🔗 Share this article

Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Commuters hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds gather.

It is maybe the last place you expect to find a well-established vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve grapes on a sprawling garden plot situated between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or whatever in those bushes," says the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who runs a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He's organized a informal group of cultivators who make wine from several hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and community plots across the city. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

City Wine Gardens Around the World

So far, the grower's plot is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which features more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of the French capital's historic artistic district area and over 3,000 vines with views of and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens assist urban areas remain greener and ecologically varied. They protect open space from development by establishing permanent, productive agricultural units inside cities," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in urban areas are a product of the soils the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the weather and the people who tend the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the charm, local spirit, environment and heritage of a urban center," notes the spokesperson.

Unknown Polish Variety

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting left in his garden by a Polish family. If the precipitation arrives, then the birds may take advantage to attack once more. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he removes bruised and rotten grapes from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Throughout Bristol

Additional participants of the group are also taking advantage of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of Bristol's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of vintage from France and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her dark berries from about 50 plants. "I love the smell of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, stopping with a container of grapes slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for charitable groups in conflict zones, unexpectedly took over the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her household in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they can continue producing from this land."

Terraced Vineyards and Traditional Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has cultivated over one hundred fifty plants perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, indicating the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is picking clusters of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can produce interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a glass in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually make good, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, the various natural microorganisms are released from the surfaces into the juice," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then add a lab-grown yeast."

Challenging Conditions and Creative Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to plant her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English physical education instructor who worked at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce French-style vintages here, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

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

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the sole challenge faced by grape cultivators. Reeve has had to erect a barrier on