🔗 Share this article

Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a police siren cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with plump purplish berries on a rambling garden plot situated between a line of historic homes and a local rail line just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people concealing illegal substances or whatever in those bushes," says Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He's pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who make vintage from four hidden urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and community plots throughout the city. It is sufficiently underground to have an formal title so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Wine Gardens Across the Globe

So far, the grower's allotment is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which features more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of the French capital's historic artistic district area and over 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them throughout the world, including urban centers in East Asia, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help urban areas stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from construction by establishing permanent, productive farming plots inside cities," explains the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those created in urban areas are a result of the earth the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the climate and the people who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the charm, local spirit, environment and heritage of a urban center," adds the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Grapes

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a urgent timeline to gather the vines he cultivated from a plant abandoned in his allotment by a Polish family. If the rain comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack again. "Here we have the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he says, as he removes damaged and rotten berries from the shimmering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this is possibly a special variety that was developed by the Soviets."

Collective Efforts Throughout the City

Additional participants of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about 50 vines. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of grapes slung over her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently took over the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her household in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has previously endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced 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 more than one hundred fifty plants perched on ledges in her expansive property, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her child, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can produce intriguing, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for upwards of £7 a serving in the growing number of wine bars specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of making wine."

"When I tread the grapes, all the wild yeasts come off the surfaces and enter the juice," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to plant her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. The former teacher, a northern English PE teacher who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," admits the retiree with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make European-style vintages in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the only challenge faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a fence on