GPrison wine is not something you would like to try. According to the popular definition, this is a brew that prisoners secretly ferment in a plastic bag or the like with whatever fermentable material they can scrape together. Because officially they are strictly forbidden to consume alcohol. This also applies to the Tuscan prison island of Gorgona. However, the inmates here not only pull the right grapes for the wine, but also press it under the supervision of Frescobaldi, one of the most important wineries in the region. But they are not allowed to drink the result. The few bottles are sold worldwide in homeopathic doses, the entire United States, for example, should get just four boxes.
What’s the point? Anyone who gets the chance to cross the rough sea for an hour from Livorno to one of the last prison islands in Europe has enough time to think. The island becomes visible quite early, dark and steep, it juts out of the Tyrrhenian Sea. Why should wine be made there under the most difficult conditions? The question can only be answered on the spot and only if the authorities allow it. The permits are issued sparingly, but there are organizers such as Toscana Trekking who take care of it. Nevertheless, you are never alone from the moment you arrive: the Polizia Penitenziaria not only checks the identity of the visitors when they leave the ship, but does not let them out of their sight during the entire stay.
Italy as it used to be
Some of the vines have been trained individually on small terraces on the side of the island that faces the mainland. You can hardly manage these mechanically, but that would not be worthwhile with the two and a half hectares anyway. Manpower is also not the problem. In contrast to some of the steep parcels on the Moselle or Middle Rhine, around seventy men are scrambling to be sent into the vineyard. This willingness to farm is one of the conditions for qualifying for island detention in a mainland prison. On this sunny day, some prisoners are cutting Vermentino grapes and packing them in green boxes. The guards’ jeeps are also there, although it is difficult to escape from the island. Even those who dare to swim thirty-four kilometers through the lively swell would be fished out of the water again in this lengthy undertaking and – possibly worse – never brought back. Instead, it would mean returning to the normal mainland prison, in which you can only see the sky when walking in the courtyard. You’d rather stay where you are.
But Gorgona is not only attractive from this relative point of view. Even the visitor without deprivation of liberty can enjoy this other, in a strange way, ideal world. That sounds quite paradoxical. But because the smallest elevation in the Tuscan Archipelago serves almost exclusively as a prison, you are in an environment that feels like an Italy that may have existed in the past: almost no car traffic, heavenly peace, good air, few colorful Houses, lots of clean nature and, above all, no crowds. Even the small beach with the two palm frond parasols is empty. The prisoners are not allowed to go swimming, the police officers are on duty. Otherwise there should only be two women, one older, the other a little less old, who live here for at least six months. Those who come from the two and a quarter square kilometers small island are allowed to stay. Most of them, however, have left and will only stop by in the summer at best. You can’t just pull it here.
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