Robin Goldstein

Robin Goldstein
Born	(1976-11-18) November 18, 1976 New York, New York, United States
Occupation	Author
Nationality	American
Alma mater	Harvard College
blindtaste.com

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 and the Wine Trials and Beer Trials books and writes for the New York Times' Freakonomics blog. He currently lives in Oakland, California.

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.^[1] With the help of his friend Giuliano Stiglitz, 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.^{[2][3][4][5][6][7][8][9]} Wine Spectator Editor-in-Chief Thomas Matthews responded on the magazine's web site.^[10][11] 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.^[12]

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.^{[13][14][15][16][17]}

Some wine critics and aficionados questioned Goldstein's conclusions,^[18] and a staff editorial in the Boston Globe criticized his findings.^[19]

Works by Goldstein

Books

• Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide, 4th Ed., Workman, 2011.
• Fearless Critic Houston Restaurant Guide, 3rd Ed., Workman, 2011.
• Fearless Critic San Antonio Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2011.
• Fearless Critic Dallas Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2011.
• Fearless Critic Seattle Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2010.
• The Beer Trials, Workman, 2010.
• Fearless Critic Portland Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2009.
• The Wine Trials 2010, Workman, 2009.
• Fearless Critic Houston Restaurant Guide, 2nd Ed., Workman, 2009.
• Fearless Critic New Haven Restaurant Guide, 3rd Ed., Workman, 2009.
• Fearless Critic Washington DC Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2009.
• The Wine Trials, Workman, 2008.
• Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide, 2nd Ed., Workman, 2008.
• Fearless Critic Houston Restaurant Guide, Workman, 2007.
• Fearless Critic Austin Restaurant Guide, Off the Map Press, 2006.
• The Menu: New Haven Restaurant Guide, 2nd Ed., Off the Map Press, 2005.
• The Menu: Northampton, Amherst, and the Five-College Area Restaurant Guide,, Off the Map Press, 2004.
• The Menu: New Haven Restaurant Guide,, Off the Map Press, 2003.

Articles

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

Blog

• "Blind Taste"

References

External links

• Official website
• Robin Goldstein on Twitter