Welcome to Puglia

Gorgeously sun-soaked Puglia, with its seemingly endless sandy beaches and its stunning whitewashed towns sat on top of craggy coves, is a dream location to taste some of Italy’s finest wines. It’s also one of Italy’s most popular destinations for visitors tired with the crowds of Rome and the prices of the Amalfi coast. Here in the South there are endless sea vistas, ancient ruins, beautiful cities packed with historic Italian architecture and, of course, there is fantastic food and drink to be had everywhere you stop.

There are five distinct regions within Puglia, each representing specific qualities found only within their territories. Foggia in the north, was once known as Daunia and was inhabited by the ancient Daunians some 2500 years ago. The next region down, Bari, is home to Puglia’s capital (also called Bari). Between Bari and the Puglia’s southern most regions, the ornate Lecce, sit Taranto on the west coast and Brindisi on the east.

Puglia is tied with Sicily as the second largest wine region in Italy, and produces wines that are bombast, and big in flavour. Some of Italy’s most famous red wines are made there from local indigenous grapes that nowadays are household names: Negroamaro and Primitivo, the latter you may already know as Zinfandel.

The sun-baked soil of this region gives winemakers different challenges to some of the other places we’ve visited with Glug before. Rather than hail and déluge, Puglia has droughts and sunburn to worry about. However, the unforgiving heat of the summer months here gives intensity, and unrivalled ripeness to Pugliese grapes. Coping with the heat is worth it.

The terrain is incredibly diverse in this part of Italy, and is touched in almost every valley and plain by sea breezes coming in from the shining Adriatic coast. The soil is good too, and as well as benefiting the local winemaking industry, this mineral-rich resource accounts for 40% of Italy’s olive oil production. But we’re here for the grapes, so let’s get into them.