🔗 Share this article

Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel train arrives at a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm pierces the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with round purplish berries on a sprawling allotment sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or other items in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of growers who produce wine from several hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and community plots across Bristol. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the group's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Across the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming world atlas, which features more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of Paris's renowned artistic district neighbourhood and over 3,000 grapevines with views of and inside Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities remain greener and ecologically varied. These spaces protect open space from development by establishing long-term, yielding agricultural units inside urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a result of the earth the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the climate and the individuals who care for the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, local spirit, landscape and heritage of a urban center," adds the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Returning to the city, the grower is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to feast once more. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European grape," he says, as he removes damaged and rotten berries from the shimmering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you need not treat them with chemicals ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

The other members of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. On the terrace with views of Bristol's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with casks of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from about fifty vines. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a container of fruit slung over her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she moved back to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her family in 2018. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already survived three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they continue producing from this land."

Terraced Vineyards and Natural Production

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established over one hundred fifty plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is picking bunches of deep violet dark berries from rows of vines slung across the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that amateurs can produce intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for more than £7 a serving in the growing number of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention vintages. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can actually create good, natural wine," she states. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, all the natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the liquid," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of small branches, pips and red liquid. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the wild yeast and then incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Conditions and Creative Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English PE teacher who worked at the local university cultivated an interest in viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. However it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

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