While the diversity of its distribution makes it a marketing man's dream, does one salt really taste very different from another? Steingarten maintains that it does, and in 2000 set up an experiment at the bi-annual meeting of scientists and super-foodies at Erice in Sicily to prove his point. This he did, at least to his own satisfaction: he was the only one in a group that included Blumenthal and American food science writer, Harold McGee, who correctly identified the salts in question. The experiment was repeated back in Britain at the research centre in Leatherhead with inconclusive results. Or rather, the most exclusive salts did not live up to their billing.