Puglia Food & Wine Experiences
Puglia makes roughly half of Italy’s olive oil, all of its burrata worth the name, the orecchiette that grandmothers still roll in the street in Bari, and big sun-soaked reds from Primitivo and Negroamaro. This is our Puglia hub. Below are the top-rated food and wine experiences in the region, then our detailed pages: cooking classes, Bari, Lecce, wine tours and olive oil tastings.
Top-rated food and wine experiences in Puglia
Why Puglia for food? Because it is Italy’s farm: olive groves to the horizon, masserie that cook what they grow, and a pasta tradition made by hand in doorways.
Ways in: a cooking class for orecchiette at a masseria or in Bari Vecchia; Bari for street food and the pasta ladies; Lecce for pasticciotto and Salento; wine tours for Primitivo and Negroamaro; olive oil tastings among thousand-year-old trees.
What to eat: orecchiette con cime di rapa, focaccia barese, burrata from Andria, taralli, panzerotti, raw seafood in Bari, bombette in the Valle d’Itria, pasticciotto in Lecce, and a glass of Primitivo di Manduria.
How the region works for a food trip
Bari is the gateway: the airport, the trains, and Bari Vecchia, where orecchiette are made and sold in the street. The Valle d’Itria, an hour south, is trulli country: Alberobello, a UNESCO site since 1996, Locorotondo, Cisternino and Ostuni, with masserie, the fortified farms, hosting cooking classes and olive oil tastings. Polignano a Mare and Monopoli on the coast are 15 to 25 minutes from Bari by train and have pasta classes and boat-and-aperitivo trips. Lecce, the baroque capital of the Salento, is an hour and a half from Bari by train and is the base for the deep south and its wines.
The food
Orecchiette, “little ears”, are pressed from semolina dough with a knife and a thumb and served with cime di rapa, turnip tops, and anchovy. Burrata was invented in Andria in the 1920s. Focaccia barese has tomatoes and olives pressed into an oily dough. Taralli are the snack, panzerotti the fried street food, and the Valle d’Itria grills bombette, pork rolls stuffed with cheese, in butcher shops after dark. Lecce has the pasticciotto, a custard pastry from 1745.
Wine and oil
Primitivo di Manduria, a DOC since 1974, is the ripe, high-alcohol red of the south; Negroamaro leads Salice Salentino, a DOC since 1976, and makes the region’s rosato. The olive groves are the landscape: monumental trees around Ostuni and Fasano, underground mills cut into the rock, and roughly half of Italy’s oil in a normal year, though the Xylella bacterium has killed millions of trees in the Salento since 2013.
When to come
May to June and September to October are ideal; July and August are hot and the coast is full. The olive harvest and pressing run October to December and the mills are open then; the grape harvest is late August into September. Spring brings fava beans and wild greens, the classic pairing for orecchiette.
Frequently asked questions
Where should I base myself in Puglia for food?
Bari for two nights and the Valle d’Itria for two, with Lecce if you have a week. A car helps beyond the Bari to Lecce train line.
Are the orecchiette in Bari Vecchia real?
Mostly, but not always; in 2025 prosecutors investigated industrial pasta sold as handmade on the famous street. A cooking class where you make them yourself is the sure thing.
What is a masseria?
A fortified farm estate, often centuries old, now frequently a farmhouse hotel or restaurant; many host cooking classes and oil tastings.
Read next: Orecchiette in Puglia: the pasta, the street and the class
How we choose
We list only experiences with a strong rating over a meaningful number of reviews and free cancellation where available, and we favour small-group and family-run hosts. FindEatLocal earns a commission when you book through GetYourGuide or Viator links on this page; it doesn’t change the price you pay. More about how we choose.