This is also demonstrably false in the wine industry. Soil has a direct impact on the outcome of your grapes, e.g. fields that have water runoff from mountainous/rocky areas produce wine that tastes more of minerals.

Im curious if there have been any blind studies that show this. I think a lot of what is conventional wisdom when it comes to taste in the wine industry is often not reproducible in the lab: https://www.theguardian.com/lifeandstyle/2013/jun/23/wine-ta...

Its tough to taste a $10 wine and a $100 wine blind and say "oh this one is much better than this other one". But it's easy to taste a wine and say "this is earthy" or "this is fruity" or "this is peppery". Earthier wines tend to be from grapes that are in more mineral present soil. Have you been wine tasting in a major region before? It's actually a fantastic experience. There's so much complexity in wine flavor.

+1 I make pizza using San Marzano canned tomatoes and they taste better than my parents home grown organic tomatoes

OK, but that's a varietal difference, which is one of the factors that the poster identified as being important - no? Unless your parents are actually growing San Marzano tomatoes.

Yes, it's a varietal difference. Obviously there's some personal preference here, but California grown San Marzano-style tomatoes (not true San Marzanos as that's a protected designation of origin) can be just as good. Canned tomatoes also just taste better in some applications, like pizza, so they're always going to be better than GP poster's parents' home-grown fresh tomatoes.