Ostuni DOC

The wine of the white city, made across the Brindisi communes of Ostuni, Carovigno, San Vito dei Normanni and San Michele Salentino, with parts of Brindisi, Ceglie Messapica and Latiano. Recognised on 13 January 1972, it rests on three varieties grown essentially nowhere else, and it very nearly disappeared.

The Terroir The registered file places the vineyards in the landscape of the Bassa Murgia, on the most varied range of soils, terre rosse that are moderately deep to deep and only slightly stony. The climate it calls temperate and cold and partly Mediterranean, with thermal excursions — hot by day and cool by night in summer — and it records a striking spread of rainfall: from 450 mm to 1,300 mm, varying with altitude. That range inside one denomination tells you how quickly the ground rises from the coast to the Murgia plateau.

Grape Varieties Ostuni Bianco is Impigno, at between half and 85 per cent of the blend, with Francavidda making up the rest. Neither is grown in commercial quantity anywhere else in Italy. The red — strictly a light red or rosé — is Ottavianello, which is Cinsault under a local name, and Ostuni is effectively the only Italian denomination built on it. Notardomenico, Susumaniello and Negroamaro are permitted alongside.

Three Grapes Nobody Else Has Impigno gives a pale, low-alcohol, faintly bitter white with green-apple acidity; Francavidda is rounder and adds body. Ottavianello, as Cinsault does everywhere, gives light colour, red fruit and a savoury, slightly herbal finish. All three were nearly abandoned in the decades when Puglia was paid by the degree and the litre, and the DOC survived on paper while the vineyards went to Primitivo and Negroamaro. Their recovery over the last decade or so is the whole of the current story.

The Critical Take This is a denomination that spent forty years as a legal fiction and is now genuinely coming back, driven by a handful of growers who worked out that obscure local varieties are an asset rather than an embarrassment. The wines will not overwhelm anyone: Ostuni Bianco is light, saline and around 11 or 12 degrees, and the Ottavianello is a pale, chillable red. In a region defined by weight and sweetness of fruit, that is precisely what makes them worth finding.

The White City Ostuni is lime-washed white and stands on a hill above the olive groves that run to the Adriatic — some of the oldest cultivated olive trees in the world are in the plain below it. The whitewash was a plague measure that became an identity, and it is why the town is on every itinerary while its wine is on almost none.

At the Table Ostunese and Murgian cooking: raw sea urchins and oysters, orecchiette, burrata, bombette from Ceglie, and fried anchovies. Bianco at 9–11°C, Ottavianello at 13–14°C.

Benchmark Producers Amalberga, which has rebuilt plantings of Impigno and Francavidda, and Cantina Greco.