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Fake restaurant busts Spectator awards

The wine blogosphere has lit up today with the story about someone who created a fake restaurant in Italy, complete with a fake Web site and fake wine list (containing low-scoring wines from the Wine Spectator). This person then entered Wine Spectator's restaurant awards contest and won an award.

So apparently all it takes to win a Wine Spectator restaurant award is a fake Web site and $250.

Check out the blog of the person who pulled this over on Spectator. Be sure to read the Spectator reviews of the wines this researcher put on the bogus list.

It appears Spectator has removed the bogus award from its database, but you can see a screen cap of the award.

The effect this could have on Wine Spectator's credibility is far reaching, as many have already have written about.

By aperdue at Aug 20 2008 - 8:42am | news | restaurants | aperdue's blog | 988 reads

Spectator's Money-making Schemes

Wine Spectator is very smart. They offer awards to restaurants that meet their criteria of levels of excellence in wine lists. Forgetting for a moment the scandal of the non-existent restuarant, let's take a look at what WS has going here.

According to WS they gave 4,129 awards to restaurants. Each restaurant must pay a fee of $250 - every year - to be "considered" for the award. Do the math... that's $1,032,250 a year! Nice. That doesn't include any restaurants that apply and are turned down from any award.

A million bucks for printing up window decals and publishing a database of restaurants.

Winemakers I know complain about all the fees that are required to have WS and others review their wines. I've heard it's $125 a wine. WS claims they review more than 15,000 wines a year. More math ... that's $1,875,000 in reverse-tasting fees each year! Nice.

I'm jealous that I didn't think of it first.

By keithwebb at Sun, 08/24/2008 - 10:26pm | login or register to post comments

And don't forget....

Most major wine magazines also charge a hefty fee to print the wineries label next to their review!

Cheers (or jeers...)!
Tim

By timinspokane at Mon, 08/25/2008 - 7:05am | login or register to post comments

Funny!!!!!

That is pretty freakin' funny! A bit sad, too, but pretty funny. I assume that no one from Wine Spectator actually visits any of these establishments that they so magnanimously bestow these coveted awards to? Tastes the food to see if it is actually any good? Reviews the wine list with enough vision and knowledge to know if the wines are bombs? This is like reviewing a restaurant by only reading the menu. Lots of people can write the menu, but how many can make the dishes sing? Amazing......

Cheers!
Tim

By timinspokane at Wed, 08/20/2008 - 2:42pm | login or register to post comments

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