Do You Want to Make Excellent Espresso?: how about go to Italy!

So you want to make excellent espresso, how about taking a trip to Italy?    

I was browsing youtube and noticed this and can not help but wanting to post it here for other coffee geek to see. Basically, the guy in the video is a journalist who is becoming interested in coffee and want to learn how to make espresso. Where do he turn to? The Italian of course! Afterall, espresso is an Italian invention and to this day, the majority of espresso machines produced and used in the world is from Italy. As a result, it would not be too far off to say that the Italian knows what they are talking about when it comes to espresso? Not entirely...

Overall, the video is good but there are several points I would like to "discuss". First of all, they talk all about the blend of espresso coffee beans as if blends are the only way to go and anything else that is not a blend must be crap. Well, this as most of us know is not true. I have had many single origin coffee roasted well enough that pull excellent shots that would rival any of the blends that I have ( shots from single origin dried processed Ethopian Sidamo comes to mind!) 

Another point in which they seem to be doing in the video is that they seem to be dosing the coffee at 14 grams which nescesitate grinding into the doser before in enough quantity and pulling the doser two pulls.  While I feel that 14 grams might be the ideal for their particular blend, sticking only with such dose might limit the potential quite a bit especially if they were to switch the type of coffee they will be using. Also, they talk about how the espresso "must" extract in 30 seconds which of course is a good guidline for some coffee but certainly not all coffee. 

Overall, I feel like what they should be teaching these people is in coffee, taste and aroma are the most important and one should do whatever it takes to maximize these components even if they were to break from the "rules". So what do you all think?