🔗 Share this article

Every quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel-powered train pulls into a spray-painted station. Nearby, a police siren cuts through the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-draped fencing panels as storm clouds gather.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. But one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with round purplish grapes on a rambling garden plot sandwiched between a row of 1930s houses and a local rail line just north of the city town centre.

"I've seen individuals hiding heroin or other items in the shrubbery," states the grower. "But you simply continue ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of cultivators who make vintage from four discreet city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and allotments throughout the city. 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

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which features more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned Montmartre area and more than three thousand vines overlooking and inside Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens assist urban areas stay more eco-friendly and more diverse. They preserve land from development by creating permanent, yielding farming plots within cities," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a product of the earth the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the people who care for the fruit. "Each vintage embodies the beauty, local spirit, landscape and history of a city," notes the spokesperson.

Unknown Polish Variety

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the vines he cultivated from a plant left in his allotment by a Polish family. If the rain arrives, then the birds may take advantage to feast again. "This is the mystery Polish variety," he says, as he removes damaged and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely hardy. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you need not spray them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Soviets."

Group Activities Across the City

Additional participants of the group are additionally taking advantage 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 wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately 50 vines. "I love the smell of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of grapes slung over her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has devoted more than two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly took over the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from Kenya with her family in 2018. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the grapevines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established over one hundred fifty plants perched on ledges in her expansive property, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the interwoven vineyard. "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 lines of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her child, Luca. Scofield, a documentary producer who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars specialising in low-processing wines. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly make good, natural wine," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the juice," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Environments and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her vines, has assembled his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 plants he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to France. However it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to make French-style vintages here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay 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 sole problem encountered by winegrowers. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on