🔗 Share this article

Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel-powered train arrives at a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a police siren cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a well-established grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve berries on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just above the city downtown.

"I've noticed individuals concealing illegal substances or other items in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your vines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who runs a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He's organized a informal group of growers who make vintage from several hidden city grape gardens nestled in private yards and community plots across the city. It is too clandestine to possess an formal title so far, but the group's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the slopes of Paris's historic Montmartre area and more than three thousand vines overlooking and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them all over the globe, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens help urban areas stay more eco-friendly and more diverse. They preserve open space from construction by establishing permanent, yielding farming plots inside urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in urban areas are a result of the earth the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the weather and the people who tend the fruit. "Each vintage embodies the charm, local spirit, landscape and heritage of a urban center," notes the spokesperson.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a plant left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast again. "This is the mystery Polish variety," he says, as he removes bruised and mouldy grapes from the shimmering clusters. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely hardy. In contrast to premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you need not spray them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between bursts of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of Bristol's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from Europe and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from about fifty vines. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she says, pausing with a container of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the car windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her household in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the garden of their new home. "This vineyard has previously survived three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of environmental care – of passing this on to someone else so they can continue producing from this land."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Winemaking

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has established more than one hundred fifty plants situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the silty River Avon. "People are always surprised," she notes, gesturing towards the interwoven vineyard. "They can't believe they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking clusters of dusty purple Rondo grapes from rows of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her daughter, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's gardening shows, was inspired to plant grapes after observing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that hobbyists can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for more than seven pounds a serving in the growing number of establishments focusing on low-processing wines. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly create quality, natural wine," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing wine."

"When I tread the grapes, the various natural microorganisms are released from the skins into the juice," says Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, pips and crimson juice. "This represents how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a lab-grown yeast."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to establish her vines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has arranged precisely across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on annual sporting trips to France. However it is a challenge to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the valley, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce French-style vintages here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole problem encountered by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on