One passenger on the ferry to the island of Elba was determined to feed a seagull. The man rode, perched on the stern, arms outstretched, holding up a bit of bread, still as a statue, while the bird soared along above him, close but not too close, as if considering the proposition.

The man stayed there almost the entire hour it takes to get to Elba from Piombino on the coast of Tuscany. When the bird finally took the dare and snatched the bread, the audience — by then most of the passengers — all broke into cheers. The man bowed. The bird rode the rest of the way perched on the flagpole.

 This was our introduction to the unusual, the unexpected and the enchanting world of Elba.

 To be sure, we weren’t quite sure why we were going there. We — my sister, a friend and I — had a few extra days to spend in Italy after we’d finished a week of cooking lessons at the remote and lovely Villa Campestri in the Tuscan hills. My sister wanted to spend them by the sea, and we were trying to decide which coast to head to when Diane De Filipi, who organizes the Let’s Go Cook Italian adventure we’d just been on, suggested, “Have you ever been to Elba?”

Elba?

As with most Americans, we largely thought of Elba as the place where Napoleon Bonaparte was exiled in 1814 and from which he escaped nine months later to make his final, disastrous stand at Waterloo. After this, the British put him on the more remote island of St. Helena, where he died in 1829. Unless one was a great fan of the late, great megalomaniac, visiting one of his former prisons, visiting his former prison did not seem like the place of choice amidst all the glorious possibilities Italy offers.

It was true, the concierge at our Florence hotel agreed. “Americans don’t go to Elba, but if Napoleon found himself there today, he might not be in such a hurry to leave … Elba, you see, is a Tuscan island.”

As it turned out, De Filipi had an Italian friend,  Daniel Terranova, who was the general manager of the acclaimed Duke Hotel in Rome, until, last year, he was sought out by the new owners of a old hotel on Elba. He’d left Roma to take charge of the Hotel Desiree. Our free time coincided with the last days of the season, after which the hotel would close for the winter months. Terranova dispatched a welcoming message with appealing rate; and we booked reservations on the ferry to take us to Elba.

As we were to find out, this almost-hidden island is as rich in natural beauty as it is in fascinating history with treasures to discover, not the least of which is its wines.

Elba,  the largest of the Tuscan archipelago, lies about 12 miles off the coast in the northwest Tyrrhenian Sea. Rugged, wild and mountainous, it’s only about 17 miles long, but it has been inhabited since ancient times by Etruscans, Greeks, Romans, and subsequent centuries of Europeans, attracted both by its mineral stores and its strategic importance. During the 19th century it was a favored retreat of British aristocrats, but it was only after World War II that it began to focus on its potential visitors. Today, we learned, it’s mostly Italians and some Germans who travel to the island.  

While the island first appears to be a wooded mountain rising out of the turquoise-colored sea, a turn of the ferry into Portoferrario, the island’s chief city, shows a skyline dominated by its facade of historic fortresses, which include the Medicean fortress built by Florence’s first Grand Duke Cosimo I, in the 16th century, as a bulwark against the Turks.

Our destination wasn’t this lively city where narrow ancient streets combine with modern-day Coop markets. The Hotel Desiree was deeper into the island, from what we could ascertain, in a village called Procchio.

At this point, our GPS system appears to suffer a mental breakdown and directed us to “turn left at the 20th of September.” No matter what we did — turn it off, reprogram it — everything except pitch it out the window and run over it, although this was a temptation — it could only gibber about the 20th of September. We were on our own. The road out of town began to climb, it wound about like a tangle of yarn. I was driving, hoping none of the passengers would notice I was trying not to gibber myself. The roads, however winding, were well marked. One turn brought us back into a view of the sea, possibly several thousand feet directly below us, but never mind that. A few more turns and we were at the Hotel Desiree.

This hotel, built in the 1950s, has an interesting Napoleonic connection. It was named, apparently, for Desiree Clary, a woman who was engaged to Bonaparte before he met Josephine. Although she was dumped by Napoleon, she went on to marry one of his generals, Jean Baptist Bernadotte, who later was asked by the Swedes to be their king; so the daughter of a silk merchant from Marseilles, although she never became the empress of the French, ended up the queen of Sweden. According to some stories, our host, Daniel Terranova, told us, this intriguing woman had a villa near where the hotel is today.

The hotel is on its own secluded beach, idyllic and private, on lush, flowering grounds that also hold a large pool, bocce courts and a children’s play area. Our rooms looked directly down on the sea, and so did the terrace where breakfast is served, and where we had our first taste of Elba wine.

Grapes have been cultivated on Elba for centuries, we learned. The soils are stony and don’t retain water, so the yield is low.

We tried an Elba white. These are made primarily from Tuscan trebbiano grapes blended with two other island varietal, ansonica and vermentinio. It was cold, crisp and minerally, a wine to drink while sitting on an island watching the waves of that extraordinary, vivid, clear, blue sea. It tasted, in short, like Elba.

The festival of grapes

 The following morning, on the advice of Terranova, we set out to explore the island, our destination being the mountain village of Capoliveri. “This is a town that resisted Napoleon,” Terranova told us. “Also you happen to be here for their festival of the grapes.”

The town, perched above the sea, dates to Roman times. The name derives either from Caput liberum (freedom hill) or Caput Liberi, the latter being a god associated with Bacchus. Either way, the guidebook said, “The locals are noted for their fierce independence.” When Buonaparte, technically sent to Elba as governor, attempted to collect taxes, “opposed to any oppressive yoke, including Napoleon, they were willing to take up arms against the emperor, who exasperated at such stubbornness, was about to give the order to bomb the town when the disaster was averted by the extraordinary diplomatic skills of a local beauty sent to placate him.”

On the way there, we got our first glimpse of wine-tasting, Elba style: a wine barrel set by the side of the road to beckon a traveler to stop and have a taste. The local olive oil is also sold this way. Mindful of those twisting roads, we waited to try the wines until we arrived in Capoliveri.

We were early and so we watched the residents’ preparations for the festival. They were setting up tables in the Plaza Matteotti, dedicated to the Socialist leader murdered by Mussolini’s Fascists, and decking the streets with fresh cut branches. We got a taste, too, of the “Elba red,” a robust, ruby-colored wine that is “at least 60 percent sangiovese grapes and up to 40 percent other authorized grapes.”

Elba also produces a rosé and a muscat, “known as the wine of meditation,” a spumante, and an “Elba aleatico meant to be drunk with fruit tarts, cream- based sweets, berries and the traditional ‘schiaccia briaca.’

The irresistible appeal of the festival, however, was that feeling that we had stumbled onto something real — not an event contrived by the visitors’ bureau to attract tourists, but something that would be part of the tradition and landscape, whether we were there or not.

We had one more stop we wanted to make before we left the island: a visit to Napoleon’s home in exile, the Palazzina dei Mulini, set amid the fortresses of Portoferrario. Touring the rooms, with the Empire furnishings, the portraits of the emperor’s former glories, and his books, it did not take much imagination to feel the brooding presence of an emperor plotting his come-back.

Another guidebook noted, “It is said Napoleon took great pleasure in viticulture during his exile” — but not enough.

For the rest of us, however, not intent of ruling the world, this tiny island offers a beckoning destination. Matchless Tuscan hospitality — and food and wine — is set amid spectacular scenery, and yet, most rare of all was that sense that we’d found a place that not everyone else knew about — yet. And we got there without a GPS.

 I’ll bet as Napoleon sat on St. Helena, he was sorry he’d left Elba.