How One Cheesemaker Revived Tuscany's Forgotten 'Goat Island'

A droplet of warm whey bounces off Alessio Peroni’s mud-spattered white Crocs as he casually confesses: “I didn’t know Capraia existed until four months ago.” The 28-year-old, a waiter-turned-dairy producer from Rome, is draining three kilograms of ricotta inside the small laboratory of Azienda Agricola Il Saracello, the only cheese producer on the island. “When my professor told me about this job, I first accepted, then looked the place up on the map,” he says, referring to the isle of around 150 residents.

A few hours earlier, I had made the 40-mile crossing from the port of Livorno, a journey just shy of three hours by ferry. Capraia is one of seven islands in the Tuscan Archipelago and the only one of volcanic origin. Its cliffs of red and charcoal-grey rock rise abruptly from the Tyrrhenian Sea, giving it a craggy character unlike any of its neighbours: Elba, Italy’s third-largest island, to the south east; Gorgona, Europe’s last-remaining island prison, to the north; and to the west, the French outpost of Corsica.

Despite the quirks of its geology, Capraia remains richly Mediterranean. Much of it is cloaked in a maquis of myrtle, wild mint and helichrysum, a plant with a warm, curry-like aroma widely used in Capraiese cuisine. Part of the Tuscan Archipelago National Park, the island is crisscrossed with hiking trails, including one that passes by a number of palmenti (ancient stone vats used to make wine), hinting at its strong agricultural roots.

The walk inland from the port takes visitors past stone houses draped in magenta bougainvillea and coils of weathered fishing rope, with the occasional 1980s Fiat Panda 4WD coughing its way through narrow cobbled streets. It’s peaceful, soundtracked by birdsong, cicadas and rumbling farm trucks. In the square, ageing locals sit beneath umbrellas of pine as the Church of San Nicola’s timeworn bell strikes the half hour. It’s obvious that everybody knows everybody here; even a short stay in a cafe is enough to see familiar faces pass twice.

It’s a sort of peace that brings its own challenges. Many families have moved to the mainland in search of work and education — the local school has just 12 pupils. As for travellers, they’re mostly Italian and come over in the summer, with winters bringing further isolation as storms cut the island off. Yet, a small community of determined artisanal producers are betting on Capraia’s revival.

“People thought I was crazy when I decided to bring goats to this island,” says 54-year-old Massimiliano Della Rosa, Il Saracello’s founder. In 2016, the white-haired entrepreneur, a born-and-raised Capraiese, introduced 100 camosciata delle Alpi goats from Piedmont after the island’s native breed had become extinct. His flock — kept on the slopes by shepherd Fulvio Coppini — adapts well to the Mediterranean climate, he tells me, keeping a watchful eye on Alessio. But producing cheese 40 miles from the nearest mainland port is no easy feat. “It’s difficult to convince young people to stay or move here.”

For his part, Alessio seems to be enjoying his laid-back way of life. “The capital was too loud,” he says, “I found peace here.” As the sole cheesemaker at Il Saracello, he makes around 15kg of cheese every day: fresh ricotta; primosale, young and semi-soft; and mursa di Capraia. The produce is mostly sold to island businesses and in the cheesemonger by the port, yet Il Saracello’s mursa won Gold at the 2019 World Cheese Awards.

Massimiliano beams as he shows me around a cold room where stacks of pungent cheese wheels hijack my nostrils. When I try a bite of the prize-winning mursa, it’s unmistakably Capraiese: rich, creamy goat’s cheese, giving way to the warm aroma of the helichrysum, grazed on by the animals that roam the island’s volcanic hills.

Wine notes

Leaving Il Saracello, I stroll back down to the port, where a small gift shop run by Federico Ferrarini sells more of the island’s small-batch produce. There’s honey from Federico’s wife, Roberta Bonomo, who revived her father-in-law’s small apiary after he died in 2015. At her estate, San Rocco in Capraia’s inland hills, she works 12 hours a day to produce a range of honeys, as well as salt blended with edible wildflowers. Next to her jars are small bags of capers, hand-harvested by husband-and-wife team Daniele Molinari and Angela Malaguti of Azienda Agricola La Sorgente. The couple moved to Capraia from Modena in Emilia-Romagna and stayed put, drawn by the island’s close-knit community.

The next day, I head to the slopes of Monte Castello — the island’s highest peak — to meet a few of the wine producers working these once-abandoned agricultural lands. The trail we drive up is little more than a narrow ribbon of dust and rocks carved into the mountainside. We buck and jerk our way towards Azienda Agricola La Mursa, a four-acre vineyard run by 35-year-old Francesco Cerri, a thick-bearded, third-generation Capraiese.

“I started growing grapes 10 years ago,” he says. “The microclimate of Capraia — where summers are short and warm, and winters wet and windy — is well suited to delicate grape varieties.” Francesco produces extremely limited quantities of wines such as Sulàna, a slightly spicy red made from grenache grapes, which he sells online and directly from the vineyard. We’re grappling through the vines when I ask him about the large tattoo on his arm.

“It’s of the goddess Venus,” he says proudly. “Legend has it that when she rose from the glittering waters of the Tyrrhenian Sea, her necklace snapped and dropped seven pearls into the ocean, creating the seven islands of the Tuscan Archipelago.”

When I query if there’s competition between him and the island’s few other winemakers, the answer is a firm no. Producers here work together, Francesco says, helping each other with everything from ordering bottles to borrowing barrels. One of them is Alice Bollani, who, when not working in sales and marketing or helping at a local cafe by the port, tends to the 14-acre Azienda Vitivinicola La Piana, set within Capraia’s former penal colony — farmed by prisoners until its closure in 1986 — high up in the hills.

We meet at Francesco’s vineyard and she drives me up to her winery, which still bears remnants of its criminal past, with cells fronted by rusting bars. The view from up here stretches across trees and grape terraces to the sapphire-blue sea, speckled only by a small cluster of circular fish farms. Inside her factory, with the help of three staff, she produces around 17,000 bottles of red, white and rosé wines a year. As we look at the equipment inside, she pops the cork on one bottle and pours me a glass of her favourite: the copper-hued Rosa della Piana 2025. She runs wine-tasting sessions from the factory, but, with investment from the government, she wants to transform the building into a bigger and more successful agrotourism experience for tourists.

I can’t help but ask why, on top of her two jobs, she decided to take on another one. Being this isolated has forced Capraia’s locals to be resilient and versatile, she tells me — to have multiple jobs to preserve, and celebrate, the island’s deep agricultural heritage. “You can’t be normal here,” Alice says. “If you have normal ideas or want to do normal things, you shouldn’t be in Capraia.” Thinking back to locals like Alessio, who signed his contract before he even knew where Capraia was, it feels as though she might be right.

Three Restaurants to Try on the Island

1. Il Carabottino

There’s no menu at this outdoor seafood restaurant, where diners eat fresh-caught fish under pine trees right next to Capraia’s 16th-century fort. What you’re served depends on the catch of the day, but a fixed price gets you a bottle of wine, dishes like cuttlefish pâté and pennette pasta with barracuda, as well as desserts, coffee and liqueur.

2. Agriturismo Valle di Portovecchio

A husband-and-wife duo run this stone farmhouse in the former penal colony of Porto Vecchio, at the top of a narrow, winding road above the port, where they produce their own honey, liqueurs and jams. Dinner is served as a fixed menu — a succession of seasonal appetisers, two main courses, wine and dessert. Be sure to book in advance.

3. Arura

Just steps from the harbour, family-run Arura champions the island’s local ingredients. Drinks include a blonde beer infused with fragrant helichrysum, while the menu features dishes such as lasagne made with mouflon (wild sheep introduced to the island decades ago). There’s also pinsa, an oval Roman flatbread topped with grilled vegetables, and nepitella, an aromatic herb that’s part of the mint family and widely used in Tuscan cooking.