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Chapter 1: What inspired Robin Goldstein to create a fictional restaurant?
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Every bottle has a front label. That's the story they want you to know. The back label is the story they didn't. This is the back label. A story that gives you the full pour. Let's begin.
The year is 2008. A man named Robin Goldstein is sitting at his desk with a question and a plan. Goldstein is a writer, a skeptic, a researcher who has spent years poking at the wine industry's most comfortable assumptions.
He'd already written a book claiming that everyday wine drinkers, even experienced ones, couldn't reliably tell the difference between a $10 bottle and a $100 bottle in blind tastings. The wine establishment was not amused. But now he has a question.
He wants to know exactly how Wine Spectator, the most powerful wine publication in the world, decides which restaurants deserves its prestigious award of excellence. So he does what any self-respecting skeptic would do. He builds a restaurant. Not a real one. A fictional Italian trattoria in Milan. He names it Ostriola L'Intripido. Italian for the fearless tavern.
A quiet wink at his own restaurant guide series, Fearless Critic. He spends about three hours online. He builds a website. He gets a Milan phone number with an outgoing voicemail explaining the restaurant is temporarily closed. The proprietors are on vacation. He invents a menu of what he calls somewhat bumbling Nouvelle Italian recipes. He posts a few fictional reviews.
Then he assembles the wine list. And here is where it gets beautiful. He doesn't fill it with great wines. He doesn't cherry pick the best of Italy. He does the opposite. He populates the reserve wine list almost entirely with wines that Wine Spectator itself had rated at 80 points and below. The magazine's own lowest scoring Italian selections from the past decade.
The bottles they deemed mediocre. The ones nobody was supposed to want. He submits the application. He encloses the required fee. $250. And he waits. Not long after, the voicemail picks up a message. A real call from Wine Spectator in New York. He had won!
The Award of Excellence, granted, granted to Osterior L'Ampetito di Milano, appeared in the August 31, 2008 issue of Wine Spectator, page 181, one of 22 Italian restaurants so honored that year. Goldstein walked into the annual conference of the American Association of Wine Economists in Portland, Oregon, and as an unscheduled prelude to a completely different presentation,
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Chapter 2: How did Goldstein design the wine list for his fake restaurant?
The New York Times covered it. The Los Angeles Times, CBS, the blogosphere lit up. Story traveled around the world in hours. Wine Spectator responded. They called Goldstein's stunt a publicity-seeking scam and an elaborate hoax. They noted it was the first time in the program's 27-year history that a fictitious restaurant had entered.
They pointed out that the award of excellence is the most basic of their three award levels, and that they simply couldn't be expected to investigate every application. What they didn't say, but Goldstein made sure everyone heard, was this.
When one spectator called the fake restaurant's voicemail to deliver the good news, they also asked whether the restaurant might be interested in purchasing an advertisement in the upcoming issue. Robin Goldstein drew his own conclusion from that call. He said the whole awards program was, in his words, really just an advertising scheme. He wasn't entirely wrong to wonder.
The program earns the magazine over a million dollars a year in application fees alone. More than two-thirds of restaurants that apply receive an award. The front label said, Wine Spectator Awards of Excellence. A mark of distinction. a signal of quality. The back label said $250, a voicemail, a fake menu, and a line list full of the worst bottles we've ever reviewed.
Every bottle has a front label. That's the story they want you to know. The back label is the story they didn't. You've just heard The Full Pour.
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