🔗 Share this article

Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel train arrives at a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers rush by collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

This is perhaps the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants heavy with plump purplish grapes on a rambling allotment situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above the city downtown.

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

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who runs a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He has pulled together a informal group of growers who make vintage from several hidden urban vineyards tucked away in private yards and allotments across Bristol. The project is too clandestine to have an official name yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Across the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of the French capital's historic Montmartre neighbourhood and over three thousand vines with views of and within Turin. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them all over the globe, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces protect open space from construction by establishing long-term, productive agricultural units within urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a product of the soils the plants grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the people who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, community, landscape and heritage of a urban center," adds the president.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the vines he cultivated from a plant abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the enigmatic Polish variety," he comments, as he cleans damaged and rotten grapes from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Efforts Throughout Bristol

The other members of the group are also making the most of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. On the terrace overlooking the city's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about fifty vines. "I adore the aroma of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a basket of grapes slung over her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has already endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the concept of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they continue producing from this land."

Terraced Gardens and Traditional Production

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated over 150 vines perched on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, indicating the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is picking clusters of dusty purple dark berries from lines of plants slung across the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was inspired to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on low-processing wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly make good, natural wine," she states. "It's very fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an old way of producing vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, the various natural microorganisms come off the surfaces and enter the juice," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, pips and red liquid. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has gathered his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to France. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce French-style vintages in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The temperamental local weather is not the sole problem encountered by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on