Speaking of enjoying the culture of a place, it doesn’t get any better than enjoying several wines and learning how they were made, etc. while you are with old and potential new friends in a vineyard while visiting Italy.
This is exactly what my friend and I were able to experience. I had known and experienced and appreciated the wines in Tuscany (or the Toscana region), but I didn’t realize until I was on the train from Florence to Lecce (which is in the Puglia region), that there were even wines in the Puglia region.
So I was surprised that we were able to book a wine tasting in Martina Franca. We also decided that although we were staying in Lecce at a very nice apartment/house in the historic city center, that we really didn’t want to be driving for an hour after leaving the wine tasting in the late evening (early night). So we opted to stay a few nights at a Trullo close to the vineyard in Martina Franca. I’ll write another blog post about that experience.
We had a wonderful wine experience. We booked it through Viator. I’ll have the link below. Or better yet, I will list the name of the winery as well at the end of this blog post.
Our wine tasting first began with a tour of the vineyard. They explained the grapes that were native to the Puglia region, and that we would be tasting in the wines to be sampled later in the evening.
It wasn’t a full dinner, but it was plates of appetizers that were staples unique to that area, and they paired a different wine with each appetizer. The last appetizer was an assortment of meats (salamis and I think may have been some cheeses). It was all very good. The level of expertise of the instructor for our group was very good. I asked what I thought was a halfway intelligent question. No question is a dumb one, right? Anyway, what I asked was about the certifications of the wines. I knew that for the Tuscan wines, there is a Denominazione di Origine Controllata e Garantita (DOCG) certification to state that it was grapes (such as Sangiovese) that were local to the region and were grown in the Toscana region. Our guide/instructor informed me that in the Puglia region, instead of DOCG, they have a different certification called ‘IGT’. So I learned something new. So I will have to look for that designation on Italian wines from the Puglia region. IGT stands for “Indicazione Geografica Tipica”.
According to Decanter newsletter, there are three tiers of Italian wine certifications/designations.
The modern-day hierarchy has three tiers:
- PDO (Protected Designation of Origin: DOC & DOCG)
- IGT (Indicazione Geografica Tipica)
- VdT (Vino da Tavola)
I’m not a wine expert, so if you want to know more about the classifications of wines in Italy, I’ve added a link to that Decanter article at the end of this blog post.
There was a lot of laughter and merriment. We didn’t get too tipsy thanks to eating food in between the wine tastings. Also luckily, I only had about a 6-mile drive back to the 100+ year old Trullo we had rented for the night and the next two days.
The winey and vineyard we visited was: Vigna il Castagno, which is in the town Martina Franca, which is close to Alberobello, Italy (the Trulli city). In fact, from the vineyard you could view Trulli in the countryside. I had to look this up because I was saying this incorrectly while in Italy, but wanted to make sure I had the correct spelling of this word in plural. Trullo – is singular, and Trulli – is plural of Trullo.
We booked the tour through Viator. www.viator.com
The particular experience we booked was: Vineyard, wine and Food.
However, seems the local tour company was called: Trulli il Castagno
Below are photos from our evening of wine tasting. The tour and tasting started at 6:30pm. So while we were halfway through the evening we were treated with an amazingly beautiful sunset over the vineyard’s horizon. It was a magical moment. I ended up buying one bottle of wine, the Terra Viva (Nero di Trola). All the wines were very good. We thoroughly enjoyed the wine, food and company. It was a Wednesday night, so there was no surprise that everyone in our group and the other group were all tourists. Most were from other countries. We sat next to someone from Toronto, Canada, but there was also some people from Soul Korea on the other side of us. Just a magical night. To be honest, I thought the gentleman to my left said he was from Otranto (which is a town in the Puglia region of Italy not far from Lecce). I was thinking to myself, wow his English is very good I hardly detect any accent at all. Then I realized he said Toronto (as in Canada). And that is before I started drinking. Funny.
More information about Italian wines, and wines and certifications and classifications of wines in the Puglia region, see section at the end of this post below the photos. Thanks. Happy travels.
Additional Information about Italian wines in the Puglia region:
If you want to know more about wines in the Puglia region, you might want to check out the linked site, which breaks down where to find the best wines in the Puglia region.
Forbes magazine also had an article about understanding the wines in Puglia region of Italy.
Another article in Decanter newsletter, is about understanding Italian wine labels and designations is linked here.
Simply amazing…watching these photos and reading about the experience made me feel a part of the journey. This part of Puglia if I’m not mistaken is in the famous “boot” part of Italy if my geography is correct. I also know that it is famous for burrata cheese. That’s sooooo cool.
Thanks for the positive comments, Ben. Yes, you are correct about it being in the boot part of Italy. I didn’t know about that cheese. I’ll have to check that out next time I visit there or try it from a local place that imports Italian cheese, if I can find it. I had planned to take a tour that showed you how they made mozzarella cheese, but my girlfriend, who was on the trip with me, didn’t think that sounded too interesting. So we didn’t book it.