“Inheriting this oil mill is like inheriting the colour of your eyes, the sound of your family’s laughter. It was never a choice, it’s just who we are.” — Lorella, 4th generation olive oil maker

The Labianca family has been pressing oil in Puglia since the 1920s. Four generations in, Lorella and Daniele are still doing it the old way — while everyone around them modernised, they didn’t blink. That stubbornness is exactly why I work with them. We share the same obsession: make people understand what real olive oil tastes like, where it comes from, who made it. We’ve run masterclasses together, taken people to Trinitapoli together. That town deserves to be discovered. So does this oil.

“My father started this cooperative with a simple idea: we grow together, we decide together, we succeed together. That hasn’t changed.” — Antonio, carrying on his father Savino’s vision

Casaltrinità was founded in 1965 in the heart of Puglia, not as a winery, but as a collective. Local farmers coming together to grow, decide, and succeed as one. Sixty years later, Antonio is still running it that way. Tommaso, their administrator, went to school with my father. He watched me grow up. When I drink their Nero di Troia, the grape of this land, the grape of Federico II and Castel del Monte, I’m not tasting wine. I’m tasting home.

“Our products give back moments of forgotten taste.” — Luigi Di Tuccio, Antica Enotria

The Di Tuccio family started farming organically in 1993, long before it was fashionable. At their Masseria Contessa Staffa, everything comes from their own fields. Luigi and Valentina keep it alive the same way it started: harvested in the morning, in the jar by afternoon. That’s not a marketing claim, that’s just how they’ve always done it. Every time we go to Puglia, this is exactly the kind of place we seek out, people who never compromised, not once.

“Each bottle is a love letter to the sweetest parts of life — beauty, pleasure, and being true to who we are.” — Maria Faretra, winemaker

Maria is rewriting history in the wine world of Puglia. In a region where winemaking has always been the domain of old men, she leads an all-female team with a vision that is modern, artistic, and completely her own. A philosophy of subtraction, never adding anything that could overshadow the grape or the land. Pure Malbec in Puglia. Labels that look like nothing else on the shelf, full of women, feminism, freedom, self-expression. She’s fighting the old school mentality and winning.

“We grow wine on our grandfather’s land, with our father’s hands, for moments worth remembering.” — Silvia & Elisa, Le Fiole

Silvia and I went to the same university and ended up working at the same company. Years later our paths crossed again through wine — which tells you everything about both of us. Le Fiole is the feminine side of Oltrepo’ Pavese: two sisters who went back to their grandfather’s land and turned family memory into a winery. Pinot Noir and Pinot Grigio, grown on the same 12 hectares their father still tends today. Elegant, personal, unmistakably from this land.

“The stones and soil of these mountains are alive. You find them in every glass.” — Francesco De Vigili, winemaker

Francesco took a family winery with roots going back to the 19th century and turned it into something completely his own, a cellar in the Piana Rotaliana, among the most beautiful vineyard landscapes in Europe. Every time I’m there I’m speechless. He didn’t stop at wine: the vineyard is also an open-air museum, home to the works of sculptor Paolo Colombini. Art, stone, mountains, wine, all part of the same vision. That’s what happens when someone takes tradition and refuses to just maintain it.

“When I saved those old Primitivo vines, I had no idea at first how to make wine. But those trees needed to be saved.” — Andrea Cavone, aTerra

Andrea is a lawyer who splits his time between London and Puglia, we both know what it means to leave your land and build something far from home. What brought him back was an old Primitivo vineyard about to be uprooted. He saved it first, learned winemaking after. That stubbornness produced something rare: a modern Primitivo, fresh and clean, organic from day one, no compromises on anything. aTerra is what happens when someone follows instinct over experience. It worked.