🔗 Share this article

Each 20 minutes or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

This is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with round mauve berries on a sprawling garden plot situated between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just above Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed people concealing heroin or other items in those bushes," says the grower. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only local vintner. He has pulled together a informal group of growers who produce wine from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots throughout Bristol. The project is too clandestine to have an formal title so far, but the group's WhatsApp group is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Vineyards Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of the French capital's renowned artistic district neighbourhood and more than three thousand grapevines overlooking and inside Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in Japan, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist urban areas stay greener and ecologically varied. These spaces protect land from development by creating permanent, yielding farming plots inside urban environments," explains the association's president.

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 individuals who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, local spirit, landscape and heritage of a city," adds the president.

Unknown Polish Variety

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he grew from a plant left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish variety," he comments, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from France and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I adore the smell of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she says, stopping with a basket of grapes slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you roll down the car windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they continue producing from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Natural Production

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has cultivated over 150 vines perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, 60, is picking clusters of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her child, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbor's vines. She has learned that amateurs can produce interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on low-processing wines. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly create good, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of making vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, all the natural microorganisms are released from the skins into the liquid," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, pips and red liquid. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the wild yeast and then incorporate a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his friends to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in viticulture on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make French-style vintages here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits Reeve with a smile. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental local weather is not the only problem encountered by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a barrier on