General Introduction In 2021, we published Wine Law1; in 2024, Wine Tourism Law2; and the trilogy was completed in 2025 with the current publication, Gastronomy Law. Gastronomy has always been more than just nourishment: it is a manifestation of culture, identity, creativity, and economy. Yet, for decades, the law remained a silent observer of this domain, regulating food production and safety but seldom addressing the broader aspects of culinary expression, tradition, and innovation. Therefore, one of the pioneers of Droit de la Gastronomie, Jean-Paul Branlard, ironically notes: “Literature has been very busy with cooking. As a jurist, we’ll add a little… Cooking is still the victim of base and deplorable prejudices. Academic jurists are hardly interested in this “feminine” art. Writing about a culinary subject is already a mistake... in taste. At most, it’s something that piques curiosity and then suffers a serious depreciation in the stock market of intellectual values. Chance and destiny, always linked, have decided that I should write about table talk, placing gastronomy in the spotlight of law. One could certainly have made a worse choice. It’s better to be unclassifiable than poorly classified. In law schools, we find researchers; we look for “finders” (we’re obviously simplifying). The gods of cooking have not yet leaned over their cradles. Yet, it doesn’t take a particularly observant mind to notice that in France, restaurants regularly attract a larger clientele than churches and university conferences.3 In a 1997 interview (La vie judiciaire), this French author, awarded by the International Academy of Gastronomy, was asked about the existence of Gastronomy Law. He stated that it could be said so, even though there was still no national and binding codification of the laws governing gastronomy, this law had its roots, more or less directly, in all branches of the country’s legal system, starting with civil law, which, for example, regulates ad gustum sales4. 1 https://publications.eshte.pt/dir/wl/wl/ 2 https://tourismlaw.pt/wine-tourism-law-was-launched/ 3 La Gastonomie, Une aproche juridique, Paris 2010, p. 5. In the author’s work on gastronomy law, the following books stand out: - Droit et gastronomie. Aspect juridique de l’alimentation et des produits gourmands. - La table & le droit, LexisNexis, 2014. - Petit lexique des grandes inventions de la gastronomie, LexisNexis, 2015. - La marmite du juriste, LexisNexis, 2017. 4 Article 1587 of the French Civil Code states: “With regard to wine, oil, and other things that are customarily tasted
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