Bristol's Garden Wine Gardens: Foot-Stomping Fruit in Urban Gardens

Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel train arrives at a spray-painted station. Nearby, a police siren pierces the near-constant road noise. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

This is maybe the last place you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants heavy with round mauve berries on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above the city downtown.

"I've noticed people hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," states the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your vines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several local vintner. He's pulled together a informal group of cultivators who produce wine from four discreet urban vineyards tucked away in private yards and allotments throughout Bristol. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Around the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned artistic district area and more than 3,000 vines with views of and inside Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the world, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help cities remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from construction by establishing long-term, yielding farming plots within cities," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a product of the soils the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who care for the grapes. "Each vintage represents the beauty, community, landscape and heritage of a city," notes the president.

Unknown Eastern European Grapes

Back in the city, the grower is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he grew from a plant left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast again. "This is the mystery Polish variety," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten berries from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. In contrast to premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Throughout Bristol

Additional participants of the group are also making the most of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from France and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from about fifty vines. "I adore the aroma of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she remarks, stopping with a container of fruit slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, unexpectedly took over the grape garden when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her household in 2018. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This plot has previously survived three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they can continue producing from the soil."

Terraced Vineyards and Natural Production

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she notes, indicating the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is picking bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from rows of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can make intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of seven pounds a serving in the growing number of wine bars specialising in low-processing wines. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she states. "It's very fashionable, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of making wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the natural microorganisms are released from the surfaces and enter the liquid," says Scofield, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were historically produced, but industrial wineries add preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Conditions and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her vines, has gathered his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to produce Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole problem encountered by winegrowers. The gardener has had to install a barrier on