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Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is maybe the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump purplish grapes on a sprawling allotment sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a local rail line just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've noticed individuals concealing heroin or other items in the shrubbery," says the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a documentary cameraman who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of growers who produce wine from four discreet city grape gardens tucked away in back gardens and allotments across the city. The project is sufficiently underground to possess an formal title yet, but the collective's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre neighbourhood and more than three thousand vines overlooking and inside the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in Japan, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens assist cities stay more eco-friendly and more diverse. They preserve open space from development by creating permanent, productive farming plots within urban environments," explains the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a product of the earth the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the charm, community, environment and history of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a plant abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. Should the precipitation arrives, then the birds may take advantage to feast once more. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European variety," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned European varieties – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across the City

The other members of the group are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. On the terrace with views of the city's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from about 50 plants. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, pausing with a container of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her family in 2018. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already endured multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Traditional Winemaking

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has cultivated over one hundred fifty plants situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is picking bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, her family member. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour'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 growing number of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing wine."

"When I tread the grapes, the various wild yeasts are released from the surfaces into the juice," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then add a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree another cultivator, who motivated his neighbor to plant her grapevines, has assembled his friends to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in viticulture on regular visits to France. But it is a difficult task to cultivate this particular variety in the dampness of the valley, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," admits Reeve with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

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