Through Flavors, Between Ravines, Olive Groves and Sea

The journey of flavors begins in Matera, a city unlike any other in the world, one that built its identity around the extraordinary experience of life in the Sassi, and which carries that same resilience to its table. Here, bread, still baked today in the wood-fired ovens of the historic center using techniques rooted in centuries of peasant tradition, was once stamped with each family's own seal before being baked in the shared neighborhood ovens. It is served alongside simple dishes from the peasant tradition: wild greens gathered at dawn, slow-cooked legumes, and extra virgin olive oil produced from the olive groves surrounding the city, an essential ingredient that has always tied the Matera community to its own land.

Not far away, in Montescaglioso, the legacy of Benedictine monastic culture, preserved for centuries within the walls of the Abbey of San Michele Arcangelo, can still be found today in olive cultivation, a fundamental element of the local economy and table since the Middle Ages. The monks who lived in these places passed down to the community not only their faith, but also an agricultural wisdom made of grafting, pruning and harvest timing that still guides the care of the centuries-old olive groves scattered across the surrounding countryside, and that remains woven into the religious celebrations that still mark the village calendar.

Scendendo verso Ginosa, il paesaggio agricolo si fa più intenso, tra campi di grano duro dorati dal sole e uliveti secolari che accompagnano il cammino fino a Laterza, la città del pane per eccellenza. Il pane di Laterza, preparato con semole di grano duro locale, lievito madre custodito e rinnovato di generazione in generazione, e cotto nei tradizionali forni a legna alimentati con legna di ulivo, si distingue per la crosta spessa e fragrante e per una straordinaria capacità di conservarsi per giorni. Un tempo veniva prodotto in grandi quantità per soddisfare il fabbisogno delle famiglie contadine durante le lunghe settimane di lavoro nei campi lontano da casa; oggi continua a essere realizzato secondo gli stessi metodi artigianali, rappresentando un patrimonio di cultura, convivialità e identità del territorio laertino.

Continuing towards the sea, you reach Castellaneta, a town that holds many souls: that of silent film, tied to the legend of Rudolph Valentino, and an older one, agricultural and wine-growing, that remains a fundamental part of its community's identity. The centuries-old olive trees surrounding the village continue to give Puglia its olive oil, one of the finest treasures of its gastronomy, still produced today with the same patient care of past generations, while vineyards nestled on the slopes of the ravines, exposed to the sun for much of the year and cooled by the nearby sea, produce wines that tell the deep and ancient bond between this land and the vine, cultivated here since the time of Magna Graecia.

The journey ends in Castellaneta Marina, where food culture takes on a completely different character: here the Ionian Sea becomes the protagonist, with fishing that has always set the rhythm of the coast and its days, from the earliest hours of dawn to the fresh catch market. A little further north, in the Mar Piccolo of Taranto, the tradition of mussel farming dates back to Roman times, when the calm, nutrient-rich waters of the gulf proved ideal for cultivating mussels: a practice that, passed down for nearly two thousand years, still makes this gulf one of the historic centers of Puglia's maritime culture and one of the culinary symbols of the entire region.

Running Puglia by UTMB also means this: crossing a land that tells its story at the table just as much as on its trails, where every taste, from Laterza bread to the oil of its centuries-old olive trees, to the catch from the Gulf of Taranto, is a chapter of the same ancient story made of work, patience and a bond with the land, discovered one step, and one bite, at a time.