Puglia

Puglia (Apulia) forms the heel of the Italian peninsula’s boot, running up the Adriatic coast to the boot’s “spur.” Its capital and largest city is Bari. As one of the least mountainous of Italy’s regions, located in the sun-baked south, Puglia is a major agricultural area, for grapes and wine as for other products. In the wine world, Puglia is still not well known, but as quality continually improves, its wines are attracting great interest. It has 4 DOCGs, 28 DOCs (see map), and 6 IGPs. To some extent, Puglia saved the nation’s 2017 harvest, managing to improve on its 2016 bumper crop to reach 9.1 million hl (101 million cases) of wine in a year when frost and hail reduced yields in most other regions. Given the poor harvest in Veneto, Puglia was easily able to claim the prize as the number-one wine-producing region in Italy, if perhaps only for a year. Puglia’s DOP production is just 7% of the total, as it continues to focus on bulk wines. The region’s primary grape varieties are Sangiovese (15%), Primitivo (14%), Negroamaro (14%), and Trebbiano (13%).