Excellence.
If that wasn’t bad enough, Goldstein fashioned the Osteria L’Intrepido reserve wine list out of wines that Wine Spectator had previously slammed as undrinkable. One highlight reads:
AMARONE CLASSICO “LA FABRISERIA” 1998 (Veneto) Tedeschi 185,00 €
Wine Spectator rating: 60 points. “…Unacceptable. Sweet and cloying. Smells like bug spray…”
Edit: Jon from Complaint Hub pointed out that the most preposterous part of this story is that Wine Spectator actually rated a wine 60 points. I agree. Has anyone seen this note or have a link to the review? Given that the only source is Goldstein, and he has admittedly duped a major wine publication, I’d like to see proof of the scores he cited on his reserve wine list
Lots more coverage: Wines & Vines, Dr. Vino, Vinography, and A new blog that Robin Goldstein started to expose the scandalous scandal.
People will likely be amused at first, then will be up in arms about wine-ratings-this and evil-empire-that and trust your palette and all that nonsense. The truth is that Wine Spectator compiled a huge list of restaurants and one (or more) judges phoned it in when going through his stack of applications. I, for one, am shocked.
Excuse me while I go to the cliche well. This isn’t brain surgery, it’s wine lists. It isn’t the bible, it’s a yearly listing of restaurants with big wine lists. Some people take it more seriously than others. The judging was, I’m sure, far from perfect. I’m sure some deserving restaurants were omitted. Others, some of questionable existence, slipped through the cracks and got in.
Funny? Yes. Big deal? Only if you really care. I mean, really care. Pulling this dupe is just the sort of thing that sounds awesome at first, but when you think about it the feeling sets in and you realize what exactly went down. An imperfect system was exposed. A CD player was stolen from a car with its windows down. Wine Spectator got owned but we’re wading into jerk-move territory. Nice job on a snarky level but at the end of the day, a big roll of the eyes and on with life.
Maybe I’m just jealous that I didn’t do it first.
August 20th, 2008 at 9:06 am
I’m on the fence about this sort of thing, too. On one hand, if your quality control and level of effort allows you to be tricked so easily, then you deserve what you get.
On the other hand, people who make a big deal out of how great they are because they “beat the system” or whatever he wants to consider this are annoying.
August 20th, 2008 at 10:29 am
Pay-to-play is pretty sleazy, and while a non-existent restaurant isn’t as significant as, say, non-existent weapons of mass desctruction, it’s shabby and deceptive.
And what, but the way, is a restaurant “of questionable existence”?
August 20th, 2008 at 11:48 am
You have a valid point, and plenty of people agree with you that the restaurant awards are nothing more than a list of people who paid a vig to Wine Spectator.
Osteria L’Intrepido, the fake restaurant that Goldstein invented, is the restaurant of questionable existence.