🔗 Share this article

Every quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a police siren cuts through the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as storm clouds form.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you anticipate to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with round mauve berries on a sprawling allotment situated between a row of 1930s houses and a local rail line just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or other items in the shrubbery," states Bayliss-Smith. "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 local vintner. He's pulled together a loose collective of growers who make wine from four hidden city grape gardens tucked away in private yards and community plots throughout the city. The project is too clandestine to possess an formal title so far, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, the grower's allotment is the sole location registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming world atlas, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and over three thousand vines with views of and inside the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help cities stay greener and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from development by creating permanent, yielding farming plots inside urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the climate and the individuals who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, community, landscape and heritage of a urban center," notes the president.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to harvest the vines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the rain comes, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he cleans bruised and rotten grapes from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Collective Efforts Throughout Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from approximately 50 plants. "I love the aroma of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she says, pausing with a basket of fruit resting on her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you open the car windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her household in 2018. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has previously survived multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established more than 150 plants perched on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting clusters of dusty purple dark berries from rows of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than £7 a glass in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly create good, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but in reality it's reviving an old way of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the juice," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but commercial producers introduce preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then add a commercially produced yeast."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree another cultivator, who inspired Scofield to plant her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to produce 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 European-style vintages in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The unpredictable local weather is not the sole problem faced by winegrowers. Reeve has been compelled to erect a fence on