🔗 Share this article

Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel train pulls into a spray-painted stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

This is maybe the last place you anticipate to find a well-established grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with round mauve berries on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed people hiding illegal substances or other items in the shrubbery," states the grower. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He's pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who produce wine from several hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and allotments across Bristol. The project is sufficiently underground to have an formal title yet, but the collective's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location listed in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre neighbourhood and more than three thousand vines with views of and inside Turin. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them all over the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist urban areas stay greener and more diverse. These spaces protect open space from construction by creating permanent, yielding farming plots within urban environments," explains the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in urban areas are a product of the earth the plants thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who care for the grapes. "Each vintage represents the charm, local spirit, landscape and history of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Returning to Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to harvest the vines he cultivated from a cutting left in his garden by a Eastern European household. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to attack again. "This is the mystery Eastern European grape," he comments, as he removes bruised and mouldy grapes from the shimmering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely hardy. In contrast to premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Collective Efforts Throughout the City

Additional participants of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with barrels of vintage from France and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty plants. "I love the smell of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she says, pausing with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the car windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she moved back to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her family 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 says. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has established over one hundred fifty vines perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is picking bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of vines slung across the cliff-side with the help of her child, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for more than £7 a serving in the growing number of wine bars focusing on low-processing vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly make quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, all the natural microorganisms come off the surfaces and enter the liquid," says Scofield, partially submerged in a container of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then add a lab-grown yeast."

Challenging Conditions and Creative Approaches

A few doors down active senior another cultivator, who inspired Scofield to establish her vines, has gathered his friends to pick Chardonnay grapes from one hundred vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. But it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The temperamental local weather is not the only problem faced by winegrowers. Reeve has been compelled to install a barrier on