🔗 Share this article

Every quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted station. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines heavy with round purplish berries on a rambling garden plot sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people hiding illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's pulled together a informal group of cultivators who produce vintage from several hidden city grape gardens tucked away in back gardens and allotments throughout Bristol. The project is sufficiently underground to have an formal title yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Around the Globe

So far, the grower's plot is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of Paris's historic artistic district neighbourhood and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing 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 assist urban areas stay more eco-friendly and more diverse. They preserve open space from development by establishing permanent, yielding agricultural units within cities," says the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in urban areas are a product of the soils the vines thrive in, the unpredictability of the climate and the people who care for the grapes. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, community, environment and history of a city," notes the president.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Back in Bristol, the grower is in a urgent timeline to gather the grapevines he grew from a plant abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast again. "This is the mystery Polish grape," he says, as he cleans bruised and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Throughout Bristol

Additional participants of the group are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of Bristol's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with casks of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from about 50 plants. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. It is so reminiscent," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already survived three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to someone else so they continue producing from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled grape garden. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, 60, is picking bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants slung across the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can make interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of upwards of seven pounds a serving in the increasing quantity of establishments focusing on low-processing wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly create quality, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the wild yeasts are released from the skins and enter the juice," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers introduce preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then incorporate a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Environments and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to plant her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines 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 regular visits to France. But it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with a smile. "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 unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole challenge encountered by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a barrier on