🔗 Share this article

Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel railway carriage pulls into a spray-painted station. Close by, a police siren cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a well-established vineyard. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve grapes on a rambling allotment situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above Bristol town centre.

"I've seen people hiding illegal substances or other items in those bushes," says the grower. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a informal group of growers who make vintage from several hidden city grape gardens tucked away in private yards and allotments throughout the city. It is too clandestine to have an formal title yet, but the group's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming world atlas, which features better-known city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of the French capital's historic artistic district neighbourhood and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them throughout the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help cities remain greener and ecologically varied. They protect land from development by establishing permanent, productive agricultural units within urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a product of the soils the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, community, environment and history of a city," notes the spokesperson.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation arrives, then the birds may take advantage to attack again. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European grape," he says, as he removes damaged and rotten berries from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Activities Throughout the City

Additional participants of the group are also making the most of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with barrels of vintage from Europe and Spain, one cultivator is collecting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. It is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a basket of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the car windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, unexpectedly took over the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her household in 2018. She experienced an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already endured three different owners," she explains. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established over 150 plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, gesturing towards the tangled grape garden. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, 60, is harvesting bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants slung across the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for more than £7 a glass in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually create quality, natural wine," she says. "It is quite fashionable, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of making wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, the various natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the liquid," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of small branches, pips and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and then add a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree another cultivator, who motivated Scofield to establish her grapevines, has assembled his friends to pick white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for wine on regular visits to France. However it is a challenge to cultivate this particular variety in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," admits the retiree with amusement. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages here, which is rather ambitious"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the only challenge faced by winegrowers. Reeve has been compelled to erect a barrier on