The glass of dorona wine I’m raising to the sky glows a rich, almost iridescent gold—more the hue of fresh cider than anything you’d expect to see come from grapes. The rows of vines before me are equally surreal, their gnarled roots rising from a sheen of brackish water. I’m at Venissa, which might just be the world’s most improbable winery thanks to its location on the tiny island of Mazzorbo, in the far reaches of the Venice lagoon.

Pointing at a white crust visible on patches of soil, my guide Annalisa Florian notes that after an acqua alta—as a particularly high tide is called—the fields must be flooded with fresh water to flush away toxic salt. This technique proved essential as recently as November, when floods submerged nearly 80 percent of Venice.

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Mattia Mionetto

If any grape can withstand the lagoon’s rising waters, it’s the one growing here: dorona di Venezia, whose name, from d’oro, reflects both its luminescent golden color and its status as the pride of traditional Venetian viticulture. The story has all the elements of a Dan Brown mystery: An abandoned 13th-century monastery whose walls once enclosed a vineyard. A wine grape thought lost to the ages, rediscovered in the overgrown garden of a 7th-century church. And the obsession of the head of one of Italy’s powerful wine families, who pored over history books and dug through weeds to find the last remaining vines, then brought the elements together to recreate dorona wine that no one thought they'd taste again.

It all started 17 years ago, when Gianluca Bisol visited the crumbling Byzantine Church of Santa Maria Assunta on the island of Torcello and noticed a few twisted grapevines growing in a neglected garden. “I had known about the history of viticulture in the lagoon, but it had been all but lost after the flood of 1966,” says Bisol, whose family has been growing grapes and making prosecco since 1542. While winemaking in the islands of the Venetian lagoon dates back 2,000 years, it had all but died out as Venice’s trading wealth made it easy to buy imported wine. In 1966, when floodwaters submerged the islands for more than two days, the salt was too much for even the hardiest of the remaining vines.

“When I saw grapevines growing in this tiny vineyard in Torcello, I was so surprised,” Bisol says. “I knocked on the door, and the owner confirmed that this was the dorona grape, so I set about purchasing the land on Mazzorbo and attempting to grow a vineyard of the golden varietal.”

Searching throughout the islands, Bisol turned up 88 vines, which were transplanted to Mazzorbo and propagated. Cultivation of the two-acre vineyard posed even greater challenges—the vines have to be planted far apart to allow the roots to grow sideways rather than down, avoiding the saltwater that lies just 18 inches below the surface. To find fresh water to flush the fields required digging a well more than 600 feet deep.

Mattia Mionetto

“Many experts told my father it would never work to have vineyards here again,” says Matteo Bisol, who took over Venissa in 2014. “But when my father decides to do something, nothing will discourage him, he is determined to find a solution.”

To make the wine according to ancient Venetian tradition, the juice is macerated on skins for 40 days, a practice that lends it the characteristic golden color and gives it a structure more akin to a red wine. Aging in bottle for two years brings out contrasting flavors of honey and salinity.

Now in its 10th vintage, Venissa produces just 3,500 to 4,000 bottles a year, each individually numbered and labeled in gold leaf. To befit the only wine in the world made from dorona, a new label is designed each year, hand-hammered by the battiloro (gold-beater) family Berta, and adhered to the bottle on the glassblowing island of Murano.

Visitors to Venissa today will find much more than wine. Under the stewardship of Matteo Bisol, the project has grown to include two restaurants, one of them Michelin-starred, and a five-room inn. The newest offering, Casa Burano, features a collection of 13 rooms on the famously colorful neighboring island of Burano, just across a narrow footbridge. And Venissa’s seasonal open-air restaurant is run by rising stars Francesco Brutto and Chiara Pavan, wth a menu featuring local ingredients like mackerel and sea bream, gelato from the milk of local goats, and produce and dozens of herbs from the onsite garden.

With the city of Venice just 25 minutes away by boat, Venissa and Casa Burano make for a different kind of travel experience, one in which you can watch fishing boats return at dusk with your evening’s dinner and walk through gardens where pensioners harvest artichokes and broccoli rabe.

Mattia Mionetto

Venissa’s product line also has expanded with the addition of Rosso Venusa, a red wine made from merlot and cabernet grapes grown on the adjacent islet Santa Cristina, as well as other locally made goods. “We want to preserve ancient traditions and recipes handed down verbally through generations,” Matteo says. “My ambition is to bring agriculture back to Venice, especially the abandoned islands, and to try to balance it with sustainable and responsible tourism.”

Even with Venissa’s improbable success, there’s no question the future looks less certain and more fraught today. This year’s high water mark fell just two inches short of that of 1966, and some areas of the vineyard were under water for several days. “We were fully aware of the risks when we planted the vineyards on Mazzorbo, but we had the dream to make one of the world’s most unique wines,” Matteo says.

After repeatedly irrigating with fresh water and treating the soil with chalk, Matteo says he’s hoping his carefully tended vines pull through. But it will be spring before he knows for sure.