Your Guide to the Best Food and Wine in Basilicata
The food of Basilicata is simple, relying a lot of grilling and baking and making the most of the local ingredients. Until recently the area was relatively poor and as a consequence does not rely as much on meat as much as many Italian regions do. When it is served it is truly excellent. Savoury dishes are characterised by their spiciness thanks to abundant use of red peppers and local wild herbs.
Basilicata has a tasty selection of strong-flavoured cheeses. Try local specialities like sheep’s milk cacioricotta and pecorino, casiddi made from goat’s milk and caciocavallo made from Padolica cows’ milk – a breed with very ancient roots indeed.
If you like sausages then you must taste salsicce lucane which are made from pork, fennel seeds and peperoncino. By the way, ‘lucane’ comes from Basilicata’s old name – Lucania.
As with all parts of Italy, there are regional variations on pasta such as orecchiette dressed with cherry tomatoes, minuich (rolled tubes) or strangulapreuti (priest stranglers – a kind of dumpling). However pasta is not obligatory here and cooked wholewheat grains (grano) are sometimes used in place of rice or pasta and even eaten as a dessert - grano dolce.
Vegetables include the IGP (Indicazione Geografica Protetta) beans (Fagiolo di Sarconi) and red peppers (Peperone di Senise) which feature a lot in local cooking.
Typical Basilicata dishes include lamb with chicory or lamb with carrot, sausage, breadcrumbs and cheese and cooked in an earthenware pot. In you are in the Potenza region then try pasta with lu’ntruppc a kind of sausage sauce and pupazzella, small, vinegar-drenched hot peppers stuffed with parsley and anchovies
Basilicata Wine
Names of Basilicata wine may not spring immediately to mind, and the region is relatively modest producer. But what Basilicata lacks in volume it makes up for in quality, making one of the finest reds in Italy – Aglianico del Vulture (DOC). Produced from grapes grown on the slopes of the extinct Monte Vulture volcano, this robust, complex wine is sometimes referred to as the ‘Barolo of the south’. That should tell you something!
The Aglianico grape is Greek in origin and its name changed from Hellenica to Hellanica and finally Aglianico during the 15th century. Non- DOC wines made from it are popular in Basilicata, particularly around Matera.
Among white wines, the best known are Asprinio, Malvasia di Basilicata and Moscato.