Europe only has one leper colony – it is located alongside the marshlands at Tichilesti on the Danube Delta in Romania.

Even today there are no street signs leading there – it’s not on any maps and most people who live more than a few kilometres away still won’t be able to tell you how to find it.

That is because for decades Communist officials denied its existence – claiming leprosy was a western condition.

Whenever anyone was discovered suffering from leprosy they were seized by the Securitatea – the feared secret police – and stripped of their property and their rights. Many were held in isolation wards where they were subjected to experiments like human guinea pigs. Some had pieces of flesh cut away – others were injected with various chemicals under the pretence of treatment. Eventually they all ended up at Tichilesti where conditions were miserable. These outcasts were separated from friends and family and only had each other.

The Tichilesti colony was founded in 1928 when 200 lepers were relocated from another colony run by monks at Largeanca, also on the Danube Delta – but Communist dictator Nicolae Ceausescu’s regime had it erased from maps as there was no place for such imperfection in his Marxist society – an affliction of the decadent west to be hidden from public view.

Even before Communism leprosy, with its associated deformities, was seen as a “divine punishment” and the touch of those cursed with the disease capable of contaminating others, justification enough for the possible removal of those infected from their communities. Under the Communist regime, the process of isolation was stepped up as authorities adopted a policy of denial that leprosy even existed.

Lepers were forbidden to use money in case coins and notes they handled spread the disease. Their old homes were sealed off, possessions burnt, and families and friends who were left behind forced to submit to regular degrading medical tests for signs of contamination.

This wine is a tribute to the work of Cristache Tatulea, the unofficial mayor of Tichilesti’s lepers. As one of the more fortunate lepers – although he had lost much of the feeling in his hands and feet due to the disease – he was still in possession of all his limbs and able-bodied.

With a single-minded determination he led the community’s lepers to build themselves a proper community and became their official mayor and spokesperson. When I first visited him in the small villa he had created on the side of their valley there were panoramic views — a vineyard that stretched off up the hillside which he had created himself and many modern conveniences that even locals in the nearby countryside did not have.

Much of what they created was paid for by using their land to grow produce such as corn which they sold locally – and the leper wine follows on from this tradition. Proceeds from the sale will go back to helping the community at Tichilesti and other impoverished groups in Romania – still one of Europe’s poorest countries. It will also go to ensure that the tradition of winemaking remains at Tichilesti.

After the fall of the Iron Curtain quarantine continued until 1993, but although residents were then finally allowed to leave, with no money or homes to go to the reality for most was to remain in the only home they had had for most of their lives.

Many are now very old and the sale of Leper Wine will help support their community and lifestyle and ensure that the tradition of caring for each other continues at Tichilesti.

Cristache Tatulea died this year after a stroke and a fall that left him with a broken hip from which he did not recover.

But even after suffering a stroke he continued to care for his precious vines – often sitting for hours at a time on a makeshift table to wave a home made rattle and keep the birds at bay. When he was too ill to climb on the table he rigged up a pulley system so he could continue to rattle cans in every corner of the vineyard from his bedside, and make sure that his harvest, which can produce 200 litres of wine a year, was safe.

In the last interview I carried out with him before his death in 2009 he told me. “I thought my life was over when they brought me here, Through I had dreams of going agricultural College and making something of myself and when I arrived here I thought they had all ended. But then I saw how the others were here and decided to help — I cut down the forest that covered the hillside and I planted my vines and I built my house. I have lived here for 60 years and through hard work we have made this place our home, and we are family to each other. Sometimes I dream of having a bit more to eat, but then I think Cristian, if that is all you have to worry about, then life can’t be so bad.”

This wine is sold in his memory, to raise funds for those who remain in the community and to ensure that the tradition of wine making started by Cristache continues.

David Rogers