Puglia day two – wild garlic, wilder driving
Ben on Wednesday 21 July
Day two in Puglia dawns still and very hot. The intrepid journalists climb aboard Beniamino d’Agostino’s 4×4 for a trip across the vineyards. How refreshing to see an off road vehicle actually go off road. The vineyards in Gravina are fascinating. A multitude of different soil types – clay, limestone, yield wildly different results. Botromagno have carefully matched soil type to grape and much replanting has taken place over the past 20 years. Many of the vineyards smell of wild garlic, which is widespread. Beniamino takes us up to the vineyard which his mother used to tend in the days of the Gravina Co-op, which was their first acquisition, and which is still planted in the old ‘alberello’ (little tree) style. 
From this high vineyard we can see across to Basilicata, whose mountains are responsible for the cooling breezes which enable the vines to flourish. It is still a shock to see lush green vineyards laid out here and there amongst the sandy coloured wheat fields. We stop for a fortifying coffee with a dazzling view across to the old (very old) town of Gravina. 
After retasting the Botromagno range at their new, state of the art winery (where once again the minerally Greco-based whites are the stars), we take to the highways of Puglia again. Once we hit the coastal autostrada from Bari to Brindisi things start to get interesting. These are two lanes each way with a solid concrete barrier in the middle. ‘Merging’ is a fairly abstract term in southern Italy. Some newcomers to the motorway sit nervously in the joining lane before pulling out, others charge up the ramp and expect any traffic in the slow lane to make way. There is no way of predicting what drivers will do! Just outside Brindisi a truck on the motorway and a small Fiat joining it collide side on about 50 metres in front of us. Our trusty Lancia swerves and bumps over bits of wing mirror and door handle – luckily nothing more substantial. And so the road continues – around 2 hours of low-level fear and concentrating, all the way to Lecce. Lecce is worth the drive. We are staying in a beautiful restored townhouse, Suite 68 with simple but striking rooms. (Tim tweets that it is ‘one of the nicest boutique hotels I have ever stayed in’). 
The old town is built from famous Lecce sandstone and is dazzling (literally!). Beautiful courtyards along every narrow alley. Francesca from Candido is our guide, and tells us of the great competition between the city’s two major churches, the Duomo and the Basilica Santa Croce. The former is elegant, with just enough decoration to make it interesting. The latter is like an overblown wedding cake. No contest in my view! In the evening Francesca drives us down to the port of Otranto, with imposing castle and slightly tacky touristy streets. We eat in style at Pecato di Vino – lots of Candido wines to accompany some spellbinding seafood.