I had the chance to spend the weekend with some great chefs and gourmet people in Andora province of Savona. Its amazing on how much there is to know on the smallest variations of taste among wine, cheese, spices and all sorts of other food. Talking about nuances in taste of various things I learned something very interesting from them. Apparently the best wines, the ones made by small local wineries, without the industrial processing, labeling and bottling can only be tasted in their original location.

To be clearer, the minute you buy those good wines and move them to another city (we are talking about few hundred kilometers) the taste of the wine drastically changes! The same applies to spices like the basilico, or the prezzemolo, lemon, oranges, cheese and all sorts of other food. This is due to changes in atmosphere pressure, altitude, climate and similar other factors.

Thinking about it, makes a lot of sense. The same rule is applicable to many local businesses. Not all businesses can go global, or when they do, they simply loose a lot of their flavor in the process. Sometimes the business has to change completely in order to be localized, and many businesses fail for not being able to adjust their model to the local needs. This is why Starbucks never tried entering Italy, or Subway didn’t succeed in Turkey. You can’t find a good Paella anywhere but in Spain, and the taste of Coke is simply different in every Country.

It is also applicable to experiences: there are a lot of coffee shops to go but the Starbucks experience is different, there are lots of hamburgers, but the Big Mac is the Big Mac. You have thousands of web sites where to shop, but Amazon is somewhat special…

Some experiences can simply not be duplicated.

If you can find that ingredient that gives you that special taste, the flavour that can be found only where you are, even if its just a small hint on the tip of your tongue, you’ll have that edge on everybody else, that unmistakable uniqueness, that’s hard to explain, but you know its there.

Sadok Kohen