Letting Go: Wine & Travel Lessons In Puglia
Plus how to be a better traveler in Italy, spaghetti alle vongole, and more
About six weeks into a nine-week stay in Puglia last summer, my friends Emily and Matt came to visit. I spent the weeks ahead of their trip taking mental notes of everything Nathan and I did/ate/drank that I thought they might also like, hoping to find a way to distill everything I love about Italy into a 10-day trip. I wanted them to have a good time, I wanted to impress them, and mostly I wanted them to love Italy. Especially Matt.
Emily and I travel together often and have known each other since before we have clear memories. But I had never spent days in a row with Matt, her husband, who knows more about food and history than many people, and was trusting me and Nathan to plan his first trip to Europe. It had to be perfect!
They flew into Rome, and Nathan, Emily, and I beamed like proud parents walking through Circus Maximus back to our Airbnb one night as Matt stopped in his tracks. “Wait–this is the Palatine Hill. Like the Palatine Hill?” he said, and proceeded to tell us more than we ever knew about it, despite all having visited before. He looked dumbstruck and happy and we all laughed and felt like jaded travelers knocked back into wonder. It was incredible to walk past the Palatine Hill and Colosseum, and how had we taken that for granted?
Then we went to Bari and spent a week eating fresh oysters at the market, stuffing ourselves with spaghetti alle vongole, starting our mornings with the world’s best focaccia, buying orecchiette from pasta grannies to cook at home, sipping spritzes and wine over plates of taralli and local cheese every afternoon, indulging in the best meatballs ever in Ostuni, and lingering over piping hot panzerotti in an open-air restaurant where groups shared tables and an older couple gave us travel tips. Quintessential Italian experiences: check! It was going fabulously.
Until the wineries. Puglia has great wine, and we wanted Matt to have an Italian vineyard experience. But, I had slacked off planning this portion, thinking we could just look up a few wineries and stop in, like you can in Tuscany or Napa or so many other wine regions of the world. Not quite. We called a few wineries, and some rang and rang while others said we could book for the following week. “You want to come today?” one woman asked, incredulous. “Umm, sì?” “No, it is not possible,” she said and hung up.
“What do we do,” I mouthed to Nathan with panicked eyes, afraid to turn around and break the news to Emily and Matt. “Let’s just drive,” he said, which instantly seemed like the obvious choice and I hoped they would trust us. (They did, and were less worried the entire time than I was).
Why was I so worried anyway? This is what I always do! I drive and walk and talk to strangers and have adventures and usually it works out. But it’s easy to forget that attitude when someone else’s experience is on the line, too. So we drove to the Gioia del Colle region, the closest wine area to Bari, and stopped at a winery with a large sign in the driveway that said it was open. Except, after searching the yard and finally finding someone in the back, it turns out it wasn’t, and we could only book for the following day. Is there any way, we asked, since we’re already here, that we could try some wines now? “No, no I’m sorry. It is not possible,” the man said gravely.
We drove on to Plantamura, or to what Google said was the Plantamura winery but looked like someone’s home. An older woman leaned her head out the window of a small house. “Ciao, do you do wine tastings?” I asked in not very good Italian. “Un minuto,” she said and disappeared. Just when we thought maybe we should leave, a younger woman, Mariangela, who owns the winery with her husband Vincenzo, came up from the garden. She seemed surprised, but excited. “You came all the way from the U.S. to do a wine tasting here? We’re not used to this!” she said, “It is something really exciting for us.” And she brought us to the cellar where we learned about Plantamura’s Primitivo and tasted wines poured on a makeshift forklift table and talked about food writing.
This sounds almost too quaint, but while they may not be set up for tastings, Plantamura is an excellent and well-known winery and you can and should find their wines all over the US. It was one of the first certified organic wineries in Italy (certified in 1996), and they stress that “nature is the main character” in their wines. Vincenzo handles the vineyards and Mariangela transforms the grapes into wine. One daughter Chiara is studying oenology to continue the business, while the other, Alessia, is focused on languages and marketing to expand international sales. Emily was expecting a daughter in September, which delighted Mariangela and Vicenzo, who (like everyone in Italy that week), assured her a taste of wine wouldn’t hurt.
“You must come see the vineyard,” Vincenzo said, “only if you have time.” Obviously, we had time. We stuffed our purchased bottles into the car and drove a few miles down the road to walk through rows and rows of vines, learning how everything is picked by hand, hearing about their love for this region (“we are so lucky to be born here, to live and work here still”), eating cherries picked straight from the trees outside the vineyard, jotting down tips for the rest of our stay. When it was time to leave, we hugged and felt like we would miss them even though we barely knew them at all. “We’ll be thinking of you at the harvest,” Mariangela called to Emily, waving goodbye. “A very good time to have a daughter.”
It wasn’t the wine tasting experience we expected to give Matt. It was much better, and a reminder to myself that many of the best travel experiences happen when you take pressure off a trip and go with the flow. To top it off, we wandered a massive empty castle on the way home. Italy really delivers.
It’s been a year now and Emily and Matt have the most perfect baby daughter. Our bottles of Primitivo are long gone, and travel and hugging strangers feels as foreign as a worldwide pandemic would have back then. One thing these last few months have taught me is to never take travel for granted, and I hope the lessons from Puglia and Rome–to forgo planning in favor of spontaneous discovery, and to stay in awe of the world and not become immune to its wonders–stick around long after we can move freely again.
(If you want a more planned route, there are many professional wine tours through Puglia, and farther south in Salento there are wineries you can just bop into. You could also learn from our mistakes and book a few days ahead in Gioia del Colle. Sophie Minchilli–whose Instagram I took many notes from to plan for our time in Puglia– is starting new tours in the region soon, so follow her for updates, or just to be jealous that you’re probably not eating as well as she is on any given day).
Be a Better Traveler
Here you can find all of my tips for Puglia.
My friend Livia Hengel and I talked this week on Instagram about how to be a better traveler in Italy in general.
On Sunday, I’ll be talking with Megan Frye about Mexico travel. The country is open for tourism, but should you go? Send me your questions for Megan and tune in on Instagram on Sunday at 1pm CST.
Be a Better Eater
On the subject of Italian seasides, I’ve been having fun making spaghetti alle vongole. I always thought clams sounded intimidating to cook, but they’re stupidly easy. I started with Marcella Hazan’s version, but there are plenty of online recipes and they’re all pretty much the same. (Just know the salinity of clams depends on the variety–here in the Gulf they’re *super* salty–so maybe adjust your recipe accordingly).
Wine of the Week
Links I Love
Yes, You Can Dine At Reopened Restaurants. But Is It Ethical?
Angkor Wat’s Collapse From Climate Change Has Lessons For Today
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez Learned Her Most Important Lessons From Restaurants
The Next Day There Were No Onions
A Reckoning on Race at the Court of Master Sommeliers Americas
What Happened When I Tried to Become French
How to Build a Better Grower Network for Your Restaurant (Including this because it features one of my favorite Madison chefs)
Recommendations
Watch: I’m the last person on earth to start The Sopranos, but am already hooked.
Read: Tasting Rome by Kristina Gill
Buy: If you’re into disc golf (if you’re not, it’s a great social distancing activity), my brother is selling dyed discs, or you can commission one custom-made.
Go: To Puglia! (In 2021)
Watch: This
Thanks for reading! Wear a mask!!
–Rebecca