Wine of the Week - Frescobaldi Gorgona 2016

Vintage: 2016
Country: Italy
Appellation: Costa Toscana IGT
Grapes: Vermentino, Ansonica 

Text: Ronny Lau

You may ask why I bother to travel all the long way to visit the wine regions, when we can get most of the wines from the world delivered to our doorsteps. Frescobaldi Gorgona is my answer. Gorgona is the last operating isolated prison island. It can be reached from the coast of Tuscany by a 1-hour boat ride twice a year. The Gorgona Penal Institute started to plant grapes in 1999, offering the prisoners skills in vine-growing, which they will be able to use to build a new future. The result was not too promising until Marchesi de' Frescobaldi stepped in with an helping hand. The first vintage of Frescobaldi Gorgona 2012 was already celebrated as a great and unique Tuscan wine.

The 2-hectare vineyard located in an amphitheatre-shaped area that overlooks the sea, the grapes produced a white wine with wild flowers aroma and tropical fruit notes on palate, the unexpected full body and long finish are also unmistakable. If you are not as lucky as me that can have a chance to visit this spectacular island, read the special-designed label, and learn all the interesting stories from it. The production of Frescobaldi Gorgona Bianco is tiny, but there is also an even more rare Rosso produced, grab a bottle if you can.

Ronny 
Lau

Ronny Lau is the chairman of Hong Kong Wine & Spirits Writers Association, and former chairman of Greater China Wine Critics Association, and has been the co-chairman of Shanghai International Wine Challenge since 2011.His regular wine & spirits columns are published in the newspapers and magazines in Hong Kong, mainland China and Malaysia, and he is also the author of 6 wine books.

Apart from writing, he is a wine & spirits educator for University of Hong Kong and Institute for Tourism Studies in Macau.He is also the curator of innovative music and wine pairing CDs which are distributed in major Asian countries. In 2012, he was invited by Italian wine producer to take up the role as winemaker and released the first ever Super Tuscan made by Chinese.