🔗 Share this article

Every quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the almost continuous traffic drone. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is perhaps the last place you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. However one local grower has cultivated 40 mature vines heavy with round purplish grapes on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've noticed individuals hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "But you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of growers who make wine from several hidden city grape gardens nestled in private yards and community plots throughout the city. It is too clandestine to possess an formal title so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Vineyards Around the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of the French capital's historic artistic district area and over three thousand grapevines overlooking and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They protect land from construction by establishing permanent, yielding farming plots inside cities," says the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those created in cities are a product of the earth the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the charm, community, landscape and history of a urban center," adds the spokesperson.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Returning to the city, the grower is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the rain comes, then the birds may take advantage to attack again. "This is the enigmatic Polish variety," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across the City

The other members of the collective are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from about 50 vines. "I love the aroma of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she says, pausing with a basket of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her household in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has previously endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the concept of environmental care – of passing this on to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established more than one hundred fifty plants perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she notes, gesturing towards the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her child, Luca. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can make interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than £7 a glass in the growing number of establishments specialising in low-processing vintages. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly make quality, traditional vintage," she states. "It's very on trend, but really it's reviving an traditional method of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the juice," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a container of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who inspired Scofield to plant her grapevines, has gathered his companions to pick white wine varieties from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with amusement. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The unpredictable local weather is not the only challenge encountered by winegrowers. Reeve has been compelled to install a barrier on