Dubow is either an apologist for the Wine magazine or he has been raised like a veal. The Business of Luxury caters to people who care about social standing of products perhaps as much as they care about their own social status. To establish a symbol of status or certain amount of cache for their products, many trade groups create a pecking order for their goods. Almost every industry or trade groups have award-night where they hand out awards as a form of self promotion as well as publicity stunt. The difference between these product award celebrations and the one in the quoted magazine is that the Wine magazine's ineptitude blew its own cover. A better example of successful hype: Academy(Oscar) award is put on by the same movie people who makes the movies and now self-promote themselves and their movie industry while raking in millions from advertisement sponsoring the show; Emmy award does the same. The purpose of both is to tell people to buy the latest-and-the-greatest show/song because they, the master of ceremony, has made some awards. Some beverage companies under-write movies because the product placement opportunities next to movie celebrities give their product stature and hence, indirectly received an endorsement, a form of award. Please note that the fees paid for such opportunities are conveniently not listed in the movie credits. There are of course ersatz goods but at the upper end the fungible goods can be distinguished with a carefully orchestrated award program even if the award was a concoction of dubious motives. Without an award program to distinguish wines, the wine industry would consolidate into a glob of confusing undifferentiated brands. Unfortunately in this case, the phony wine award was exposed to the embarrassment of the Wine magazine. If the truth be told to Dubow, he would realize that the same embarrassment would befall hundreds of other products. Without busting Dubow any further, let's just consider his article a rhetoric essay written in "Tongue-n-cheek" style.