wein.plus
Attention
You are using an old browser that may not function as expected.
For a better, safer browsing experience, please upgrade your browser.

Log in Become a Member

Puglia is not a uniform whole, but an almost 400-kilometre-long area in which not only very different wines are produced, but also different dialects are spoken and different dishes are prepared everywhere. To speak of "Apulian wine" is, strictly speaking, a misnomer.

The fate of the individual parts of Puglia, roughly divided: Foggia, Bari, Taranto and the Negroamaro-Salento, must be considered separately if one wants to understand the region.

(Photo: Merum)

Puglia not only offers astonishing diversity in terms of landscape and viticulture, on our trip we met the most interesting people and farm structures belonging to the most diverse eras, so that our stay seemed far too short.

We cannot deny that we were impressed by a guy like Francesco Liantonio (Torrevento). His lightning intelligence is simply captivating, his speech is convincing, his entrepreneurial successes are inspiring. An entrepreneur like him, we imagine, would lead any company to success.

Or the Apollonio brothers and Paolo Cantele, exuberant young entrepreneurs always ready for a self-deprecating joke... They showed us the most beautiful sides of the baroque city of Lecce and led us through the alleys of the Salento capital to Rosalba, in whose restaurant Alle due Corti we would love to return tomorrow to enjoy her simple, Apulian dishes.

In Cutrofiano, in the south of Salento, we met our old friend Ninì - Cosimo Palamà by full name - who, together with his wife Isa, who speaks perfect Zurich German (the Apulian spent her childhood in Switzerland), has worked the family's original cask winery into one of the most reliable wineries in Puglia.

Most touching, however, was our visit to Vittorio Pichierri. The Vinicola Savese winery, owned by him and his brothers, is a piece of history. The exact opposite of a modern winery, with amphorae in which Primitivo has been maturing for decades, old barrels, unfashionable labels, but with wines that have an unusual depth, that tell stories in the glass when aerated, wines that come from another time and should actually be protected. Wines, however, that are selling worse and worse.

Vittorio is depressed; it saddens him that there is apparently no more room for him and his wines in the wine world. As a farewell gift, he gives us a bottle of Tradizione del Nonno, a Primitivo di Manduria. Quite sadly, we leave the winery and drink the bottle at Joe's, a small neighbourhood pub in Sava.

(Photo: Merum)

The new future of Apulia

The development that is currently taking place in Puglia is extremely exciting. Until before the Second World War, Puglia's land belonged to large landowners. After the expropriation of about 190,000 hectares (in Puglia, Molise and Basilicata) in the 1950s and 1960s, the cultivation of the fields, olive groves and vineyards was transferred to the former tenants and farm workers on their own. The newly founded cooperatives - oil mills, wineries, etc. - took over the harvest and paid the workers. - took over the harvest and paid the farmers.

This new system eradicated all entrepreneurship at the root and threw the country into a fateful twilight sleep from which it has never awoken. Today, the grapes, wheat and olives are worth nothing and the farmers are back in the same situation as before the land distribution.

Only a few producers are doing well. They are people who understand that agriculture is not viable without self-marketing. They are agricultural entrepreneurs who do not sell olives and not oil, but bottles and canisters, who do not export grapes or bulk wine, but wine bottles, who do not bring wheat to the cooperative, but market pasta. They travel a lot, make contacts and accompany their wine to the world.

Puglia is changing rapidly. The times of unqualified wine production are over, the Cantine Sociali stand around uselessly, the equipment rusts, grass sprouts between the cement slabs of their forecourts, the faded notice of the liquidation general assembly may still hang on the entrance gate.

Pietro Giorgiani (Nuova Santa Barbara): "In ten years, only the best quality of a few private wineries will be produced in Salento. What will be left of Apulian viticulture after the grubbing-up premiums and the natural selection through absolutely unworthy grape prices are a few dozen wine companies.

Mostly large family wineries, a few small self-marketing winemakers, large estates owned by northern Italian wine houses, a few cooperatives. They survive because they have created a direct contact with the markets, they flourish if they know how to communicate properly and offer a quality that these markets demand.

(Photo: Merum)

Quite a number of wine businesses have been set up by out-of-town wine entrepreneurs in recent years. Unlike local producers, their thinking doesn't start with the grapes, but with demand. They are based in Puglia, not because fate would have it that way, but because they believe they can sell Puglian wine at a profit.

Alberto and Alfredo Falvo (Li Veli), who had already made a name for themselves as founders of Avignonesi in Montepulciano, Tuscany: "In Puglia, there is a lack of important names that give the region some glamour and accordingly increase demand. In Sicily, for example, Planeta has made a big impact, but in Puglia there is no such winery. This situation was of course tempting for us, it is a big challenge to enter a market where the die is not yet cast. The locals did not view our investment suspiciously or negatively. On the contrary, they were even proud that a Tuscan family loves their land. Puglia has great potential and some producers have worked very hard in recent years to improve their quality. We observe a great interest in Puglian wines. With fair prices, the region's quality wine can have great success."

These companies, working according to modern market rules, do not cover their wine needs mainly by buying young wine from the Cantine Sociali, as they used to do, but they cultivate and plant their own vineyards. This is the only way they can ensure the quality their customers expect from them. In Apulia, only vineyards whose grapes ripen towards a predetermined purpose, a label, will survive. Vineyards without a concrete, commercial purpose will disappear.

Marcello e Massimiliano Apollonio: "We oppose the clearing of the Alberello vineyards. With this vine training you harvest a maximum of 6,000 kilos per hectare, and understandably many farmers can't make ends meet with it, but the quality is unique. Their cultivation is complex and costly, as these vineyards cannot be mechanised, all work has to be done by hand. In order not to be left without grape suppliers at some point, we have to buy vineyards. Otherwise we run the risk of running out of grapes for our wine production.

(Photo: Merum)
Puglia and its wine have a future. However, those who measure it against the past of the last decades will be disappointed. Even if this was probably not brought about consciously, Puglia seems to have been caught up by modernity these years. Much of what we associate with Apulian wine must be forgotten. These include overproduction, subsidised cellar cooperatives, certain characteristically overcooked types of wine and - since it costs little less to produce quality wine in Puglia than in northern Italy - the ridiculous prices.

Puglia has to break away from its image as a low-priced supplier and offer wines that are attractive because of their character and less and less because of their price.

The wine country of Puglia is coming of age, it deserves our attention and understanding. Paolo Càntele: "My greatest wish is that the name Puglia will one day be mentioned in the same breath as Tuscany and Piedmont. Our image must be marketed better. Producers still need to work more on their quality, but we are on the right track."

Southern wines and "northern wines"

The Primitivo of Manduria ripens between late August and early September, the Primitivo of Gioia del Colle from late September to mid-October, the Negroamaro in mid-September, the Nero di Troia (Castel del Monte) from late September to mid-October.

The ripeness of a grape is decisive for the type of wine. The Nero di Troia from northern Apulia, like northern Italian varieties, ripens only at the end of September, sometimes even in mid-October. This makes more elegant and fresh-fruited wines possible than in Salento with Negroamaro and Primitivo, because the grapes are not yet ripe during the high summer heat and the aromas are thus preserved. In the cooler climate of northern Apulia, neither Primitivo nor Negroamaro thrive because they depend on hot, dry summers. In recent years, therefore, August rainfall has been a major problem for Salento wines, especially the thin-skinned Primitivo.

Castel del Monte is bottled by about a dozen producers. A weak point of this appellation is the variety of wines offered under this designation. The fact that there is not one Castel del Monte, but a multitude of typologies - red wines, white wines and rosé from about a dozen grape varieties - makes any communication difficult.

Fortunately, changes are in sight, also on the labels. In addition to the appellation name, the name of the grape variety will also have to be mentioned in future. Conte Onofrio Spagnoletti Zeuli: "Unfortunately, everything is summarised under the name Castel del Monte, even the international grape varieties that have nothing to do with Puglia. The focus should have been on the Nero di Troia grape variety much earlier."

(Photo: Merum)

Francesco Liantonio from Torrevento is also president of the Castel del Monte consortium: "We want to achieve that all international grape varieties are removed from the production regulations. No more Cabernet, Merlot or similar in the Castel del Monte appellation! I am firmly convinced that an appellation must have a wine by which it identifies itself. Only then can it be communicated. The new Castel del Monte appellation will be based on Nero di Troia, this variety represents our territory. We will also obtain DOCG certification for this wine. We producers have to ensure transparency and clarity."

Negroamaro is becoming rare

Coming from the north, one enters the home of Negroamaro, the Salento peninsula, at Brindisi. The variety is grown exclusively here, in the provinces of Lecce and in the southern part of Brindisi. In the third Salento province, Taranto, Primitivo is the predominant variety.

Until the 1980s, Salento was covered by a single sea of vines. Intertwined small tree vines (Alberello) like in Pachino or on Etna in Sicily, in southern France or Châteauneuf-du-Pape were common here. This type of cultivation is very labour-intensive and produces low yields, but particularly good grapes.

The fact that Salento is a wine country today is due to the fact that a hundred years ago France's vineyards were severely decimated by phylloxera. Before 1920, there was little viticulture in Puglia, people did the usual mixed farming, sowing grain under the olive trees and growing some wine.

The demand from France triggered an enormous planting fever in many parts of southern Italy, but especially in poor Salento. In fact, wine brought some prosperity to the rural population in the years that followed. But Puglia's heyday as a wine country did not last long; already in the 1930s, demand from France subsided as the country's own new plants went into production. At the same time, international political conditions brought exports to other countries to a standstill.

(Photo: Merum)

The short boom quickly turned into hardship, the local wineries suddenly didn't know what to do with the wine and refused to take the grapes from the farmers.

At that time, the land belonged to large landowners who had immense latifundia of 10,000 hectares or more and had the farming done by a multitude of small sharecroppers. In the 1940s, but especially in the 1950s and 1960s, a large-scale distribution of land took place, and at the same time, state-supported cellar cooperatives were founded.

With the takeover of wine production by the Cantine Sociali, which were hampered in their marketing, Apulia's fate as an open wine supplier was sealed. The cooperative wineries guaranteed the farmers the purchase of the grapes, but they were unable to find a better market for the wine than the wineries of central and northern Italy. So there was no talk of marketing or far-sighted sales strategies. They vinified the members' grapes and let the wine "flow off" to the north at the daily price.

When the demand for blended wine in the north became less and less thanks to the introduction of the DOCG and stricter controls, the cask wine prices collapsed and with them the grape money. The cellars were full to bursting. Subsidised must concentration and compulsory distillation could only slightly alleviate the consequences of overproduction. When the grubbing-up premiums were introduced in 1988, the great clear-cutting of the Apulian vineyards began.

From 1982 to 1990 alone, 233,000 winegrowers in southern Italy gave up their vineyards. In Puglia, especially in Salento, around 50,000 winegrowers gave up their profession as soon as the grubbing-up premiums were introduced, and most of their colleagues followed their example in the following years.

And the death of the vines continues: "As late as 2009, 6,000 hectares of vineyards were grubbed up in Puglia thanks to the EU grubbing-up premiums," Alessandro Candido regrets, "in 2010 it was even 6,500 hectares and another 5,000 hectares are expected for 2011."

In the province of Taranto, fewer vineyards were cleared than in Brindisi and Lecce. This is mainly because more is paid for Primitivo grapes than for Negroamaro. However, the fact that both of Sava's cantine sociali recently had to close down shows that the situation here is also dramatic.

As a result of the lack of grapes, one cantina sociale after the other went bankrupt. In most cases, they owed their members grape money for several years. Of the original 170 Cantine Sociali in Apulia, not much more than a dozen have survived to this day.

(Photo: Merum)

As recently as 1987, Puglia produced 1,300 million litres of wine. Today, the region produces just half of that. The EU Commission's goal of getting the wine surplus under control seems to have been achieved.

In reality, the grubbing-up premiums primarily led to the abandonment of low-yielding, i.e. unprofitable, but high-quality vineyards in Salento. In northern Apulia, on the other hand, irrigated, fertilised intensive vineyards flourished with almost obscene yields of low-quality grapes - there is talk of 50, 60 tonnes per hectare and more.

Alessandro Candido: "Vineyards with low yields per hectare were grubbed up. Only for these farmers is grubbing up recommended. The owners of plants with maximum yields make ends meet even with low grape prices."

This explains why so little remains of the former Negroamaro cultivation area. It is no longer only vines and olives that characterise the modern image of Salento, but also vast wasteland, greenhouses and large-scale photovoltaic plants.

The end for cheap wine from Apulia

Stefano Garofano (Azienda Monaci): "When I was a little boy, Salento consisted of a single sea of vines. Today, the vineyards look more and more like islands. Much lies fallow today, many vineyards have been replaced by greenhouses or orchards. The reason for this is the lack of generational change. My peers want a job that guarantees them some income, viticulture can't do that."

Pietro Giorgiani (Nuova Santa Barbara): "The grapes are getting less and less, more and more farmers are clearing their vineyards. As a result, the cellar cooperatives can no longer operate their facilities and cellars, because they were originally designed for huge quantities. The farmers don't know how to survive, because prices are falling more and more and the competition is becoming more and more merciless. You can't produce grapes for 18 cents a kilo. It is not possible."

The low grape price is aggravated for the winegrowers by the fact that the cellar cooperatives usually only pay out the grape money after two or three years, if at all.

Donato Lazzari (Vallone): "The farmers are forced to clear their vineyards and build photovoltaic plants in their place. They don't like to do that, what farmer likes to sacrifice his land to technology?"

(Photo: Merum)
Pietro Giorgiani (Nuova Santa Barbara): "As a father, how can I advise my son to continue cultivating the vineyards? Young winemaker Gabriele Buccoliero (Galenos): "My peers don't want to have anything to do with farming any more, and they want to get their hands even less dirty. They dream of a comfortable office job with secure earnings. While the lecture halls of the faculties of management science and law were overcrowded, my faculty of oenology in Foggia was poorly attended."

Vittorio Pichierri: "I pay around 60 cents a kilo for good Primitivo grapes. But the yields per hectare are very low, between 6,000 and 7,000 kg per hectare. If I sell my wine to bottlers, I get maybe 1.20 or 1.50 euros per litre of DOC wine and 70 to 80 cents for an IGT wine."

Ernesto Soloperto: "The vineyard plots are very small here in the Primitivo area. The largest ones are just one hectare and are mostly cultivated by farmers of retirement age. That one hectare brings them next to nothing at today's grape prices."

Marcello and Massimiliano Apollonio: "A grape grower would have to earn around 10,000 euros per hectare to make it worth his while," Alessandro Candido says, adding that farmers can get by on just 6,000 euros. The fact is, however, that private wineries pay between 30 and 40 cents for Negroamaro grapes, which, with a yield per hectare of between 7,000 and 9,000 kilos, results in earnings per hectare of between 2,100 and 3,600 euros. Even the Primitivo farmers of Sava and Manduria only make it to 4,000 euros per hectare with difficulty. No wonder the farmers take the first opportunity to uproot the vines.

Stefano Garofano (Azienda Monaci): "For about one and a half years, the price of cask wine has decreased noticeably. There is less demand from bottlers."

Donato Lazzari (Vallone): "The bulk wine prices are suffering greatly from the competition from the New World. We simply cannot keep up with these prices. A lot of wine from overseas comes to Puglia and ruins the prices. After the area under vines has declined sharply in recent years, the prices for grapes and bulk wine should actually have gone up again, but this is not the case. When the big bottlers and wineries from the north no longer had a need for Apulian wines to blend, the system collapsed. Despite the sharp drop in production volumes, there is still too much wine in Puglia. The cask wine price for Negroamaro DOC is around 50 cents per litre. That is definitely too little. The crazy thing is that even the bad Apulian wines still have higher production costs than mediocre wines from overseas that are brought to Livorno or Trieste by big ships."

In fact, the low-price competition from overseas is particularly hard on the lowest price segment. Sebastiano de Corato (Rivera): "Paradoxically, it is mainly our low-priced wines that are affected by the general sales crisis, because they are still 30 per cent more expensive than those of our competitors. Marcello and Massimiliano Apollonio: "When there is a sales crisis, we sell our expensive wines better than our cheaper line. This one is not really competitive anymore at the moment."

(Photo: Merum)

The reason for low grape prices and low bulk wine prices is always a supply overhang. In the past, the Apulian winegrowers took care of the overproduction themselves, but today the importers of bulk wines from overseas do it for them. Whoever has to sell grapes or open wine in Apulia today has to pay more.

Even with the marketing of cheap wine, nothing can be earned any more, because the new competition cannot be undercut. Francesco Winspeare (Castel di Salve): "100 kg of grapes cost me between 39 and 55 euros. How can I sell a litre of cask wine for 35 cents? I really lose money on that. We only get into the black if we produce bottled quality."

It is also unpleasant for the quality producers that cheap goods from their own region get in their way everywhere. Damiano Calò (Rosa del Golfo): "Most of the Apulian wine abroad does not come from producers located here, but from big bottlers in northern Italy. The cellar cooperatives sell Negroamaro or Primitivo to them at impossible prices because they don't know what to do with it. And so it happens that Negroamaro turns up in Germany for 1.79 euros a bottle."

Entrepreneurial spirit in demand

In Foggia and in the northern part of the province of Bari, table grape cultivation and mass wine production are flourishing. There are some quality producers here too, but the land is fertile and produces yields per hectare that are still worthwhile even at low grape prices.

The wines of the Castel del Monte appellation in the province of Andria are incomparably more interesting. Not only the local Nero di Troia produces great wines, but also Aglianico and Montepulciano are among the authorised grapes of the Castel del Monte DOC.

The appellation is prospering thanks to a small handful of very active wineries: the classic Rivera, the high-flyer Torrevento, the small winery Santa Lucia, Count Spagnoletti Zeuli and, for some years now, Antinori with Tormaresca.

Perhaps it has something to do with the fact that the winery is located in the renowned Castel del Monte appellation, but certainly the success of Torrevento, which is very untypical for Puglia, shows what energetic entrepreneurship is capable of. Francesco Liantonio, son of a wealthy winegrowing family and former lecturer in communication and marketing, bottled his first bottle of wine in 1994. After 16 years, the amount of wine marketed under the own brand Torrevento was already 2.5 million bottles. On top of that, there are "a few million bottles" with customer labels.

And because he was tired of leaving the wheat from the family's fields to the wholesalers at world market prices, he has it processed into high-quality pasta under his own brand Altigrani.
The Apulians like to feel sorry for themselves when the desolate situation of their agriculture is mentioned. Apart from the dramatic lack of entrepreneurship, however, there are few reasons why Puglia should be worse off than Tuscany, for example.

The natural quality of grapes, olives and other gifts of nature is as high here as anywhere else. On the contrary, the taste of the fruits, the pasta, the cheeses, the vegetables, the good olive oil seems even more intense here than elsewhere. Unfortunately, it is not possible to secure this advantage, to market it and thus establish a positive image.

The observation of Donato Lazzari (Vallone) is heard again and again: "A big problem in Puglia is the lack of entrepreneurial spirit, and not only in agriculture. Our boys who graduate from a university in northern Italy usually don't return."

In the conversations with the winegrowers, some express that the politicians are not doing anything to make Puglia better known abroad. They complain that the "Puglia brand" is comparatively unknown in contrast to the "Sicily brand" and call for state support for communication.

One can believe in the effectiveness of state communication work or not... Certainly, those responsible in politics and administration should have invested in the local and landscape planning of Apulia first.

As in many places in Italy, the granting of building permits is subject to rules that are certainly not dictated by public interest. Marcello e Massimiliano Apollonio: "Here there is wild building everywhere, soon there will be no more arable land. Even the coasts have been ruined because ugly cement blocks have been put up without permission."

Apart from a few oases, the city of Lecce for example, the coast south of Otranto, the hills of Castel del Monte, people in Puglia have successfully tried to hide the beauty of as many landscapes as possible behind cemented ugliness.

Yes, that too is Puglia. Ugliness stands right next to things worth seeing. Like everywhere else in southern Italy. But the traveller only remembers the beautiful impressions, and there are countless of them. We can only wish our readers that their way will lead them to Lecce, to the Castel del Monte or across the countryside to one of the lively fishing ports along the 800 kilometres of coastline.

Puglia profile

Puglia is southern Italy, and one way to recognise southern Italy is that the very beautiful and the very ugly are frighteningly close to each other. Beautiful are the old vineyards with their intertwined Alberello vines, the landscapes and villages on the east coast from Polignano a Mare down to Santa Maria di Leuca or the hinterland of Bari with the Murge plateau, the old olive trees, the fearful faces of the old people sitting in front of the village bar, the fishing ports, the sea... What is ugly is the wild urban sprawl, the uncontrolled cementation, the moribund agriculture.

Puglia was Italy's wine barrel for a long time. Today you drive across the Salento and wonder where all the vines have gone and what all the people live on who worked this sea of vines until the introduction of grubbing-up premiums 23 years ago.

Puglia is long. From Marina di Chieuti on the northern border with the region of Molise to Santa Maria di Leuca in the far south, it is more than 400 kilometres by car and about a five-hour drive.

Puglia produces extremely diverse wines. Heavy, overripe, fruity, at the same time tart, acid-rich Negroamaro in Salento, super-concentrated, alcohol-rich, often sweet Primitivo from Taranto, delicate whites from the Itria Valleytart, cherry-fruity, sometimes elegant Nero di Troia from Castel del Monte (Bari) and - in addition to a few quality wines - mass-produced wines from the fertile plains of northern Apulia (Foggia).

Puglia offers the friend of good food everything his heart desires: the unforgettable Burrata of Andria, durum wheat pasta in all, wonderful variations, best Coratina olive oil from the province of Bari, fish from the harbour directly to the plate, unique bread, tasty vegetables...

Puglia used to be populated by an extremely hospitable and friendly people! Fortunately, this has not changed: The Apulians are among the best that Puglia has to offer!

Related Magazine Articles

View All
More
More
More
More
More
More
More
More
More
More

EVENTS NEAR YOU

PREMIUM PARTNERS