🔗 Share this article

Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel train arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

This is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with round mauve grapes on a rambling garden plot sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a local rail line just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've noticed individuals concealing illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," states Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only urban winemaker. He's organized a informal group of growers who produce vintage from several discreet urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and community plots throughout Bristol. It is too clandestine to have an official name so far, but the group's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Across the Globe

So far, the grower's plot is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which features more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the slopes of the French capital's historic Montmartre area and over 3,000 vines overlooking and within Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them throughout the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards assist urban areas remain more eco-friendly and more diverse. They protect open space from construction by creating long-term, productive agricultural units inside urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in urban areas are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the people who tend the grapes. "Each vintage represents the charm, local spirit, landscape and history of a urban center," notes the president.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he grew from a cutting left in his allotment by a Polish family. If the precipitation arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to feast again. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish grape," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across the City

Additional participants of the collective are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between bursts of fall precipitation. On the terrace with views of Bristol's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of vintage from Europe and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from approximately 50 vines. "I love the smell of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a container of grapes resting on her shoulder. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her family in 2018. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the grapevines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has previously survived multiple proprietors," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they can keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Vineyards and Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was inspired to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's vines. She has learned that hobbyists can make intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for more than seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can truly make quality, natural wine," she states. "It's very fashionable, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of producing wine."

"When I tread the grapes, all the wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the liquid," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and then incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Conditions and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her grapevines, has gathered his friends to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with cooling tides moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make European-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental local weather is not the only challenge faced by winegrowers. The gardener has had to install a barrier on