Throughout Eastern Europe, Dacha means ‘summer house.’ Practically, dachas are an escape from the city: small simple cottages with a yard for growing vegetables to pickle. Culturally, the dacha takes on a semi-mythic quality. It is a space outside time that is both creative and close to nature, built with a view out to the natural world’s weird tension between beauty and brutality. If people live in the city, they dwell in the dacha. To Burgundy-trained winemaker Isabel, Oregon is in many ways the preeminent Dachaland of the USA. Given the confluence of various environmental, cultural and humanitarian crises, it is time to reframe the dacha: less as an escape, more as a laboratory. She farms in the Southern Willamette and Umpqua Valleys, is working to grow the biodiversity and health of the vineyards, and the diversity of people who drink the wines that come from them.
