When we travel or we want to genuinely learn how a country is actually like, there’s a number of factors we try to grasp and cuisine is no doubt a key player in that knowledge.

Through flavors, aromas, colors, ingredients and ways of cooking we can get to know the oldest essence, traditions and customs of mankind. It was Mexico, back in 2005, the first country ever to try to inscribe its name on the candidate list of “Maize people. Mexico’s ancestral cuisine. Rites, ceremonies and cultural practices of Mexican cuisine” as UNESCO Immaterial Cultural Heritage of Mankind.

The candidacy was turned down under the allegation that “each form of expression or cultural space must be a specific creation rather than a vast field of creation” and the nation was suggested to inscribe maize as a symbol of Mexico’s traditional and ancestral cuisine. However, this action became a precedent that gave many people food for thoughts about the importance of gastronomy as a cultural expression.

This trend has now been joined by the UNESCO inscription of Mediterranean food as immaterial cultural heritage of mankind on the part of both Spain and Italy. In the case of France, a parliamentary commission is currently debating whether to also present French cuisine as a world heritage candidate.

Amid this awareness-building process and the preference for good food, gourmet products, the prevailing of cooking programs and media-hyped chefs, an assortment of gastronomic festivals and events are popping up in every nook and cranny of the planet. In Mexico, there’s one festival that stands out from among the rest for it has acquired a character that goes beyond its borders: the International Gourmet Festival of Mexico, Puerto Vallarta and the Nayarit Riviera.