Jailed Italian criminals produce vintage wine

ROME — A group of inmates on a remote prison island off the coast of Italy have started producing their own wine, making them perhaps the country’s most unlikely vintners.

The prisoners are incarcerated on the tiny island of Gorgona, the farthest flung speck of the Tuscan archipelago. The island has been a penal colony since 1869.

The inmates planted a vineyard recently and have now produced 2,700 bottles of white wine, a blend of Vermentino and Ansonica grapes.

They will not be allowed to sample it themselves — instead it will go on sale to restaurants and wine bars around Italy, starting next week.

The 50 prisoners on the island, which is covered in Mediterranean scrub, pine trees and holm oak forest, have been given wine-producing tips by the Frescobaldis, one of Italy’s oldest and most respected winemaking families.

The aristocratic Tuscan dynasty has been producing wine at their estates for seven centuries and count among their past customers the court of Henry VIII, several popes and the artist Donatello.

A Frescobaldi of the 13th century was friends with Dante. The company is the first to take part in a scheme, launched last year, in which businesses are invited to invest in the island and to give prisoners skills and training that will help them get jobs once they are released.