The village on the Dniester where the vine grows on terraces for 200 years

The village of Stroiești in Rîbnița district lies harmoniously on the left bank of the Dniester river, and the October sun leaves its color on the leaves of the trees and on the surrounding valleys. The houses are placed at the foot of the rocky hills or among them. As in many localities located on the banks of the Dniester, the houses are small and have preserved the traditional rural architecture. The stone fences are waist-high and the gates remain the same height. (Click here for pictures).

The luckiest seem to be the households "from the first rows", because every season they are shown a new painting of the river from the window. What makes the village even more special is the large number of springs and terraces of vines planted by the German-born Russian officer Wittgenstein.

In the village of Stroiești there are so many springs that people long ago stopped "baptizing" them. The director of the local museum, Rasina Vacari, says that one of the springs is called "Желанный" (from Russian: desired). Legend has it that a spring had appeared between the lands belonging to two men. They always quarreled and could not share the water resource. One day, Catherine the Great, empress of Russia, would have come to Stroiesti. She found out about the spring and asked one of the two men to take care of it. At night, the other man would have dreamed that another spring was flowing in his garden, under a stone. As soon as he wakes up, he runs into the garden and finds the dream stone. This is how the spring with the name "Желанный" - the desired spring - would have appeared.

"There are many stories and legends in our village," adds Rasina. The woman tells about a family deported to Siberia who, after a decade of living there, returns home to Stroiesti. But the daughter stays in Siberia with her new family and after some time she falls ill. One night, she dreams that at one end of her home village is a spring of healing water. The daughter sends a letter to the father and asks him to bring her water from that spring. That's what Dad does. He takes the water and goes to Siberia to save his daughter. After the first sip of water from the spring in Stroiesti, it is said that the girl was cured.

Wittgenstein

If you go around the village and ask people who Wittgenstein is, you will surely get a prompt answer, because the village developed precisely because of him. Ludwig Adolph Peter Wittgenstein (1769-1843) is the descendant of an old German family. He commanded the Russian army in the Russo-Turkish war of 1828. The base of action of Wittgenstein's armies was Bessarabia. But his family arrived in this region as early as 1805, after Count Wittgenstein's wife bought land here. In 1819 he began to build a mansion in Camenca, at that time still part of the historical region of Podolia.

In the 1920s, Wittgenstein decided to plant vines on the hilly massif in the area of the Dniester River. It invites winegrowers from Germany, who bring the experience of organizing wine terraces on sloping land. He brings planting material from Germany and France, such as varieties of Pinot Noir, Riesling, Traminer, Muscat, Chasselas.

Due to the favorable conditions, the orientation of the slope to the south, and being protected from the cold northern winds, he builds terraces with vineyards reinforced with stone retaining walls. Over ten years, the household from Camenca becomes one of the largest producers and suppliers of wine in the southern region of the Russian Empire.

"An intensive model vineyard. This fact was only possible through the artificial terracing of the vines, thus making the appearance of one of the oldest agricultural landscapes inscribed in a natural site, without diminishing its aesthetic value. On the contrary, once subjected to anthropization, it became more expressive", explains Aurelia Trifan in her doctoral thesis in architecture on the "Architecture of wine complexes in Moldova", published in 2020.

Identical terraces were also built 30 km away along the Dniester river, in the village of Stroiesti. Local people called these places "slope without shade". "Because there is never any shade here. The sun rises on one side of the slope and sets on the other side", explains the director of the museum in the village of Stroiesti, Rasina Vacari. If you get to this village, people may point to the hillside terraces when you ask who Wittgenstein is.

The woman tells that this count had seven children: six boys and one girl. "Because he loved his daughter very much, he gave her the town of Stroiesti," says Rasina. Years later, Emilia, Wittgenstein's daughter, builds the "Wind Tower" on top of a hill in Stroiesti, dedicated to her father. The tower is about five meters high and is built without any kind of "glue" between the perfectly polished natural stones. Even though lightning struck a column of the tower, it still stands today.

After Emilia Wittgenstein-Trubețcaia, Stroiești belonged to Wittgenstein's niece – Maria. At the beginning of the last century, she builds the countess's gazebo on the same rock where the Tower of the Winds is located. Rasina Vacari tells that this countess was a very sad woman. She came from Russia only in the fall, when the apples were ripening. She was brought in her arms and placed in the gazebo. Rasina says that Maria came with a lot of candies, which she distributed to the children in the village. He got all these stories about the countess from the children of that time, today the village elders.

The foundation of the gazebo follows the same construction technique as in the case of the tower. The stones were quarried from the hills of the area, polished by hand in such a way that they did not need glue. Over time, people have in some places restored the gazebo as best they could. Today you can see some cement over the natural stone foundation, the wood of the gazebo is visibly rotting, and part of the roof has been "stolen" by the wind.

The estate belonged to the Wittgenstein family until 1917, when the October Revolution took place. The revolted peasants destroyed the mansion to the ground, and the family would have taken refuge in Germany. Then, during the collectivization period, the vineyards on the terraces became the property of a state farm. In the second half of the 20th century, the 90-year-old vine is deforested, writes Aurelia Trifan in her doctoral thesis "Architecture of wine-growing complexes in Moldova".

Mistress of the copper mountain

You cannot leave Stroiesti without visiting Iulia Gavrilovna, "хозяйка медной горы" (from Russian: mistress of the copper mountain). Her greatest joy is receiving guests.

Iulia Paiul is almost 70 years old. She has been living in Stroiesti with her husband, Nicolae, for 50 years. In front of their gate they set up a round table with chairs made of logs, and on the fence she strung a traditional carpet that she wove with her mother as a child. He decorated the fence around with everything: a makeshift oven, a soccer ball, some towels hanging from the tree in the middle of the rest area.

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Iulia invites us into the house. "It is said that if you drink water from the springs of Stroiesti, you will immediately come back. That's what happened to me too," the woman laughs. She and her husband studied in Orhei, where they were called to work and settle down, but Iulia refused. "I am the mistress of the copper mountain. I didn't want to leave the village. Stone by stone, we put one on top of the other and built the house. And I always said that in this little house lives love". Iulia was inspired by the Slavic mythology in which there is the "Mistress of the Copper Mountain", that is, the mistress of the Ural Mountains. She jokes that she would be "the mistress of the mountains of Stroiesti". She prepared a large round cheese pie. At other times, it serves tourists with sarmales, with traditional Moldovan desserts or simply with homemade bread. "I want to share with someone, even with a piece of bread. And I want a round table... I've made a simple little table here and I want someone to sit here," says the woman in a warm voice, pointing to the wooden table and chairs that have been brought out for the paint to dry. Once you step on the threshold of her house, Iulia takes care of you, embracing you with her kindness and warm words.

Today the woman can only receive guests for a few hours and feed them delicious dishes. Unfortunately, he cannot accommodate them, as the space he owns has no conditions. "I had a dream for many years. Someone has to see these places. I've been around the world before and I understood that there is something to do in these places... Not something fancy, not a museum, but something simple that pleases the eye. You also eat a piece of bread", says Iulia. Her dream is to be able to receive as many tourists as possible, to have as many people as possible come to see the village of Stroiesti and its beauties. Most of the visitors to the village of Stroiesti are from the right bank of the Dniester. And it's not just about visits - over time, close ties have been formed with the residents of the left bank. "Blood and water are not made and we are a whole," says Rasina Vacari, director of the museum in Stroiesti.

s https://www.moldova.org/satul-de-pe-nistru-unde-via-creste-pe-terase-de-200-de-ani/?fbclid=IwAR0mQFKHn-AUyIyzAFgqLsw6q1AhbMC5c6DghzTTx4ZSCMjcX5f1yF4uSHg