Indeed the magazine, which boasts two million readers worldwide, this month added the Osteria L'Intrepido to its list of global restaurants worthy of its Award of Excellence. The only problem was that the Osteria L'Intrepido – along with its roast piglet and impressive list of Chiantis and Brunellos – did not exist.
For it emerged yesterday that the high-flying restaurant was an illusion cooked up by a wine writer to expose what he claimed was a lack of rigour in the granting of many food and drink awards.
Robin Goldstein, a wine critic and author, added to the embarrassment faced by Wine Spectator, which has run its "Awards of Excellence" scheme to highlight laudable restaurant wine lists since 1981, by inventing a special "reserve wine list" for the Osteria L'Intrepido consisting largely of highly priced bottles which had been previously panned by the magazine.
One of the wines, a 1988 Amarone Classico La Fabriseria, was described by the periodical as smelling "like bug spray", while another, a 1993 Amarone Classico Gioe, earned the description: "Just too much paint thinner and nail varnish character." Mr Goldstein said he had executed his hoax by creating a sham website for his restaurant and submitting the $250 (£133) entry fee to the magazine along with a covering letter, a sample menu, which he described as a "fun amalgamation of somewhat bumbling nouvelle-Italian recipes", and an exhaustive wine list.
In its defence, Wine Spectator said that it made no claim to visit every one of the 4,500 restaurants that apply for its award each year and had gone to "significant efforts to verify the facts" by repeatedly calling the Osteria L'Intrepido's phone number, Googling its location, looking at the restaurant's website and reading reviews – subsequently proved to be fictitious – on Chowhound, a dining website.
No comments:
Post a Comment