The instinctive joy that comes to us from our palate, together with our natural urge to investigate and classify, not to mention the possibility and increasing desire of having access to expensive consumption, has led to entire universes building up around gourmet food and wine. Like the bar in Star Wars, these universes are inhabited by both simple and complex organisms, organisms of all races and religions such as journalists, associations, guides, reviews, books, critics, sommeliers, gourmets, traders, producers, importers, nutrition experts, dieticians, restaurateurs, consortiums, and so on, together creating a Babylon of languages stretching between two extremes: the Gluttons and the Wise. The first group includes those who on any occasion, whatever the real or presumed level of refinedness of the dish and/or place, reach the end of the meal with a haughty air and the fatal words: "Yes, but it can't compete with a good old home-cooked roast". This is perfectly justified criticism in its own way and as such no reply is needed. They're right. The second group features those who like to break everything down into particles. Beginning with comparisons between Indo-European traditions, they conclude with a score card bristling with chef's hats, forks, glasses, pineapples and all sorts of other useful symbols. The procedure is scientific and as such not open to criticism. Any further comment is useless: they too are right.
   We Guardians by statute and by vocation are careful to acknowledge Man's human side, made up of the inclinations and mechanisms he is born with and which develop with him, and of that hierarchy of external systems, created by history and the environment, which we call Civilisation, Culture, Education and an infinity of other names. As an individual and as a species, Man is certainly evolving steadily, adding to and modifying his original baggage, making changes to his faculties and the way of perceiving others, himself and the world of phenomena. Many people try not to look closer at Man's real nature, preferring to imagine him how they would like him to be rather than what he really is. If we were truly honest with each other when the umpteenth immigrant from God-knows-where slaps his sponge on our windscreens at the traffic lights; if we remembered what we thought of doing to the guy on the scooter who cut in front of us; if we really looked at and tried to understand the phenomenon of violence in the stadiums, we wouldn't be wasting time playing at being natural born peace-lovers and anti-racists. These noble intentions are the product of that collective Super-We which enables us to live together and believe in a future which is getting better. But there is no point kidding ourselves we are already today what we hope to become tomorrow. The biology we are born with in fact is many generations behind our best intentions. It is essential that we know and recognise our biology if we really want to pursue these intentions.
   What conclusions can we draw from this if we apply this humanistic mentality to gourmet food and wine? All men are born with a taste for food and in an abstract way are similarly attracted by flavour and quality. As the years go by, however, in each of us develops what Luca Gargano so aptly described as the Mental Palate. This expression refers to the action of cultural gratification over the mere gratification of taste, the influence of the imagination on the stomach. Just to give an example, we would attribute a wild Scottish salmon, line-fished and smoked in the traditional way, with a hierarchical superiority over similar produce. We may find satisfaction in the geographical origin, in the type of cultivation, or in the personalised packaging - in other words in an infinite quantity of factors outside the strictly organoleptic characteristics of the food. Leaving aside the perception of its actual superiority, our Mental Palate will be stimulated by the satisfaction of partaking of a product known to few and consumed by even fewer. We might say that the cultural gratification, in this case the feeling of privilege, leads us to secrete the hugely powerful hormone of Vanity, responsible for a great part of human satisfactions. In turn, this acts by stimulating an enjoyment of cerebral origin which appears to be directly sensorial to anyone who has not understood the trick. We don't know whether the hormone of Vanity actually exists, but if it has not already been noted and classified, we Guardians will take the liberty of encouraging medical research in this direction.

   Thus the Pleasure we gain at table, though it may appear univocal, has compound origins. Only in part is it physiological, while a variable and sometimes predominating percentage of it is purely intellectual. We need to accept this fact with serenity, as we do the others which describe how our mind and body actually work, and attempt to draw the due consequences. If we know we can rely on this dual order of stimuli, we can slip easily and without feelings of guilt from the side of the Gluttons to that of the Wise, passing through the intermediate shades and away from the main route along the secondary paths, like the one which leads to the little fortress of the Truly Refined.

   As for the study and criticism of wine and food, let us conclude by highlighting a fundamental feature of our way of intending the Cosmos. The objects of taste, whether we are talking about a bag or a patè, cannot be evaluated with a procedure which goes from the detail to the general. It only has sense to break down the overall view frame by frame if you are playing a game or studying a code for transmitting single data, but if you do this you need to know that the overall assessment may not be the same as the sum of all the details. If you look at a sea lion standing still, you would never imagine how graceful it can be when it swims. In the same way a wine should be appraised in a single movement: by drinking it. Is it good? Is it exceptional? Or is it like medicine? It is no use starting with a consideration of the soils and the yields, going on to examine the colour and the smell, describing and evaluating the tiniest stimuli to the palate and nose, in the belief that you can reliably sum together the marks for the single components of the product. The difference between the first and the second method is just the same as between two people in a meadow when one shouts: "A pheasant! How marvellous!", and the other notes down: "A wild gallinacean of medium size" and clamps a ring through its foot. A wine or a dish is quick to reveal all its class or its tricks to the real connoisseur. Only afterwards can he begin to take it apart, right down to the last element - and not for the pleasure of pulling off the wings of a butterfly but for the pleasure of understanding it.