The island of Gorgona is Italy’s Alcatraz. The jail hosts bank robbers, drug traffickers and assassins, including the hitman hired to shoot fashion boss Maurizio Gucci. 

Here’s what happened when the maximum security unit turned into an experimental vineyard. It’s quite a story. 

Gorgona makes an Edenic prison. Sited midway between Corsica and the chi-chi resort of Forte dei Marmi, the island glistens like an emerald on a Tiffany-tinted Tyrrhenian Sea. Unlike Alcatraz, escape is impossible. Since the jail’s inception in 1869 not one inmate has been sprung. 

Not that felons would crave freedom. Nor a return to mafia hierarchy and gangland politics. Gorgona is so splendidly isolated that it was once a monastic retreat scented by juniper, myrtle and mastic trees. Jailbirds are also encouraged to tend a small vegetable garden, an olive grove and a chicken coop. 

A small crop of Vermentino and Ansonica vines also clings to the 2km2 island. The latter grape was probably planted by a previous inmate. It’s a tough-as-nails Sicilian variety that can handle Gorgona's searing summers, which arrive three weeks before mainland Italy. 

In 2012 the prison governor had a ‘what if’ moment. A hundred emails were sent to winemakers across Italy to ask if they could help inmates produce an island vintage, while teaching them valuable skills in the process. 

Only one responded. That man happened to be Marquis Lamberto Frescobaldi, a 30th generation winemaker from a noble Florentine family with ties to British royalty and Italian aristocracy. 

The Marquis rode a speedboat 90-minutes into the Tyrrhenian Sea to find out more. On Europe’s last surviving island penitentiary Frescobaldi agreed to train 79 of the country’s toughest inmates in organic viticulture and wine production.  

Amazingly, the moonshot worked. Rural toil gave prisoners a sense of pride. As the Marquis explained to the FT: “(Their children) don’t say ‘My father’s in prison’, they say, ‘My father makes wine for Frescobaldi’”. The rate of recidivism for released prisoners dropped to 20%. This compares with an 80% reoffending rate at Italy’s overcrowded mainland prisons. 

The wine wasn’t bad either. In return for his investment, Frescobaldi produces over 4,000 bottles of rich, flinty white. This unique tipple retails for $100 and can be found in Michelin three-star restaurants. 

A newer red named Gorgona Rosso is made with Vermentino Nero, a late-ripening fireball that dances like a Merlot on amphetamines. Prisons and alcohol. That’s quite a pairing. 

Tristan is a Tonic Magazine contributor

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