The City of Bristol's Backyard Wine Gardens: Grape-Treading Fruit in Urban Spaces

Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous road noise. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as storm clouds form.

This is perhaps the last place you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated 40 mature vines sagging with plump purplish berries on a sprawling allotment situated between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above the city downtown.

"I've noticed individuals hiding illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," states the grower. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who runs a kombucha drinks business, is among several local vintner. He's pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who make wine from several hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and community plots across the city. The project is too clandestine to have an official name yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Wine Gardens Around the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming world atlas, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the 1,800 vines on the slopes of Paris's historic Montmartre area and more than three thousand vines with views of and within Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the world, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens assist cities remain greener and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve land from construction by establishing permanent, productive agricultural units within urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a product of the earth the plants grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, community, environment and heritage of a city," notes the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a urgent timeline to gather the grapevines he grew from a plant abandoned in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack again. "This is the mystery Eastern European grape," he comments, as he cleans damaged and mouldy grapes from the shimmering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Activities Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between bursts of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from approximately fifty vines. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit slung over her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the car windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently took over the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her family in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already survived multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they can keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 plants situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking clusters of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of vines slung across the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for more than seven pounds a glass in the growing number of wine bars specialising in low-processing wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly make quality, natural wine," she says. "It's very fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an old way of producing wine."

"When I tread the grapes, the various wild yeasts come off the skins into the liquid," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of small branches, pips and crimson juice. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown yeast."

Challenging Environments and Creative Solutions

A few doors down sprightly retiree another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to establish her vines, has assembled his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from one hundred vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at Bristol University developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to France. However it is a challenge to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the valley, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce French-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable local weather is not the only problem encountered by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on