Apulia

The wine-growing region of Apulia (Ital. Puglia) with ist capital of Bari is located on the Adriatic coast in the extreme south of Italy. This region is strecthed out and consists of the spur (the Gargano mountains) and the heel (the Salento peninsula) of the Italian boot. The name goes back to the Apuli; an Oscian tribe in ancient times. This is one of the oldest wine-growing regions in the world, both the Phoenicians and the Greeks planted vines her 3.000 years ago. The Romans particularly liked the wines from Tarentum (the port city of Taranto) and the poet Horatio (65-8 BC) described the area as a site of “perpetual spring”. In contrast to other regions in the south of Italy, there are very few mountains, the countryside consists of plains and high-lying plateaus. The climate is hot and dry, with low rainfall, so that some areas have to be irrigated. The soils are mainly sandstone, limestone and clay. Apulia has the largest number of grape varieties in southern Italy, around 80% of the varieties are red. Many of them are indigenous varieties – these have been specially cultivated and propagated in recent years. The most widely planted red varieties are Aleatico, Bombino Nero, Malvasia Nera, Montepulciano, Negroamaro, Primitivo, Sangiovese, Somarello Rosso and Uva di Troia. The most widely planted white varieties are Bombino Bianco, Fiano, Falanghina, Impigno, Moscato di Trani and Verdeca. The vineyard area totals 106.715 hectares – that is one eighth of the total area for Italy - and the region is the leading producer of wine in Italy (more than in the whole of Germany or Bordeaux). For this reason the region is also aptly desribed as the wine cellar of Italy, or even of Europe. Together with Sicily it heads the table for the largest production of wine in Italy. There are 25 DOC zones, many of which have very small vineyard areas, together these make up less than five per cent of total production. A large part of the wines is sent of for distillation as inductrial alcohol, or for use in the production of mass-volume branded wines. The DOC zones are:

* Aleatico di Puglia
* Alezio
* Brindisi
* Cacc´e Mmitte di Lucera
* Castel del Monte
* Copertino
* Galatina
* Gioia del Colle
* Gravina
* Leverano
* Lizzano
* Locorotondo
* Martina Franca
* Matino
* Moscato di Trani
* Nardò
* Orta Nova
* Ostuni
* Primitivo di Manduria
* Rosso Barletta
* Rosso Canosa
* Rosso di Cerignola
* Salice Salentino
* San Severo
* Squinzano