21st
Wine Spectator Fraud: Osteria l’intrepido
In the event that you haven’t yet heard about this, the quick story is as follows:
A certain Robin Goldstein recently tested the Wine Spectator Grand Awards program. He concocted the fictitious Osteria l’intrepido (it doesn’t exist), created a web site, created a wine list with the worst rated wines of the last decade in WS, sent in his $250 (hugely important). And bingo, his restaurant is one of the new grand award winners!
Ok, so this is undoubtedly one of the funniest things to happen in the media business since Rush Limbaugh got popped for sending his maid out to score drugs. Perhaps even more entertaining still is the love-fest of solidarity that followed the pleas of WS Executive Editor, Thomas Matthews, who addresses his Kool-Aid guzzling online congregation as a victim. They’re all somehow smacking of Walter Sobchak in their downtrodden camaraderie, rallying around their fallen leader.
What’s not funny—many people make their spending decisions based upon guidance from “experts.” In today’s economy, it is particularly disheartening that Matthews would write it off saying, “no one is completely immune to fraud.” That’s a dangerous word to throw around.
A certain economist—who shall remain nameless—summed it up best: WS collects $250 from 4,000 restaurants all over the world, in other words: one million dollars. That’s a lot of zeros, in a hundred-point world.
