Puglia Awakens

A connoisseur's guide to the Itria Valley's masserie — and why March is the right month to find Puglia in the act of becoming itself again.

The first thing to know about Puglia in March is that the almond trees are in flower. They flower across the Salento and the Itria Valley in a rolling tide that begins in late February and finishes by the end of March, and to drive a country road between Locorotondo and Cisternino in those weeks is to drive through a kind of slow white storm. The light is sharp and clean — the African light that gives Puglia its character — and the temperature is, for a Northern European visitor, almost ideal. Sixteen degrees by midday, a glass of Verdeca at lunch on a terrace, the trulli white as bone against a sky that does not look like the sky of the rest of Italy.

The Geography Briefly Explained

Puglia is the heel of Italy, a region whose length runs nearly five hundred kilometres from the Gargano peninsula in the north to the tip of Santa Maria di Leuca in the south. Within it, three sub-regions matter for travel at our level. The Itria Valley — the limestone plateau between Bari and Brindisi, dotted with the conical-roofed trulli — is the most picturesque and the centre of our work. The Salento — the southern peninsula, with its baroque capital Lecce and its two coastlines — is the wilder, harder-light Puglia, and asks for a separate kind of journey. The Murgia and the Tavoliere — the inland plateaux to the north — are the agricultural Puglia, less visited but home to some of the great olive groves of the Mediterranean.

We design most week-long Puglia itineraries around the Itria Valley as a base, with day trips that range as far south as Otranto and as far north as Matera, just over the Basilicata border. The geography rewards a slow rhythm; trying to see Puglia in three days is a project that does not end well.

The Masseria, Properly Understood

A masseria is, in its origin, a fortified farmhouse — typically built between the sixteenth and the eighteenth centuries, organised around a central courtyard, with thick walls of local stone and a cluster of outbuildings that historically housed labourers, livestock, and the olive press. The contemporary luxury masseria is a creature of the last twenty-five years; the first to be restored at the international standard was the Masseria San Domenico in the late 1990s, and the model has multiplied considerably since.

There is, by now, a meaningful distinction between the masserie that have remained working agricultural estates and added rooms, and the masserie that are essentially hotels in old farm shells. We strongly prefer the former. Borgo Egnazia is its own category — a kind of miniature village, beautifully done, with a scale of operation closer to a resort. Masseria Torre Maizza, now a Rocco Forte property, is the contemporary luxury answer. Masseria San Giovanni, smaller and family-run, is for the client who wants something quieter. Masseria Le Carrube, only adults, is the pared-back contemporary option. We send our clients to different ones for different reasons.

The Tables, Honest and Otherwise

Pugliese cuisine is among the most coherent regional cuisines in Italy. It is built on three pillars — wheat, olive oil, and the sea — and the best of it is found at tables that are not trying to be anything else. The orecchiette con cime di rapa at Trattoria Cucina Casareccia in Lecce, made by a woman whose mother also made them. The crudi at Pescaria in Polignano a Mare. The fave e cicoria at Il Capriccio in Vieste. The bombette — small parcels of pork with cheese — at any honest macelleria in Cisternino.

We arrange, in addition, the more curated experiences: a private dinner at the Masseria Petrolla outside Ostuni, where a Pugliese chef cooks for one party at a time on a terrace overlooking the olive groves; a tasting at the Castel di Salve cellar in the deep Salento, where the Negroamaro and Susumaniello are made by one of the most thoughtful winemakers of the region; a visit to the Tenuta Liliana for the slow-pressed olive oils that the great Italian restaurants finish their dishes with.

What March Permits

There is a Puglia of August that requires no introduction. There is also a Puglia of March that asks for one. In March the masserie are partially open, the prices are roughly half their July rate, the country roads are quiet, and the small hill towns — Locorotondo, Cisternino, Ostuni, Martina Franca — are still towns rather than backdrops. One can sit alone in the central piazza of Cisternino at eleven in the morning with a coffee and watch the town be the town. By August, this is no longer possible.

We send our clients to Puglia in March for the same reason we send them to Tuscany in May: it is the month when the place is most itself.