A lovely story has broken of how the US magazine Wine Spectator has paraised a restaurant that doesn’t exist. American author Robin Goldstein invented sent details of the fictitious Osterio L’Intrepido in Milan to the magazine, along with a fee of $250 and wasn’t surprised to receive one of the magazine’s Awards of Excellence. Read more about it here.

Reminds me of an April fool that Farr Vintners put out a few years ago in which all the wines were ones that for whatever reason had never been made, such as 1992 DRC Montrachet and 1984 Château Musar. Lay the phoniness on sufficiently sticky, and some of it somewhere will stick. Not of course with North of England-based wine writers, oh no. Never. Honest. But the 1978 Le Pin we drank last night was superb…