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

Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted station. Close by, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is maybe the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. But one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump purplish berries on a rambling allotment situated between a line of 1930s houses and a local rail line just north of the city town centre.

"I've noticed individuals hiding illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who runs a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of growers who produce wine from several discreet city grape gardens nestled in private yards and allotments across Bristol. It is too clandestine to have an formal title yet, but the group's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Around the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of Paris's historic Montmartre area and over 3,000 grapevines overlooking and within Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the globe, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities stay greener and more diverse. These spaces protect land from construction by establishing long-term, productive agricultural units within cities," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a result of the soils the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, community, environment and history of a urban center," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to harvest the grapevines he grew from a plant abandoned in his garden by a Eastern European household. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast again. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he comments, as he removes damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you need not treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Throughout Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from France and Spain, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from about fifty vines. "I adore the smell of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a container of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you roll down the car windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the grape garden when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her family in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has previously survived three different owners," she explains. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to someone else so they can continue producing from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has established over one hundred fifty vines perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Currently, the filmmaker, 60, is harvesting bunches of dusty purple dark berries from lines of vines slung across the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can make interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than £7 a serving in the growing number of establishments specialising in low-processing vintages. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can actually make quality, natural wine," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's reviving an old way of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various natural microorganisms come off the skins into the liquid," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to plant her vines, has assembled his friends to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only problem encountered by grape cultivators. Reeve has been compelled to erect a fence on