The Universe Introduced Me to a Wonderful Italian Winery

Borgo Turrito
71122 Borgo Incoronata, Province of Foggia, Italy
http://www.borgoturrito.it/

I had no plans to visit Borgo Turrito. In truth, I didn’t even know it existed. If the universe had not intervened, I would never have discovered this wonderful small winery tucked away in an even smaller town in southern Italy.

I’d left Campomarino di Maruggio on the Ionian coast the previous morning with a simple plan: drive over the southern Apennines en route to Foggia.

Somewhere along the way, scrolling through Google Maps, I reached Caiaffa winery about an hour south of Foggia. I had tried calling to request a tour the day before, but couldn’t get through. When I arrived around 1:00 in the afternoon, dusty and hopeful, they told me I’d missed the last tour of the day.

Then serendipity stepped in. The staff at Caiaffa, helpful despite my poor timing, called another winery near Foggia on my behalf and then provided a brief tour of their facilities, without a tasting.   Later,  I headed on to the hotel with a pending WhatsApp message waiting from someone named Pasquale.  I slept hopeful that he might confirm a tour for the next morning.

The following day, I awoke to a confirmation message.  The drive took me through Borgo Incoronata, a village of just 600 souls.  I passed the first of two Catholic churches, both testaments to the town’s founding legend: 1,400 years ago, the Virgin Mary appeared to two men hunting in the woods and instructed them to build a church on that very spot.

Just 400 meters beyond the town’s edge, I found the entrance to Borgo Turrito.

Before I could even reach the door, Pasquale was already striding toward me, his smile broad and welcoming, greeting me as if I were an old friend rather than a stranger who’d stumbled upon his family’s winery by accident.

As we walked toward the tasting room, Pasquale shared the winery’s history in flawless English.  For more than a century, Borgo Turrito had served as the village winery.  A modest operation where winemaking knowledge passed quietly from father to son, and bottles rarely traveled beyond the town’s borders.  The wines were made for neighbors, for Sunday meals, for the rhythms of local life.

Then in 2006, everything shifted. Luca, the current generation’s winemaker, envisioned something more.

He wanted to honor the family tradition while opening it to the wider world.

It was a delicate balance: preserving the integrity of what his ancestors had built while introducing their wines to markets beyond Borgo Incoronata.

As we talked, Pasquale gestured toward a lean, sun-weathered man inspecting a row of barrels. “That’s Luca,” he said. Luca looked up, nodded a quiet greeting, and returned to his work.

He was clearly a man more comfortable with vines and fermentation tanks than conversation—the kind of winemaker whose hands tell the story his words don’t.

We headed out for the tour the vineyards.  Unfortunately, the recent rain had turned the soil to a thick mud, forcing us to admire the neat rows of vines from the perimeter.

Instead, Pasquale guided me through the production area where all the magic happened: the destemmer, the crusher, the press, and the maceration tanks. Everything sat outdoors under a broad roof—a setup that felt refreshingly unpretentious, more workshop than sterile facility.