When Tom Matthews, executive editor of the Wine Spectator magazine, spoke with me in July about the magazine's restaurant awards, he said, "The basic award is not hard to get." At the time, he surely didn't know how prophetic that statement was. The world now knows that among the 2008 Wine Spectator award winners is a nonexistent restaurant!

Wine critic and author Robin Goldstein was curious about how the Wine Spectator awards were made, so he invented a restaurant, created a menu and wine list and sent them along with the required $250 entry fee to be considered for an award of excellence from the magazine. The fictitious restaurant received the award and was included in the Aug. 31 Wine Spectator listing of the world's best restaurants for wine.

The critic had named his imaginary restaurant Osterio L'Intrepido, a play on the name of his book series, The Fearless Critic. (Intrepido is Italian for fearless.) He claims the experiment was part of his research for an academic paper he is presenting on standards for wine awards.

Skeptics wonder if it might have more to do with publicity for his just released book, "The Wine Trials" (see story above).

This isn't the first time that the awards have been in the news. In 2003 Amanda Hesser wrote a piece in The New York Times headlined "A Wine Award That Seems Easy to Come By" that pointed out that only for the top level, the Grand Award, does the magazine physically inspect the restaurant, interview the sommelier and owner and visit the cellars. For the other two awards, the lists are accepted as entered when they meet the criteria for number of selections, quality and, for the second level, breadth and depth of vintages and regions. Although the Grand Award is a guarantee that wines are properly stored and served and that what is on the list is also in the cellar, the entry level is not checked and the second level is checked only randomly.

The magazine always has been upfront about the criteria for the awards and clearly states them on winespectator.com under Dining and Travel. Mr. Matthews has posted an entry on the Web site's forum explaining that in the name of due diligence, the magazine called the Osteria multiple times, always reaching an answering machine. Staffers Googled the restaurant and got a Web site showing a menu and a map for the location. They also found entries about dining at Osteria L'Intrepido on the Chowhound Web site. Mr. Matthews points out that the objective of Wine Spectator's awards is to raise the level of restaurant wine programs and he feels confident that over their 27-year history the awards have fulfilled that goal.

Mr. Goldstein concedes that his act was duplicitous but implies it was necessary to show how little value there is in such awards.

The question is whether the Wine Spectator was scammed or whether this hoax was a legitimate tool to show whathappens when rating systems run amok.