Identifying artisinal gelato?

[TAPrice]

I was talking with a local artisanal gelato maker. They make everything from scratch, using no pre-mixed bases or off-the-shelf flavors.

She told me certain tricks to identify who uses fresh ingredients and who uses flavor pastes. For example, look at the banana flavor. A grey color means that real bananas were used, while a bright yellow means prepackaged flavors. Preprinted, professional labels at an independent gelateria would also be a sign of premade flavors.

Any other ways to identifying gelaterias crafting their flavors from scratch? Sure, I could just ask, but that would be too easy?

And does it matter? Do fresh ingredients always taste better than flavors created in a factory?

[kiliki]

I think a lot of us do the pistachio test-gray pistachio is a good sign, bright green pistachio is not. I don't really get the labels thing, though-why can't a good gelateria use printed labels? I can't remember ever (here or in Italy) seeing a gelateria without professional looking labels. Even in some of the best places they use those labels that have the pictures of the fruit on them.

It Italy it's easy to tell-there will be a sign that say produzione propia or nostra produzione to indicate they make it themselves. It would be nice if there was the same thing in the US, though I just had some fantastic gelato from NYC's GROM, made with flavor bases, so maybe it doesn't ALWAYS matter. It's not really that hard for me to imagine places in the US making it themselves but still being substandard.