Puglia's charms are many: Italy's overlooked 'heel' has a wealth of food, wine and unique architecture

Like many opinionated people who love to travel, I can be dead wrong about a place.

I sure was about Italy's southern region of Puglia. A one-day stay as a teen backpacking around Europe left me thinking, "Meh." But after several Italian friends who'd vacationed there gushed about its charms, I vowed to give it another try.

It helped that this year my wife, son and I — who have visited Venice three years in a row — were eager for new Italian experiences during his spring break. If we could find them without selfie-stick-wielding tourists, even better. Puglia, we'd been told, would do the job.

After nearly a week in Puglia (pronounced POOL-ya), I've more than changed my mind. I'm in love with the place.

Determined to give the region a more competent second look, I sought trip-planning advice from experts on southern Italy at Southern Visions Travel. Although Puglia's beaches are renowned, March weather would make for a chilly dip, so they suggested an itinerary highlighting the area's famed foods and funky architecture.

Bordered by the Ionian and Adriatic seas, Puglia forms the "heel" of Italy's boot, which is an apt metaphor for how it's long been regarded by fellow countrymen and countless invaders.

Or, as Puglia native Antonello Losito, the former pro cyclist who founded Southern Visions, would later tell me: "This is not a place for most first-time visitors to Italy. This is for more-sophisticated travellers."

Fair enough, though less than an hour after arriving by plane from Milan in Brindisi, on the Adriatic coast, I'm kicking myself for not coming back sooner. Eager to taste Puglia's legendary food and wine, we've driven our rental car south from the airport straight to winery Masseria Li Veli.

A cartoonishly cute pair of basset hounds greets us outside a centuries-old farmhouse, followed by stylish and young winery owners Edoardo and Alessia Falvo, who invite us inside for what will be the first of many of the best meals we've eaten in Italy.

Plates heaping with tender fried artichokes and zucchini, followed by impossibly fresh burrata, ricotta and mozzarella, arrive one after the other. So good is the homemade orecchiette pasta in a slightly bitter sauce of rapini that I go for a second helping. Even in multi-course-crazy Italy, the length and variety of this prandial parade stand out. And, as we soon happily discover, it's apparently just how meals are done here in Puglia.

Hotter days and cooler nights in Puglia favour local wine-grape varietals such as negroamaro and primitivo. Though back in the States I'd often associated these grapes with inky, tooth-staining wines, this same fruit in the hands of folks such as Edoardo and Alessia can, as I discover at first sip, become fresh and crisp rosés.

As with most regions in Italy, Puglia is a riot of local grape types, often known only by dialect names. Among my favourites of the wines we taste at lunch is a zingy white made from verdeca grapes. "We found these grapes totally by chance in Lorenzo Pesce/The Washington Post Laris Karklis/The Washington Post Lorenzo Pesce/The Washington Post Gabriel Bouys/AFP/Getty Images Lorenzo Pesce/The Washington Post

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