Franciscan saint, and he and a dozen or so fellow
fishermen are dedicated to sustainable practices in
the hope of fixing the damage caused by long-term
overfishing. “We have special nets,” he says, gesturing
at the one hauled onto the deck, dotted with wriggling
fish caught at dawn in the Secche di Ugento, a
once-decimated shallow nature reserve. “They’re
designed to catch fish only once they are a certain
length so we know they have reached reproductive
age.” Today he has caught mullets, Atlantic stargazers
and sea bream, as well as a few cuttlefish, which he
sells at a shop near his moored boat. “It has taken time
to educate people that the sea won’t always give us fish
if we demand too much, so we have to limit what we
catch. But slowly, we are helping people understand.
If we want to keep doing this job, this is the only way.”N
ext stop is the sprawling town of Gallipoli.
In an otherwise nondescript apartment
block in the new quarter is the modest
headquarters of a family business that
produces a true taste of the south. In 2001 Angela
Margapoti and her parents, Fernando and Antonietta,
founded Amaro Margapoti, an artisanal liquor
company producing an amaro and other herbal
digestivi according to family recipes using Salentine
herbs. Fernando and Antonietta, retired teachers, had
made amaro for themselves for decades. “Since we had
the summers off and loved to travel, we would pack up
our roulotte [caravan] and drive off to some part of
Italy with provisions, including our bottles of amaro,”
Antonietta says, sitting in the kitchen where the family
macerates cinchona bark, cloves, cinnamon, bay leaves
and other natural flavourings with spirit. “When the
bottles were empty, we knew it was time to come back.”
Most of Amaro Margapoti’s customers are in the
north, in Rome and Milan, but Angela takes us to
meet one of her local clients, chef Andrea Capoti,
of Capitoni Coraggiosi, a harbourside restaurant in
the old quarter. Our lunch of local seafood – raw
red prawns, marinated cuttlefish and roasted octopus- is paired with a rosato made from an indigenous
grape called negroamaro, a common coupling with
fish in Salento, and finished, of course, with Amaro
Margapoti’s sweet and sour citrus flavours with
a pleasantly bitter finish.
About half an hour’s drive east of Gallipoli,
fourth-generation winemakers Paolo and Gabriele
Nutricato grow negroamaro, malvasia nera di Lecce,
primitivo and a few little-known white varieties for
their winery, Cantina Supersanum. Greeks introduced
grapes to the peninsula during the Iron Age and
the vines have flourished ever since; the region’s
high-alcohol reds have been used in blends since
the 19th century to impart colour and structure.
Cantina Supersanum is among a growing group
of small producers focused on low-yield organic and
minimal-intervention winemaking.
The brothers climb aboard and together we drive
from their cantina – a converted garage in the village
of Supersano – to their vineyards. Standing among the
vines, Paolo gestures across the road to a desolate olive
grove afflicted with Xylella fastidiosa. “In the post-war
era, subsidies were offered to farmers to pull out their
vines to plant olive trees, so you had this whole trend
towards monoculture,” he says, adding sadly, “Nature
rebelled.” With their dark ruby colour, Supersanum’s
rosato wines would pass for reds elsewhere, but they
have pleasant acidity that renders them light and
drinkable, perfectly suited to Salento’s fish and
vegetable dishes. I buy a few bottles at the cantina to
share with my friends at L’Orecchietta, a shop and
trattoria in Guagnano, about an hour’s drive north.
L’Orecchietta is named for the region’s signature
durum-wheat pasta, ear-shaped orecchiette made from
scraps of dough dragged across a wooden surface with
a knife. Lisetta Scarciglia started selling fresh pasta to
busy cooks at her shop in Guagnano in 1991 and soon
the business grew to include a full menu of dishes to
take away or enjoy at an adjacent trattoria. Now her
whole family works here. “Everyone in Guagnano used
to make pasta at home – vendors would go aroundAbove:
Orecchiette
being made at
L’Orecchietta in
Guagnano.
Opposite:
Barocco
Leccese-style
architecture in
Galatina; prawns,
cuttlefish and
crudo at Capitoni
Coraggiosi in
Gallipoli.156 GOURMET TRAVELLER