Bristol's Garden Vineyards: Foot-Stomping Grapes in Urban Spaces

Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered train pulls into a spray-painted station. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

It is maybe the last place you expect to find a well-established vineyard. But James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines heavy with plump mauve grapes on a sprawling allotment situated between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just above the city downtown.

"I've seen people hiding illegal substances or other items in those bushes," states Bayliss-Smith. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He's organized a informal group of cultivators who produce vintage from several hidden urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and community plots across the city. The project is sufficiently underground to possess an official name yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Around the World

So far, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which features better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 vines on the hillsides of the French capital's historic artistic district neighbourhood and more than three thousand vines with views of and inside the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them throughout the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens assist urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating permanent, yielding agricultural units inside urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the vines thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, local spirit, environment and heritage of a city," notes the president.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Returning to Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting left in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain comes, then the birds may take advantage to attack again. "Here we have the mystery Polish grape," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Collective Activities Throughout the City

Additional participants of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between bursts of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's glistening waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with casks of wine from France and Spain, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from about fifty vines. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, stopping with a container of grapes resting on her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on vacation."

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 overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has already endured multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the concept of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Traditional Production

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has established over 150 plants situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from rows of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to plant grapes after observing her neighbor's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for more than £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in low-processing vintages. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's reviving an old way of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various wild yeasts are released from the skins and enter the juice," says Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "That's how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the natural cultures and then incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to establish her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to France. But it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make French-style vintages in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines 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 erect a barrier on