🔗 Share this article

Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a spray-painted stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-draped fencing panels as rain clouds form.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated 40 mature vines heavy with plump mauve grapes on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of 1930s houses and a local rail line just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've noticed people hiding heroin or other items in those bushes," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who runs a fermented beverage company, is not the only local vintner. He's pulled together a loose collective of growers who make vintage from four hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and community plots across the city. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the group's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Around the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming global directory, which features more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of the French capital's renowned Montmartre area and more than 3,000 grapevines with views of and within Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has discovered them throughout the globe, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help cities remain greener and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating permanent, yielding agricultural units inside cities," says the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a result of the soils the vines thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who tend the fruit. "Each vintage embodies the beauty, local spirit, environment and heritage of a urban center," notes the spokesperson.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the vines he grew from a plant abandoned in his garden by a Eastern European household. If the precipitation comes, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast once more. "This is the mystery Polish variety," he says, as he cleans bruised and rotten grapes from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they are certainly hardy. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you need not treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

The other members of the group are additionally making the most of bright periods between bursts of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of wine from France and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I love the smell of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she says, stopping with a container of grapes slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has devoted more than 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her household in 2018. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has already endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of handing this down to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated over 150 plants perched on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of vines slung across the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbor's vines. She has learned that hobbyists can make intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of £7 a serving in the growing number of establishments focusing on low-processing wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly make good, natural wine," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the juice," explains the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Environments and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her vines, has gathered his friends to pick white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a challenge to cultivate this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to fungal infections."

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

The temperamental local weather is not the only problem faced by winegrowers. The gardener has had to install a barrier on