🔗 Share this article

Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers rush by collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.

It is maybe the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. But one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve grapes on a sprawling allotment situated between a line of historic homes and a local rail line just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've seen individuals concealing heroin or whatever in those bushes," says the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several local vintner. He's pulled together a informal group of cultivators who produce wine from several discreet city grape gardens tucked away in back gardens and community plots throughout Bristol. The project is too clandestine to have an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the World

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location listed in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and more than three thousand grapevines with views of and within Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has identified them all over the globe, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help urban areas remain greener and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who care for the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the charm, local spirit, environment and history of a city," notes the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he grew from a plant abandoned in his garden by a Eastern European household. If the precipitation comes, then the birds may take advantage to feast again. "This is the enigmatic Polish grape," he comments, as he cleans bruised and mouldy grapes from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Across Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's shimmering waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with casks of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty vines. "I love the aroma of these vines. It is so evocative," she remarks, stopping with a container of fruit resting on her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom 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 plot has already endured three different owners," 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 Natural Production

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established over one hundred fifty vines perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she notes, gesturing towards the interwoven vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, 60, is harvesting bunches of dusty purple dark berries from rows of plants slung across the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce interesting, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of £7 a glass in the growing number of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of making vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, all the natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the liquid," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the wild yeast and subsequently add a commercially produced yeast."

Challenging Environments and Creative Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has gathered his companions to pick white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in viticulture on regular visits to France. However 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 wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," admits the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay 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 problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on