We travel to Gragnano, a hilltop town outside Naples where the mountain wind, sea air and light conspire to create conditions unlike anywhere else on earth. And where Pastificio Di Martino has been making Pasta di Gragnano IGP for over a century.

Giuseppe Di Martino walks us through 260 handcrafted shapes, each one designed not for beauty alone but for the precise company it will keep on the plate. He speaks about 100 percent Italian wheat, bronze dies and slow drying at low temperature, and about a family philosophy as old as the town itself: pasta will never make you rich, but it will never let you go hungry.

From a landmark collaboration with Dolce & Gabbana that gave rise to the Devozione restaurant in New York, to the pastificio's sponsorship of the San Carlo opera house in Naples, Giuseppe draws a straight line from pasta to Puccini, and traces how this most Italian of arts travelled with emigrants to every corner of the world.

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We arrive at Masseria Potenti near Manduria, a 16th-century fortified farmhouse in the heart of Puglia, where a family's dream of sharing their corner of southern Italy has quietly grown into one of the region's most beloved destinations.

Maria Grazia Di Lauro and her daughter Chiara Tommasino tell us how a holiday home became an agriturismo by accident, shaped entirely by the guests who loved it first. And they reveal what comes next: a monastery in Nardò, six years in the making, where the ancient philosophy of healing through craft, connection and slowness is being brought back to life.

It is a story about olive oil, whitewashed walls and the particular kind of hospitality that only happens when a family opens its home and never quite closes the door.

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We sit down with Albiera Antinori, at the Forum della Cucina Italiana in Manduria, where the 26th generation of Italy's most storied winemaking family talks dynasty, disruption and the long view.

She tells us how Tignanello broke every rule of late-1960s Chianti Classico, why wine and food are inseparable in Italian culture, and what a 27th generation is already bringing to one of the world's great wine estates.

Six hundred years in, the direction has never been clearer.

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