The hard-to-find Osteria L’Intrepido in Milan is honoured in the next issue of Wine Spectator, the American magazine, for its list of 256 vintages.

The restaurant offers a 1998 Amarone Classico La Fabriseria for a mere €185 (£143) and a 1993 Amarone Classico Gioé for €110, although Wine Spectator claims that the 1998 bottle “smells like bug spray” and the 1993 has “just too much paint thinner and nail varnish character”.

That was before the magazine, the taste-maker for wine snobs around the world, discovered that the restaurant did not actually exist. It was made up by a writer who styles himself as “The Fearless Critic”.

Robin Goldstein set up a fake website for Osteria L’Intrepido – a sly nod to his “fearless” reputation – and sent off a $250 (£135) cheque and a copy of the restaurant’s bogus menu to apply for one of Wine Spectator’s coveted Awards of Excellence.

Winning an Award of Excellence gets the restaurant a plaque to hang on its wall and a listing on the Wine Spectator website. Mr Goldstein deliberately included some of the magazine’s lowest-ranked Italian wines in the restaurant’s reserve list.

“While it’s interesting that the reserve list would receive such seemingly little scrutiny, the central point is that the wine cellar doesn’t actually exist,” he said.

“While Osteria L’Intrepido may be the first to win an Award of Excellence for an imaginary restaurant, it’s unlikely that it was the first submission that didn’t accurately reflect the contents of a restaurant’s wine cellar.”

Mr Goldstein is the author of The Wine Trials: 100 Everyday Wines under $15 that Beat $50 to $150 Wines in Brown-Bag Blind Tastings, which contends that people think wine tastes better just because it is expensive.

In blind tastings of 6,000 wines that ranged in price from $1.50 to $150 a bottle, he found, for instance, that two thirds of people picked a $12 bottle of Domaine Ste. Michelle Brut, a sparkling wine from Washington State, over a $150 Dom Pérignon.

Wine Spectator has removed Osteria L’Intrepido from its website and condemned Mr Goldstein’s “act of malicious duplicity”. Its statement only uncorked further embarrassment by revealing its prize-giving methods, citing bogus customer reviews on the internet.

“We called the restaurant multiple times. Each time, we reached an answering machine and a message from a person purporting to be from the restaurant claiming that it was closed at the moment,” Thomas Matthews, the executive editor, said.

“Googling the restaurant turned up an actual address and located it on a map of Milan. The restaurant sent us a link to a website that listed its menu.

“On the website Chowhound, diners (now apparently fictitious) discussed their experiences at the nonexistent restaurant in entries dated January 2008 to August 2008.”

The hoax caused a storm in a wineglass among sommeliers, who vie for Wine Spectator awards. Almost 4,500 restaurants paid the $250 fee to apply for a Wine Spectator Excellence award and all but 319 won one, earning the magazine more than $1 million.

“They are taken quite seriously. It’s one of the most well-regarded wine magazines in the country,” said Juliette Pope, wine director at Gramercy Tavern in New York, which holds one of the higher-level “Best Of” awards. “There is a certain slice of the dining public that takes the awards seriously. I think it’s unfortunate. I hope it’s not indicative of their standards.”

Frank Stitt, a chef who has three well-regarded restaurants in Alabama, said that he withdrew from the Wine Spectator awards several years ago after the magazine began increasing the application fee. “You can buy advertising. You can pay the Wine Spectator to say you would like to be known as a wine destination,” he said. “But that is different from being known solely on the basis of the quality of your wine.”

Tyler Coleman, a wine writer, said: “It does call into question the awards. When you’re in the business of rating wines and, in this case, restaurants, you need to be beyond reproach. They generate over $1 million for the magazine each year . . . and the plaques hang in the entry halls or outside bathrooms of the restaurants, generating publicity for the magazine.”

The final word on the scandal is perhaps best put by Wine Spectator in its review of another wine on Osteria L’Intrepido’s list: “Smells barnyardy and tastes decayed. Not what you’d hope for.”

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