Excellence Inflation

One of the most annoying things about Italian politics is the excessive and repetitive use of the term 'excellence' in regard to food and agricultural products. It used to be just a title for an ambassador but today 'excellence' is applied to everything, especially when you need to puff up a speech that lacks any real content, as if such a word by magic gives substance to what is otherwise just political hot air. Examples of excellence in the food and agriculture sector, especially in regard to wine, are few and well-known to all. Today not all DOCG wines are 'excellent' even if the law that established this category said it should be applied only to products of ''particular merit''. This worked at the beginning with wines like Barolo, Barbaresco, Brunello di Montalcino and Vino Nobile di Montepulciano. It was then later applied to Chianti, Albana di Romagna, Asti and a host of other wines that are of course good but certainly not examples of 'excellence'. Perhaps lawmakers thought it was more important to safeguard the consumer's right to have access to products of guaranteed quality, rather than recognize products of ''particular merit'', which is understandable. Perhaps it would be better to just become right out and say that, even if this may asking too much. Instead, we now have a grotesque situation in which any product, any wine, becomes an example of 'excellence' only for electoral reasons, resulting in a flood of useless official recognitions accompanied by empty political claptrap. The truth is that in Italy there are a lot of good and typical products, some are just good, while others are true examples of 'excellence'. If there cannot be a credible ranking system, if everything is heralded as extraordinary the result will be two-fold. The first is that one day someone is going to shout out ''the Emperor has no clothes'' and some good industrial products will be better than a false 'quality' one. The second, a consequence of the first, it that people will lose faith, stop believing. This despite of the campaign for 'Made in Italy' and because of 'excellence' inflation.