Back Label - The $250 Trick That Fooled Wine Spectator

The Best 5 Minute Wine Podcast

The front label said Award of Excellence. The back label said $250 and a voicemail box. In 2008, writer and researcher Robin Goldstein invented a restaurant from scratch — complete with a website, a Milan phone number, and a reserve wine list built almost entirely from Wine Spectator's own lowest-rated Italian wines — to test how seriously the magazine vetted its restaurant wine award. The fictional Osteria L'Intrepido won anyway. Goldstein went public at a wine economists' conference, the story hit the New York Times, the LA Times, and CBS, and Wine Spectator called it a hoax. But one detail stuck: when the magazine called to deliver the good news, they also asked about buying an ad. This episode tells the full story of the scandal that made the wine world question what its most trusted award badge actually means.

@thebestwinepod

Discover More from The Best 5 Minute Podcast Network:

Wine Podcast

Music Podcast

Travel Podcast


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

More description

The front label said Award of Excellence. The back label said $250 and a voicemail box. In 2008, writer and researcher Robin Goldstein invented a restaurant from scratch — complete with a website, a Milan phone number, and a reserve wine list built almost entirely from Wine Spectator's own lowest-rated Italian wines — to test how seriously the magazine vetted its restaurant wine award. The fictional Osteria L'Intrepido won anyway. Goldstein went public at a wine economists' conference, the story hit the New York Times, the LA Times, and CBS, and Wine Spectator called it a hoax. But one detail stuck: when the magazine called to deliver the good news, they also asked about buying an ad. This episode tells the full story of the scandal that made the wine world question what its most trusted award badge actually means.

@thebestwinepod

Discover More from The Best 5 Minute Podcast Network:

Wine Podcast

Music Podcast

Travel Podcast


Hosted by Simplecast, an AdsWizz company. See pcm.adswizz.com for information about our collection and use of personal data for advertising.

2026-06-18 5 min
Listen elsewhere

Available Results

Generated results are saved to your library for reuse and search.

No generated results are available for this episode yet.

Transcript

No transcript is available for this episode yet.
Sign in to generate a transcript for review.
Sign in

Chapters

No chapters available.