The City of Bristol's Garden Wine Gardens: Foot-Stomping Grapes in Urban Gardens

Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered train arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm pierces the near-constant traffic drone. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as storm clouds gather.

This is maybe the last place you expect to find a well-established vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated 40 mature vines heavy with plump purplish berries on a rambling garden plot sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just north of the city downtown.

"I've seen people hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," states Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He has organized a informal group of growers who produce wine from several discreet urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and community plots across the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the group's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the Globe

So far, the grower's plot is the sole location listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming world atlas, which features more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and over 3,000 grapevines with views of and inside Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them all over the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities remain greener and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve land from development by establishing long-term, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," explains the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, community, environment and heritage of a city," adds the spokesperson.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Back in Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting left in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to attack again. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European grape," he comments, as he cleans bruised and rotten berries from the shimmering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they are certainly hardy. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Collective Efforts Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are also making the most of sunny interludes between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of wine from France and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from about fifty plants. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a basket of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the car windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her family in 2018. She experienced an overwhelming duty to maintain the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has previously survived multiple proprietors," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the concept of environmental care – of passing this on to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Terraced Vineyards and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established over 150 vines perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, 60, is picking bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of vines slung across the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that hobbyists can make intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of establishments focusing on low-processing vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly create good, traditional vintage," she states. "It's very fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the liquid," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of tiny stems, pips and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down active senior another cultivator, who inspired Scofield to establish her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on regular visits to France. However it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce Burgundian wines in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to mildew."

"I wanted to make European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only challenge encountered by winegrowers. Reeve has had to erect a fence on