Fake restaurant wins Wine Spectator's Award of Excellence.

Consumerist found a funny story about a guy who created a fake restaurant website and online menu/wine list and submitted it to Wine Spectator, who gave the wine list its "Award of Excellence." The kicker?

The best part is that Mr. Goldstein included "the lowest-scoring Italian wines in Wine Spectator over the past 20 years."

"I didn’t have any empirical evidence of the quality of the restaurants other than my own impressions,” he said. “I wanted to see what the standards of the Awards of Excellence were. The results speak for themselves."

So does Wine Spectator give this Award of Excellence to anyone and everyone who submits a list? Very likely, and here's why:

Dr. Vino also notes that in a Times article from 2003, a reporter estimated that Wine Spectator was bringing in $625,275 from the award each year-- and that was when the application fee was only $175.