🔗 Share this article

Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a police siren pierces the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants heavy with round purplish berries on a rambling garden plot sandwiched between a row of 1930s houses and a local rail line just north of the city downtown.

"I've noticed people hiding illegal substances or whatever in those bushes," states the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a documentary cameraman who runs a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's pulled together a informal group of growers who make wine from four hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and allotments throughout the city. The project is too clandestine to possess an formal title so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Vineyards Across the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of Paris's historic artistic district area and more than 3,000 grapevines with views of and inside the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them throughout the globe, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens help urban areas remain more eco-friendly and more diverse. These spaces protect land from construction by establishing permanent, yielding farming plots inside cities," explains the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those created in urban areas are a result of the earth the plants grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the people who care for the grapes. "Each vintage represents the charm, local spirit, environment and history of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he grew from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. If the precipitation comes, then the birds may take advantage to feast once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish grape," he says, as he cleans bruised and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Throughout the City

Additional participants of the group are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of vintage from Europe and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her dark berries from about 50 vines. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she says, pausing with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her family in 2018. She felt an overwhelming duty to maintain the vines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has previously survived three different owners," she explains. "I really like the concept of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Production

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established over 150 plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she notes, gesturing towards the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is harvesting clusters of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of vines slung across the hillside with the help of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was inspired to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that amateurs can produce intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on low-processing wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various natural microorganisms come off the skins and enter the juice," explains Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently add a commercially produced yeast."

Challenging Environments and Creative Solutions

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her vines, has assembled his friends to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a challenge to cultivate this particular variety in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the only problem encountered by grape cultivators. Reeve has had to erect a fence on