🔗 Share this article

Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Nearby, a police siren pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

This is maybe the least likely spot you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. However one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve berries on a sprawling garden plot sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed individuals hiding heroin or other items in those bushes," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several local vintner. He's organized a loose collective of growers who make wine from four hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and allotments across the city. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the group's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Across the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming world atlas, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 vines on the hillsides of the French capital's historic Montmartre area and over 3,000 grapevines with views of and within the Italian city. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the vanguard of a initiative reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the world, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist cities stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They protect open space from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units inside urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a product of the soils the plants thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, local spirit, landscape and heritage of a city," adds the president.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he cultivated from a plant abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the rain comes, then the birds may take advantage to attack again. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish variety," he says, as he cleans damaged and rotten berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Activities Across the City

Additional participants of the group are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty plants. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit slung over her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the car windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly inherited the grape garden when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her household in 2018. She experienced an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has previously survived multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the idea of environmental care – of handing this down to someone else so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the collective are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established more than 150 plants perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the interwoven grape garden. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, 60, is harvesting clusters of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated 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 seven pounds a serving in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually create good, natural wine," she states. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an old way of making wine."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, all the wild yeasts are released from the surfaces and enter the liquid," says Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then add a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to plant her vines, has gathered his companions to pick white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to France. 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 French-style vintages in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "This variety is late to ripen and very sensitive to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, 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 barrier on