From the Dust Heap of Time

From the Dust Heap of Time

Hemmed in by the silence of old walls, we wove our way north from the steps of the Rialto Bridge through early morning streets searching for Venice’s Fondamente Nove.  The Fondamente is the location of a major waterbus station, but unlike many of the others that service Venice’s commuters, it is the main gateway to the northern islands of the lagoon.  Still cool, it was another beautiful morning in the water city that made towing our wheeled suitcase almost an afterthought.  The occasional bridge across intervening canals was the only impediment to the clickity-click of our

Bridge Along Our Route 

luggage.  Luckily, there were only four we needed to negotiate.  Our route wasn’t straight “as the bird flies” but wended its way generally in the right direction, northward.  Thankfully, it was rather well marked with signs.  When occasionally I could have used some sort of route marker, but one wasn’t visible, it was easy to maintain course by simply asking a passing fellow traveler or shop owner.  I recall poking my head into a flower shop at one point for guidance.  Its exterior reminded me of a scene from a favorite movie of ours, Pane e Tulipani (Bread and Tulips).  Unfortunately, the man who appeared wasn’t the Italian actor Felice Andreasi, who’d played the garlic chewing anarchist florist, Fermo.  In a lava flow of words, he explained that the shop wasn’t the one in the movie either.  I guess it was too much to hope for.  All in all, our voyage through this rich cultural world of liquid streets proved to be a straightforward trek and we soon emerged onto the northern watery boundary of the city of Venice. 

Built in the sixteenth century, they still refer to the Fondamente as “nove”, their dialect for new.  It extended about a kilometer and was the port of call to many ferries.  Four waterbus platforms, one separated by a rather long bridge from the others, stretched along the Fondamente.  Pontoon floats served as cushioning buffers between the Fondamente and the shuttling ferries.  Next, we had to figure out which of the cluster of pontoons serviced the ferry that would take us to our destination, the island of Mazzorbo, just a footbridge away from the neighboring island of Burano.  The woman in the ticket sales booth quickly resolved the issue when we purchased our tickets.  It would be Vaporetto #12, and as fate would have it, its platform to await the water bug of a ferry was across the bridge.  A short haul later we’d arrived.  This time, with Lady Luck on our side, minutes later we were aboard #12 and underway.  Andiamo!

It proved to be a smooth forty-minute journey as we navigated between the bricole that rose from the water to mark the channel to either side of us, like wickets in a lawn game.  The only interruption was a brief hesitation of a stop at Murano, the famous island of glass.  The hawsers hadn’t settled before they were undone, and we were off again.  It was a similar operation when we slid alongside Fondamente di Santa Caterina and were deposited at our destination, Isola Mazzorbo.  From there it was a very short walk down the fondamente to our accommodations at the Venissa Wine Resort.

Venissa Wine Resort 

The Venissa Wine Resort was a refreshing change from our hectic days in Venice.  Our reception, even though we’d arrived hours before normal check-in, reminded us of our arrival at the Castiglion Del Bosco Resort in Tuscany years earlier.  I recall the hot towels and cool lemon water drinks we were greeted with on our arrival there.  Our welcome to the Venissa five-room boutique hotel was equally professional and was topped off with the announcement that our room was waiting for us.  After depositing our belongings, a mandatory check of the bathroom, a must, and checking the air conditioning, a double must, we were off to lunch.  We could have tried the Michelin star-rated restaurant on site but the place we’d passed only steps away from the ferry stop,

Our Venissa Resort Room

looked more appealing.  Others may have thought so too or already knew how good it was because the tables on the veranda at Trattoria alla Maddenenna were all taken, and we had to wait for a table to free-up.  The wait proved worthwhile.  I’d describe the Maddenenna as timeless.  Timeless in the sense that it had an atmosphere that had awaited us since 1954 when it first swung open its doors.  That was well before Maria Elena and I had opportunity to enjoy long lazy lunches like

Trattoria alla Maddenenna

the one we delighted in that day.  No, about then Mare and I were reveling in bag lunches in grammar school to the interruption of a back to class alarm bell.  Low and behold, we’d stumbled upon the number one restaurant on Mazzorbo.  The fact that there are only three all together on the island didn’t diminish our enjoyment.  Our only bias was our hunger, but offers of sea bream, fried sardines, squid, prawns … all to perfection, and the best tiramisu since we got to make our own at Ristorante Silarus in the lofty Quaglietta Borgo with Chef Marko, but that’s altogether another story. 

We began by sharing a half-liter of white wine along with a bottle of frizzante (effervescent) water in the shade of an umbrella canopy bordered by green hedges fronting the Maddenenna.  There was a wide selection of items offered for the various courses available.  Comfortably relaxed, we sipped wine as we sifted through the myriad of options and went over lunchtime possibilities.  It wasn’t long before we’d decided and I was tucking into Cozze e Vongole Saltate in Padella (pan sautéed mussels and clams) as

Sea Bass Ravioli

a starter, followed by elegant Ravioli di Branzino Ripieni (stuffed sea bass ravioli).  I had the surrounding sea on my plate!  These creations from the sea were fabulous.  The half-dollar size clams and mussels the size of tongues were a sort of sea-based appetizer followed by the ravioli as my primo main course.  The stuffed ravioli pillows filled with ricotta, parmesan, garlic, parsley and accented with white wine had a delicate taste and enhanced the natural flavor of the sea bass.  Meanwhile, Maria Elena began by enjoying a red and white shuffle of tomatoes and mozzarella slices dripping with oil, a classic Insalata Caprese (Caprese Salad). She followed this 

Tagliata di Manza

 with her mainstay, Tagliata di Manza con Rocket e Grana Padano (steak sliced on the bias with peppery arugula, here known as rocket, and shaved Parmigiano-Reggiano cheese).  Mare especially likes it hot off the grill, pink to red on the inside.  It proved to be a shared surf and turf meal.  Yum.  The aroma may elude us now, but I can still see our repast arrayed before us.  And to think, this pleasurable Venetian lagoon experience for our pallets was only lunch. 

We decided to wait out the afternoon heat before exploring Burano.  In the meantime, we took a tour of the Venissa vineyard.  This is a vineyard whose golden Dorona grapes have withstood salt and floodwaters for centuries.  To unfold this unlikely story of a white grape treated as a red was our young sommelier, Matteo, Italian for Mathew.  His was the story of a wine that Venetian royalty drank over 500 years ago and where today the elite of Venice can drink a half-liter for the stratospheric price of 1000€.  Definitely not your average table wine!

The re-emergence of this wine teetered on a chance encounter back in 2001.  As the story was unfolded to us, Matteo’s father, Gianluca Bisol, was visiting the nearby Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta, which dates from 639 AD, on the nearby island of Torcello, the most northerly island in the Venetian Lagoon.  As he was exiting the church, he noticed something peculiar in a garden, something that looked out of place among the other plants, a grapevine.  At the time, Nicoletta Emmer was watering the garden.  Noticing him by the fence and suspecting his interest in her garden, she invited him in.  She told him that the garden held numerous international varietals that her father had planted.  She went on to relate that it also held an ancient grape varietal, Dorona, which she proceeded to show him.  He was both surprised and unfamiliar with this type of grape.  Yes, there was something definitely different here.  The leaves, for one, were rather unique.  Intrigued by this discovery, he contacted a friend, Venetian historian Carla Coco, to research the state archives to see what they might contain about this mysterious find.  Now began a research phase to determine just

Dorona Grapes on the Vine

what he had.  Was it indeed among the ancient vines of the Lagoon?  To verify what he’d stumbled upon, samples of the vine were sent for DNA testing which eventually authenticated their identity.  In the meantime, Carla uncovered the startling fact that in times past, the lagoon, even Venice itself, hosted many Dorona vineyards.  With so much water and so little soil, it’s hard to believe that the Venice lagoon had for the past 2,500 years been a region of vineyards.  In 1100, in what is today Saint Mark’s Square, she was surprised to learn there once was a huge garden and vineyard.  Over time, however, this grape gradually disappeared as its cultivation dwindled.  The blame lay with the insidious combined effects of real estate demand and mother nature.  Land being so valuable saw vineyards gradually replaced with buildings, churches, and palaces.  Interest in viticulture also gradually ceased to exist due to recurring floods that killed the vines from the salinization of the soil.  It was the great flood of 1966, the worst flood in Venice’s history, that put an end to grape horticulture.  While recurring floods were part of Venice’s long history, this flood was different.  That year the tide rose well above the barriers protecting the lagoon’s islands.  Massive waves caused by a violent storm swept away many a vineyard.  Venetians soon found themselves under three feet of water.  And unlike other years, the tide didn’t recede as quickly as it normally had.  As a result, the ground was covered in saltwater for more than two days.  This long-term salty saturation of the soil destroyed all the vineyards in the lagoon, much like salting icy roads kill bordering trees.  This event was thought to have meant the death-knoll of the Dorona grape, that not a single vine had survived.  In way of compensation to offset this setback, other industries were emerging which offered steady work verses the fickle ways of nature, while burgeoning trade links made other wines available.  A grape once so prized that Dodges and wealthy Venetians placed them on their tables to signify their status as a family of means, had disappeared.  Ever so slowly, the Dorona grape was forgotten and relegated to dusty archives. 

Fortunately, this garden’s three plant mini vineyard was not all that remained.  A search of the

lagoon uncovered 85 additional plants.  Gianluca had something different here but to grow them in salty soil 

The Ancient Monastery Campenilla 

remained a threat.  He searched for a place to host his new vineyard and settled on an abandoned estate enclosed by medieval walls on Mazzorbo, once a Benedictine monastery whose fourteenth-century bell tower is all that remains.  The team’s agronomist advised against planting the vineyard in the old monastery surrounded as it was by water on three of its four sides and given the high sodium content in the soil.  Despite this, Bisol decides to replant the ancient vines there, thanks to the history of the estate that had been home to vines since the 1300s and from the 1800s was a winery that continued to produce until the historic flood of 1966.  His was a risky strategy.  Some would say that as a minimum he was overpromising on results and in the worst case, risking the few vines that remained.  I don’t know

Medieval Wall Around Venissa Estate

if he prayed a lot or lit candles in that nearby Basilica of Santa Maria Assunta but his faith in the vitality of these vines was more real than the reality of the high sodium content of the soil and the high water phenomenon that could destroy the vineyard again.  In any case, Gianluca decided to return the ancient vines in their home soil where the roots of the vines grow so deep that they touch the salty groundwater that lies only 1.2 meters beneath the surface.  He then proceeded to transform these two-hectares into the present day Venissa Wine Resort structured around the resilient Dorona grape.  Like a high-stakes gambler, hoping for a wild card, he was all-in.  

Research revealed that this native vine had over the centuries adapted to the salinity conditions typical of the lagoon.  As a result, Dorona is unique for the salt that gives the grapes a particular flavor and a distinctive salty aroma.  When a wine label says “contains sulfates”, in the case of Dorona, you can be certain it does.  As we enhance the flavor of food with a dash of salt, so the presence of natural salt in the soil adds a special personality and elegance to this wine.  The result is described as a wine that has the robustness and longevity of a red wine and the classiness and freshness of a white.  The taste of the wine eventually made from this grape was like none other.  This one-of-a-kind characteristic is found nowhere else in the world.  Here was a white grape that somehow had adapted to the Venetian climate and was able to thrive.  In a survival of the fittest mode they had somehow made peace with soil that is constantly threatened by salt and water.  Gianluca’s gambit had proven correct.

To transform the grapes into wine, traditional methods for making white wine are employed.  Like a red, however, long maceration of the golden-colored skins gives added life to this wine, contributing the added richness of tannins and greater longevity.  The skins remain in the must for approximately 30 days to develop the wine’s color.  It is this extended maceration that results in a white wine with the body and structure of a red.  When bottled, the wine is allowed to ferment in their beautifully designed bottles for two years before release. 

Italians are all about style.  To properly dress-up this special wine, in way of homage to the history and iconic stature of this golden wine, they introduced a unique, and to be honest, a costly method of presentation.  A special bottle for a special wine was crafted.  Matteo explained that in order to put the vineyard into a glass, Gianluca chose bottles created by the most celebrated glassmaker in Murano, Carlo Moretti.  But there is more to the story than just these exclusive 500-milliliter bottles.  Under the direction of this most celebrated glassmaker, the winery developed an elegant yet simple labeling and bottling strategy to hallmark this rare and historic vintage.  What better way to present the juice of these golden-colored grapes that once only royalty consumed than with gold, to be exact, gold leaf.  Goldsmithing is another Venetian tradition that goes back centuries in Venice, yet there is only one person left who practices the craft today.  It was obvious then.  To fashion the bottle’s gold-leaf labels, they chose Berta Battiloro.  The Battiloro family has worked with gold for over 1,000 years in Venice’s Cannaregio district, a picturesque area of canals and atmospheric corners that runs from the Santa Lucia railway station, east to the Rialto Bridge.  Venice once hosted over 300 goldsmiths.  Yet in all of Europe only one family remains that produces these almost weightless golden leaves, once used to adorn monuments.  The pure gold leaf labels are fused onto the bottles using ovens and then each bottle, just below the label, is hand-etched with a unique number.  Each year a new label is designed, some only slightly different from an earlier year.  Clearly, even these bottles tell a story of Venice’s past. 

Slight Changes in Labels Differentiate Vintages

It was in 2010 that the Bisol family made the first Venissa Dorona wine.  From its five-acre vineyard, the winery produced 4,880 half-bottles that year.  Since that first harvest, production has stabilized at approximately 4,000 bottles annually.  Such a low yield of an already scarce commodity, not consumed in Venice for decades, only adds to its rarity. 

More of its past lay only a picturesque footbridge away connecting Mazzorbo island with the colorful fishermen’s village of Burano.  In addition to staying at the resort, another reason for visiting the archipelago was to experience Burano by night.  We’d been there briefly before and its charm had intrigued

Mazzorbo - Burano Footbridge

us enough to look forward to a return.  Late that afternoon, we walked the lane beside the lagoon leading across the timber bridge on into Burano.  Passing through a shaded park-like area, we meandered through side streets of colorfully painted homes, no destination in mind, past gated yards, gardens, and front doors where locals sat about, some talking, some sewing, one group sharing photos from a recent wedding.  At one point we happened upon Matteo talking with a friend, and later, an old man relaxed in a chair proudly proclaimed having achieved the stately age of 94.  Island life apparently agreed with him.  The tourist crowds long dissipated, stores were taking in their displays of needle-made lace clothing.  As evening shaded to night, to our

 Pathway to Footbridge 

surprise, the few cafes and restaurants there were, began to close and those individuals still about gradually dwindled to nothing.  We had to finish our drinks quickly as our glasses along with tables and chairs were either stacked or collected in an apparent hasty conclusion of another day.  In the remains of the day, there wouldn’t be time for dinner unless somehow, we could pop over and join the crowds in Venice.  Too long a swim made that impossible.  How different life was only a few miles of water away where the evening's dinner crowds were only beginning to appear.  Maybe Burano still clung to its fishing heritage and an “early to bed, early to rise” lifestyle.  

Burano Evening Get Together

I learned a new word in the process of visiting Mazzorbo.  It is “terroir”.  No, it’s not a misspelling of those wiry little dogs, though both spellings are derived from the Latin for terra, meaning earth or soil.  At its most basic level lies the belief that a wine’s features, taste for instance, are affected by the aspect of the land where the grapes are grown, the soil, a region’s climate, sunlight, and let’s not forget winemaking traditions.  Together they impart unique characteristics to the grapes

that could not be passed on by any other

Golden Wine for a
      Golden Wine

region.  The signature of the wine, like our DNA, is therefore unique. 

A wine’s color, longevity, aroma, and the many flavors, in a stratosphere beyond which my taste buds are incapable of discerning, ranging from chocolate to walnuts and everything in between, are

determined by the terrior.  It essentially determines a wine’s greatness.  As Venice and life on the nearby islands seem to persevere in a contemporary blend with the ancient world, now so does the ongoing history of the Dorona grape.  The Bisol family had succeeded in resurrecting a piece of Venetian history, an echo of its long past.  But there is also “terrior” in life across this  scattering of lagoon islands, where a water-bound land, time-honored traditions and a doggedness in the face of a harsh environment, taken together in a mesh of norms, have 

Lagoon Life

imparted a unique character of place to its inhabitants, here again like nowhere else in the world.  We were fortunate to get a glimpse of life on the lagoon islands which like the Dorona grape is unique.  Like wines vary, so life differs here.  I can only describe the experience as peaceful, serene, far removed from the hectic fuss of the Venice scene and relaxing beyond every-day experience.  And the wine?  Well, to sip this time-honored ambrosia is like enjoying fine art … Da Vinci’s Mona Lisa, Michelangelo’s David, Bernini’s “Ecstasy of Saint Theresa”.  In this case, your feelings take on a new dimension, for you not only see this art and grasp its history but can taste and consume it as well, a sensation produced by an altogether different palette. 

Mazzorbo - Peaceful, Serene and Far Removed from Hectic Venice

Written on the Road …

From That Rogue Tourist

Paolo