Gorgona: Criminal rehabilition through wine production

A prisoner in a penal colony, holds a bottle of Gorgona wine by Frescobaldi's vineyard . Picture: Reuters

And now the tiny Mediterranean island of Gorgona, off Tuscany, and home to a penal colony since 1869, is helping rehabilitate some of Italy’s most infamous criminals through production of a top quality wine from its own vineyard and other agricultural projects.

The island has just produced 2,700 bottles of a crisp white wine – labelled Gorgona – with the help of a 700-year-old Italian wine dynasty. Among the buyers is a Michelin three-star restaurant in Florence.

Gorgona’s 40 inmates, many convicted of murder, including a notorious contract killing, also help produce pork, vegetables, chickens, olive oil and cheese.

There is a waiting list for entry to the island, a highly desirable location compared with most of Italy’s overcrowded jails. Unlike them, Gorgona is at about half its capacity.

“When I come up here in the morning I am struck by the peace. The time does not weigh on you. It is a different mentality here,” said one of them, Brian Baldissin, a tattooed 30-year-old from the northern Veneto region, whose older brother is also in the jail.

His companion, Francesco Papa, also 30 and from Sicily, agreed: “It is different here. You are outside and free. I drive a tractor. I work. You seem a normal person. Elsewhere you are inside for 23 hours a day.”

Escape from Gorgona, 23 miles off the Tuscan port of Livorno, is considered impossible although one prisoner did disappear never to be found.

Prisoners are only locked up at night.

“When I arrived and got off the launch, the first thing I did was to look for a guard. Then they said to me: ‘Off you go’. I was staggered,” said Umberto Prinzi, 41, a murderer serving 22 years.

Both prisoners and guards back the rehabilitation regime and say it should be used elsewhere.

“What does prison do? A prison like Gorgona can improve you. But other institutions where you are closed 22 hours in a cell just make you bad, that’s it,” says Prinzi. “The screams of desperation there will stay in your head forever.”

Higher up the island from the vineyard, Sicilian Benedetto Ceraulo, 55, works among racks of ewe’s milk and cow’s milk cheeses.

He was convicted in 1998 of gunning down Maurizio Gucci, last member of the original family to control the fashion empire, on the orders of his former wife. Ceraulo, who insists he is innocent, won a transfer to Gorgona a year ago. “It’s a good life here. You are free. You have the chance to learn,” he said.

The vines on Gorgona were first planted in 1999 but later abandoned. They were cleaned up and restored after 2009 by a now-released Sicilian inmate who had his own vineyard at home, helped by Prinzi and Papa.

The Marchesi de’Frescobaldi wine dynasty came on the scene in summer 2012 after prison authorities asked local companies to invest in the programme. The firm sent experts to improve the care and picking of the vines, harvesting the same year.

The Frescobaldis pay a wage to the convict workers and then sell the wine.

Asked what he felt when he took his first sip of the wine, the Marchesi replied: “It brought a tear to my eye. It made me reflect on all the people on this island that don’t have the chance I have to come and go.”