Ideas for your Puglia food and wine tour
Tastings, cookery courses, food and wine tours, even tailor-made ones
Puglia, the heel of the boot, is a place that hides different souls, suspended between nature, history, tradition, Apulia food and wine and spirituality. It is a strip of land stretching out into the sea with wonderful beaches, from the sandy Torre dell’Orso and Porto Cesareo to the rocky shores of Otranto and Santa Maria di Leuca. Here the crystal-clear, calm Ionian Sea meets the deep-blue Adriatic. But Puglia is not just about the sea. To discover the natural wonders of the region, you can visit the Murge National Park and the Gargano National Park, with its wild Umbra Forest, salt pans and lakes.
A must-see is Alberobello, a small town in the Bari hinterland that was listed as a UNESCO World Heritage Site in 1996. Alberobello is the home of the trulli, ancient and characteristic dwellings with conical roofs built by hand from dry stone. Puglia also boasts another UNESCO site in Andria: Castel del Monte, a masterpiece of medieval architecture built by Frederick II of Hohenstaufen in the 13th century.
Three ingredients are the cornerstones of Puglia food and wine: durum wheat, vegetables and extra virgin olive oil. Combined with meat and fish, they create dishes that are iconic of Puglia cuisine, offering straightforward and unmistakable flavours. In Puglia food and wine also mean top-quality wheat from which many types of pasta are made, such as orecchiette, made with turnip greens, or the famous strascinati and the renowned Pane di Altamura PDO. Puglia wine is prestigious and has achieved great fame, even at international level: the Primitivo di Manduria, Castel del Monte and Negramaro. You’ll be spoilt for choice on your journey to discover Puglia food and wine.
