An Ostuni wine tasting is the easiest way into the Itria Valley’s wine, and the least known. The white town sits above olive groves, but the hills behind it, toward Martina Franca, Locorotondo and Alberobello, are covered in low vines and trulli, and a handful of estates now open their cellars to visitors. These seven … Read more
The wineries in Puglia that open their doors to visitors are spread along nearly 250 miles of heel, from the Nero di Troia hills around Castel del Monte to the Negroamaro flatlands south of Lecce. Few of them run a tasting room the way Napa or Tuscany does: you book ahead, a family member walks … Read more
The best hotels in Lecce are not on the coast or in the countryside: they are inside the old town, in palazzi of honey-colored stone a few lanes from Santa Croce. That makes Lecce the easiest base in Salento for a wine trip. The Negroamaro cellars of Salice Salentino, Guagnano and Copertino are all within … Read more
Where to stay in Salento depends on which wine you came for. Negroamaro, the dark, bitter-cherry grape of the heel, grows around Salice Salentino and Guagnano, northwest of Lecce. Primitivo belongs to Manduria, on the Taranto side. Between them run the Ionian coast and the old towns of Nardò and Gallipoli. The six stays below … Read more
Wine masserie in Puglia are the region’s answer to the Tuscan wine estate: fortified farmhouses built to guard grain and olive oil, now sleeping guests among their own vines. Plenty of masserie call themselves wine resorts and pour someone else’s bottles. The six below make their own wine, mostly Primitivo, from vineyards you can walk … Read more
Puglia wine country runs the length of Italy’s heel, from the castle hills of the north to the red earth of Salento, with the sea never more than an hour away. It is where Primitivo and Negroamaro come from, where Italy bottled its first rosé, and where a night in a masseria among the olives … Read more