🔗 Share this article

Each 20 minutes or so, an older diesel train pulls into a graffiti-covered station. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as storm clouds form.

This is maybe the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump purplish berries on a sprawling garden plot situated between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've seen individuals concealing illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," states Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has organized a informal group of growers who produce wine from four discreet urban vineyards nestled in private yards and community plots throughout Bristol. The project is too clandestine to possess an official name yet, but the group's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Across the World

So far, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of Paris's renowned artistic district neighbourhood and over three thousand grapevines with views of and inside Turin. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including cities in Japan, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help cities stay more eco-friendly and more diverse. They preserve land from construction by creating permanent, yielding farming plots inside urban environments," explains the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in urban areas are a product of the soils the plants thrive in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who care for the grapes. "A bottle of wine embodies the charm, local spirit, landscape and heritage of a urban center," notes the president.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Back in Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the rain comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he removes damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are additionally making the most of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with casks of vintage from France and Spain, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about 50 vines. "I love the aroma of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she says, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the car windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly inherited the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her household in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured three different owners," she says. "I really like the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Natural Winemaking

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established more than one hundred fifty vines situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, indicating the interwoven vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting clusters of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can make intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than £7 a glass in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly create quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an old way of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, the various natural microorganisms are released from the skins and enter the liquid," says Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently add a lab-grown yeast."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has assembled his friends to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on regular visits to France. However it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to produce Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," admits the retiree with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and very sensitive to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole challenge faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a barrier on