First study trip. Check.

Nothing can prepare you for the realities of a study trip. 

Start with 25 people, 2 leaders, psychotic bus drivers of varying skill, and being on the go, all together, from 9am til 1am. 

Then add long stretches without food, followed by abundance of one type, for example, fresh cheeses. 

Combine regular lectures on locality, walking tours during the heat of the day and wine and olive oil tastings at random.

Mix together with a very southern Italian host *wink, wink* and long-drawn out dinners at traditional restaurants, wine-makers pairing their products with each course. 

The end result:

The spewing gastronomes...

Apart from the Friday being hands-down, the most miserable food poisoning experience of my life, the trip was exhausting, stretching - and thoroughly enjoyable.  The producers we met were so incredibly passionate about their work and why they do things the way they do.  People in Puglia were warm, generous and friendly.  Especially the men.  Very friendly.  Maybe too friendly.

Here are some highlights of Puglia.

Olive trees grow in the direction of the earth's rotation, which means that the groves resemble graceful, aged dancers performing pas de deux.  If you have 5,000 euros, you can even buy a 1,000 year old gnarled tree of your own and receive all the oil it produces, each year.

Cheese.  Fresh, raw-milk cheese of creaminess unimaginable.  Made right in front of us, like this fresh mozzarella that was fashioned into small knots.

Beautiful, complex, rich wines made from varietals I've never heard of before.  That's no longer a problem.  We met winemakers with major productions (1 million bottles +) who pick all their grapes by hand and proudly make only indigenous wines.  They're starting to break into the North American market now - keep an eye out for them.

 

Capocollo di Martina Franca.  There's nothing like standing in a shop piled high with large hunks of meat being seasoned in red wine, salt and pepper, covered in stretched intestines and wrapped carefully to age and cure.  Even better when your meat-obsessed roommate dives in and joins the third generation cappocollo makers in the job.

Seafood.  I never thought I'd say this, but on a hot day, there's little that beats a marinated octopus and cuttlefish salad in a waterfront cafe, with a cool glass of prosecco in hand.  The dinner in Brindisi at the foot of the terminus of the Appian way was a complete overload of the senses with five courses of plates piled high with seafood.  My stomach buckled finally when attempting to suck the brains of a huge raw shrimp.  I might have to stick to the ...

Forno.  A traditional restaurant where you choose your meat from the display, and it's cooked for you in the wood-fired oven. 

We ate tripe, donkey and some flavourful beef and sausage in a simple tomato ragu.  Paired with a beautiful Negroamaro that Jesse and I liberated from the other ends of the table once we finished our own bottle, the meal was spectacular.  Our group really seemed to bond on this night.  That might've had something to do with the wine...

The simple pleasure of a nonna's cooking.  From learning to make fresh pasta, to lingering over an alfresco meal of beautifully executed traditional dishes with the minister of agriculture for Puglia, our last night was exquisite in its down-home feel.

 

Puglia is all heart.  There's something about the landscape, the people and the products that draws you in and inevitably makes you family.