Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered train pulls into a spray-painted station. Nearby, a police siren pierces the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.
It is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a well-established vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines heavy with round purplish berries on a rambling allotment situated between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above the city downtown.
"I've noticed people concealing heroin or other items in those bushes," states Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."
The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who produce wine from several hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots across the city. The project is too clandestine to possess an formal title so far, but the group's messaging chat is called Grape Expectations.
To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the hillsides of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and over three thousand grapevines overlooking and within Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the forefront of a initiative reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them all over the globe, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Central Asia.
"Vineyards help urban areas remain greener and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units inside cities," says the organization's leader.
Similar to other vintages, those created in cities are a product of the soils the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the climate and the people who tend the grapes. "Each vintage represents the charm, community, environment and history of a city," adds the president.
Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. If the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to attack once more. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he removes damaged and rotten berries from the shimmering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they're definitely hardy. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Soviets."
The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. On the terrace overlooking the city's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is collecting her dark berries from about fifty plants. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she says, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on vacation."
The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she moved back to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her household in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has previously endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can keep cultivating from this land."
Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established over 150 plants perched on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the interwoven vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a city street."
Today, the filmmaker, 60, is picking clusters of dusty purple dark berries from lines of plants slung across the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of £7 a glass in the growing number of wine bars focusing on low-processing vintages. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually make quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's reviving an traditional method of producing vintage."
"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various wild yeasts are released from the skins and enter the liquid," explains Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, pips and red liquid. "That's how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and then incorporate a lab-grown yeast."
A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to establish her grapevines, has assembled his friends to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to France. But it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."
"I wanted to make European-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers"
The unpredictable local weather is not the sole problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a barrier on
