🔗 Share this article

Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel train pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant traffic drone. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is maybe the last place you anticipate to find a well-established vineyard. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with plump purplish grapes on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

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

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's organized a loose collective of cultivators who make vintage from four discreet urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and allotments throughout the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Wine Gardens Across the World

So far, the grower's allotment is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which features better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 vines on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and more than three thousand grapevines overlooking and within Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has identified them throughout the globe, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens help urban areas stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces protect land from development by creating permanent, productive agricultural units inside cities," explains the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those created in cities are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, local spirit, environment and heritage of a city," notes the president.

Unknown Eastern European Grapes

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the vines he grew from a plant left in his garden by a Eastern European household. If the rain arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the mystery Polish variety," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Soviets."

Collective Activities Throughout the City

Additional participants of the collective are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of Bristol's glistening waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with casks of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately 50 plants. "I love the aroma of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she says, stopping with a container of fruit resting on her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than 20 years working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the UK from East Africa with her family in 2018. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already survived multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they continue producing from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established more than one hundred fifty vines situated on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she notes, gesturing towards the tangled grape garden. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting clusters of deep violet dark berries from lines of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a glass in the growing number of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually create good, natural wine," she states. "It's very fashionable, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of making wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the wild yeasts are released from the surfaces and enter the juice," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the wild yeast and subsequently add a commercially produced yeast."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree another cultivator, who motivated his neighbor to plant her vines, has assembled his companions to pick white wine varieties from the 100 vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental local weather is not the only challenge faced by winegrowers. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on