🔗 Share this article

Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. But one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with round purplish berries on a sprawling allotment situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people hiding heroin or other items in the shrubbery," says the grower. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who runs a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of cultivators who make vintage from four discreet city grape gardens nestled in private yards and community plots across Bristol. The project is sufficiently underground to possess an official name so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned Montmartre area and more than three thousand grapevines overlooking and within the Italian city. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help cities stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating long-term, yielding farming plots within urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a product of the soils the plants grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the people who care for the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, community, landscape and history of a urban center," notes the president.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a urgent timeline to harvest the grapevines he grew from a cutting left in his garden by a Polish family. Should the precipitation comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack again. "Here we have the enigmatic Eastern European variety," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten grapes from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely hardy. Unlike noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Efforts Throughout the City

Additional participants of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of Bristol's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I adore the aroma of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, pausing with a basket of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the car windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her family in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already endured multiple proprietors," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to someone else so they keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established more than 150 plants situated on ledges in her expansive property, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking clusters of deep violet dark berries from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her child, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to cultivate vines after observing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that hobbyists can produce interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can sell for more than £7 a glass in the growing number of establishments specialising in low-processing wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually create quality, natural wine," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's resurrecting an old way of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the juice," explains the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of tiny stems, pips and red liquid. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the wild yeast and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Environments and Creative Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to plant her grapevines, has gathered his friends to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a challenge to grow 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 in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with amusement. "This variety is late to ripen and very sensitive to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only problem faced by winegrowers. Reeve has had to install a fence on