User:Enologist/Robin Goldstein

Robin Goldstein is an American author and food and wine critic. He is known for his offbeat academic papers questioning conventional wisdom in the food and wine industries, including a controversial exposé of Wine Spectator magazine. He is also the founder and editor-in-chief of the Fearless Critic restaurant guide series.

Goldstein received a BA in Neuroscience and Philosophy from Harvard in 1998 and a JD from Yale Law School in 2002. He graduated from the French Culinary Institute and the WSET wine program.

Wine Spectator Award of Excellence controversy
At the August 2008 conference of the American Association of Wine Economists in Portland, Oregon, Goldstein revealed that in a hoax exposé, he had won a Wine Spectator "Award of Excellence" for an imaginary restaurant, Osteria L'Intrepido. He created a fake website for the restaurant, submitted a reserve wine list of low-rated Italian wines along with the $250 entry fee, and won the award, which he sought to expose as a form of advertising. The hoax garnered worldwide press. Wine Spectator Editor-in-Chief Thomas Matthews responded on the magazine's web site. Stanley Fish of the New York Times compared Goldstein's exposé to the hoax by the physicist Alan Sokal, in which Sokal published an article full of gibberish in the cultural studies journal Social Text.

The Wine Trials experiment
In May 2008, Goldstein revealed the results of an experiment that he conducted in which 500 subjects, in a blind taste test, preferred cheaper wine to more expensive wine. The results were published in an academic paper entitled "Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?" followed by a book entitled The Wine Trials.

Some wine critics and aficionados questioned Goldstein's conclusions, and a staff editorial in the Boston Globe criticized his findings.

Works by Goldstein
Books
 * Fearless Critic New Haven Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2009.
 * Fearless Critic Washington DC Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2009.
 * The Wine Trials, Workman, 2008.
 * Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2008.
 * Fearless Critic Houston Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2007.

Articles
 * "Can People Distinguish Pâté from Dog Food?"
 * "Do More Expensive Wines Taste Better?"

Blog
 * "Blind Taste"