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Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered train arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Nearby, a police siren cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is maybe the least likely spot you anticipate to find a well-established vineyard. But one local grower has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with plump mauve grapes on a sprawling allotment sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just above Bristol downtown.

"I've seen people hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who runs a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has organized a loose collective of growers who make vintage from four hidden city grape gardens tucked away in private yards and allotments across Bristol. It is too clandestine to have an official name so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming global directory, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred plants on the slopes of the French capital's historic artistic district area and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and inside Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has discovered them all over the world, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities stay greener and more diverse. They protect land from development by establishing permanent, productive farming plots within cities," says the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, local spirit, landscape and history of a city," adds the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Returning to the city, the grower is in a race against time to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he says, as he cleans damaged and rotten grapes from the glistering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely hardy. In contrast to premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Across the City

Additional participants of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. On the terrace overlooking the city's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of wine from France and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty plants. "I adore the smell of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she says, pausing with a basket of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the car windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly took over the vineyard when she moved back to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her family in 2018. She felt an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has previously survived three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of environmental care – of handing this down to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Vineyards and Traditional Production

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

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking bunches of dusty purple dark berries from lines of plants slung across the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can sell for more than seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars specialising in low-processing vintages. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can actually create good, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, all the natural microorganisms are released from the surfaces into the juice," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the wild yeast and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Solutions

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to plant her grapevines, has gathered his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce Burgundian wines in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," admits Reeve with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, 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 fence on