GOLD COAST
On Mazzorbo island in Venice, but far from the crowds, SUSAN GOUGH HENLY discovers wine made from ancient “golden” dorona grapevines at Venissa.
It’s dusk and the Venetian lagoon shimmers all around us, the last rays of sunshine burnishing the bell towers and salt marshes and the occasional cormorant drying its wings. The vaporetto has taken us from the jangled crowds of the Grand Canal, past the glass factories of Murano and out across this wide silvery expanse towards the island of Mazzorbo, home to Venissa, the last and only commercial vineyard of dorona grapes.
Turns out that vines have grown in and around Venice for centuries. They were planted with Venice’s very own dorona, or “golden”, grape variety, which adapted well to the saltiness of the lagoon. In the year 1100, records show that vineyards were dotted throughout Piazza San Marco and other campi, or fields, of the city. (The ghosts of this ploughed earth remain in the term campo that is used to denote many squares in Venice.) While San Marco’s vines were pulled out long ago to make way for palazzi, vineyards in the outer islands continued producing wine for generations. All remaining vines were lost in the great flood of 1966. Or so it seemed.
About 18 years ago, however, Gianluca Bisol, the president of one of Italy’s renowned prosecco wineries, discovered some dorona vines growing next to the church of Santa Maria Assunta on the island of Torcello. After tracking down another 88 vines in private gardens dotted around islands in the northern lagoon, the Bisol family decided to replant an abandoned walled vineyard on Mazzorbo from propagated cuttings. Their goal: to restore the ancient winemaking tradition of La Serenissima.
“Viticulture has always been very important to us,” explains Bisol’s 32-year-old son Matteo, managing director of Venissa. “We’re Italian so we could never survive without our local wine.”
This walled vineyard has now become the centre of a slow-travel project which includes a Michelinstarred restaurant, a contemporary osteria, and a boutique hotel, which offers a range of immersive experiences far from Venice’s tourist hordes.
Quite apart from its recent flooding, Venice has for many years been drowning in over-tourism. While banning cruise ships would make the biggest impact, there’s also a place for thoughtful small-scale alternatives, such as Venissa, which honour longstanding traditions and offer a palpable sense of place.
As the water bus drops us at the Mazzorbo terminal, a sense of calm descends upon us. We pass a fisherman and amble along a serene canal-side street before arriving at the salmon-pink stucco and red-brick building that is Venissa. The five-room country inn and its two restaurants have been reimagined by architect Mariano Zanon from the lagoon home of the walled Scarpa
Volo wine estate, abandoned more than 50 years ago.
At its heart is a remarkable biodiverse two-hectare campo overlooked by a 15th-century bell tower. Matteo shows us around, pointing to the rows of 4000 dorona grapevines interspersed with 40 local herbs. He explains that they only planted vines on half of the space, leaving the rest for an orchard, grasses and vegetable plots, which are tended by local retirees. Red roses perfume the air, but also work as disease indicators.
Conventional wisdom says that vines do best with little access to water so their roots must plunge deep into the soil to seek nutrients. Yet here they are surrounded by salty water that often floods their root systems. The secret, we learn, is that these vines have learned how to grow horizontally to find fresh water while the ever-present salinity adds its own form of stress and unique flavour profiles.
“We decided that the best place to drink such an unusual wine was right in front of the vineyard,” says Matteo as he guides us to their 25-seat, oneMichelin-starred restaurant set in a glass cube fashioned from a former toolshed. The food is an equal match to the wine, with chef Chiara Pavan, named Italy’s best female chef for 2019, at the helm. Her innovative cuisine might include soft-shell crab, cuttlefish, clams, and an array of local fish and foraged herbs of the lagoon, not to mention the garden’s exquisite tender artichokes, string beans, tomatoes and onions.
“The whole history of Venice can be found in this bottle,” says Matteo. Here is Venetian wine reminiscent of what was served at the Doges’ banquets.
The last of Venice’s goldbeaters creates gold-leaf wine labels that are baked onto bottles in Murano’s glassfiring ovens. It’s a local tradition that, like winemaking, had almost disappeared.
The Bisol family works with Tuscan wine consultant Roberto Cipresso, an expert in viticultural history.
“We make this white wine just like a long-lasting red, with lots of skin contact,” says Matteo. “It’s the way Venetians have always done it, so they could preserve the wine without refrigeration or underground cellars. It’s very fresh and acidic, yet has a unique bittersweet, salty character that speaks of this place.”
They also produce a Rosso Venissa red wine from a blend of merlot and carménère grapes grown in a 50-year-old vineyard rented from the Swarovski family on their nearby private island, Santa Cristina. And Matteo has even created the delicious Venusa beer, fragrant with lagoon herbs.
The next day we explore the lagoon on an old bragozzo with a fisherman who shows us how he harvests moeche, or soft-shell crabs. We could have also taken a gondola class with Burano’s rowing club or learned how to make essi biscotti with the local ladies, if there’d been time.
That night we feast on rosemary tagliatelle with a ragù of local duck, guinea fowl and quail on the patio of the osteria. And later, we fall asleep on a sublime Piero Lissoni-designed bed in our spacious suite.
The next morning we enjoy excellent coffee and the kitchen’s freshly baked breads with house-made jam.
“We want our guests to experience what we like to do ourselves, so we created activities that are not really available to tourists… most are through our personal relationships,” says Matteo. “I think the right type of tourism is where travellers experience ‘true things’ that keep the traditions of Venice alive. It’s important to have the right balance between visitors and the local community.” Venissa has certainly found it.
Venissa, Fondamenta Santa Caterina 3, Venice,
Italy, venissa.it
“We’re Italian so we could never survive without our local wine.”