What Does a Six Year Old and Wine Spectator Have In Common?

Posted by Eric Hazard | 2 Comments

They both believe in fictional characters.

At least the six year old has a plausible excuse for their fantasy. They are after all still a child. So I ask, what is Wine Spectator’s excuse for bestowing an Award of Excellence on a restaurant that doesn’t exist?

And by doesn’t exist, I don’t mean, doesn’t exist any longer. Or has temporarily ceased to exist to due to renovations. Or doesn’t exist in the location it once existed in.

No, when I say the restaurant doesn’t exist, I mean it is a figment of someone’s imagination. Specifically, the mental creation of one Robin Goldstein. Robin is under this crazy notion that cheap wine can be just as good as (if not better than) expensive wine. While I’ll disagree with Robin on some of this points (after all, there’s a darn good reason certain Chateaus in Bordeaux command a king’s ransom for their product; because they’re damn good) one point I am in full agreement with is that the wine rating system are a whole load of horse caca.

I’ve long posited that it is impossible to rate wines with any degree of accuracy based on the 100 point system Wine Spectator likes to use. Why? Because with something as subjective as wine tasting, it is impossible to standardize to a point scale. I’m not alone. The Wall Street Journal’s columnists Dorothy Gaiter and John Brecher use a very easy to understand, good / very good / delicious designations, with descriptions of their tasting experience.

To prove his point about how worthless Wine Spectator’s rating were (and, ostensibly, Wine Spectator), Robin decided to open his imaginary restaurant Osteria L’Intrepido and fill the wine list full of a bunch of impressive sounding labels that didn’t score so hot on the Wine Spectator ranking system. (If it were me, I think I would have named it Saint Nick’s Neat-o Food Emporium and Wine Drinkery).

How did this prove Robin’s point that cheap wine can taste as good as expensive wine? Well I’m not exactly sure. But what it did prove is that the arbiter of all that is good in the wine world is in fact, full of it:

It’s troubling, of course, that a restaurant that doesn’t exist could win an Award of Excellence. But it’s also troubling that the award doesn’t seem to be particularly tied to the quality of the supposed restaurant’s “reserve wine list,” even by Wine Spectator’s own standards.

When reading this account, my first thought was, how could Wine Spectator dole out awards for excellence without even visiting the supposedly wonderful restaurants? Shouldn’t a meal and accompanying wine selection be a requirement for the Wine Spectator folks?

A lot goes into having a good wine selection. It is not enough to put a lot of bottles to Eurocentric names on a list. The wine selection should be accompanied by a knowledgeable sommelier, who is equipped with the tools to make recommendations based on customer preference, their food order, price range, time of year, time of day and a host of other factors.

Instead, what Wine Spectator has done is told the world how much of a whore they are for revenue. Hey kids, send us $250 and you too can win an award! It’s worse than the Grammys.

Wine Spectator, which I sadly subscribe to, is a joke. It is a lifestyle magazine, not a serious wine journal. Hopefully, through the power of the internet and consumer purchasing power, Wine Spectator will cease to be relevant. Their rankings and awards now have all the legitimacy of the “Best Steakhouses in the U.S.” ads one sees in the in-flight magazines.

I think those guys in Georgia who put a monkey suit in a cooler and called it Bigfoot should open up a restaurant and win an award. Wine Spectator will be happy to give them legitimacy.

Wine Spectator is aware of the problems this will create for their brand and, as such, has posted a rebuttal on their Web site. If you are so inclined, here is the link.

The response is typical. They point to the fraud, and put the burden of proof on the applicant. “We assume that if we receive a wine list, the restaurant that created it does in fact exist.”

Or this little gem: “Googling the restaurant turned up an actual address and located it on a map of Milan.”

Huh?

The whole point is that you, Wine Spectator, are not fact checking. Doing a Google search is not fact checking. I just put into Google Maps “Santa’s Workshop,” and came back with 58,000 locations. Doesn’t mean it exists.

Also, their response fails to address my concern chief concern. How can Wine Spectator bestow an award without actually visiting the restaurant? So what if a restaurant’s wine list is posted online. That does not mean the wine is available, or stored properly. How wonderful do you think a bottle of ’82 Petrus would taste if it were stored underneath a water heater? These things matter.

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