🔗 Share this article

Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel-powered train arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Close by, a police siren pierces the almost continuous road noise. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds form.

This is perhaps the last place you expect to find a well-established vineyard. But one local grower has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with round mauve berries on a sprawling garden plot situated between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of the city town centre.

"I've noticed people concealing heroin or whatever in those bushes," says the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a documentary cameraman who runs a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He's organized a loose collective of growers who make wine from four discreet city grape gardens nestled in private yards and community plots across Bristol. The project is sufficiently underground to have an formal title yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the World

So far, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned artistic district neighbourhood and more than three thousand grapevines with views of and inside Turin. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist urban areas remain more eco-friendly and more diverse. They protect open space from development by creating permanent, yielding agricultural units within cities," 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 climate and the people who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, local spirit, landscape and history of a urban center," notes the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Back in the city, the grower is in a urgent timeline to harvest the grapevines he grew from a cutting left in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the mystery Polish grape," he comments, as he removes damaged and rotten grapes from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you need not spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Activities Throughout Bristol

The other members of the group are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. On the terrace with views of the city's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with casks of wine from France and Spain, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from about 50 vines. "I love the smell of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the car windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from Kenya with her household in 2018. She felt an strong responsibility to look after the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has established more than 150 vines perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking clusters of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make intriguing, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than £7 a serving in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can truly create quality, natural wine," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of making wine."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, all the wild yeasts are released from the skins and enter the liquid," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of small branches, pips and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his friends to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. The former teacher, a northern English physical education instructor who worked at the local university cultivated an interest in wine on regular visits to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce Burgundian wines in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

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