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Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel train arrives at a spray-painted station. Nearby, a police siren cuts through the near-constant traffic drone. Commuters hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is maybe the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with plump mauve grapes on a sprawling allotment situated between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've noticed individuals concealing illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a documentary cameraman who runs a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who make wine from several hidden city grape gardens tucked away in private yards and allotments across the city. It is sufficiently underground to possess an formal title so far, but the group's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the World

To date, the grower's allotment is the sole location listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned Montmartre area and over 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing city vineyards in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them throughout the globe, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help urban areas remain more eco-friendly and more diverse. These spaces protect land from construction by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," explains the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in urban areas are a product of the earth the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, local spirit, landscape and heritage of a urban center," adds the president.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the grapevines he grew from a plant left in his allotment by a Polish family. If the precipitation comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the mystery Polish grape," he says, as he removes damaged and mouldy berries from the glistering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they are certainly hardy. Unlike noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

The other members of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from approximately 50 plants. "I love the aroma of these vines. It is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you open the car windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she moved back to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her family in 2018. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already endured three different owners," she explains. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Vineyards and Traditional Production

Nearby, the final two members of the group are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has cultivated over 150 vines situated on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, Scofield, 60, is harvesting bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make interesting, pleasurable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of seven pounds a glass in the growing number of establishments specialising in low-processing vintages. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly make good, natural wine," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the wild yeasts come off the surfaces into the liquid," says Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "That's how wines were historically produced, but commercial producers introduce sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently incorporate a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who motivated Scofield to plant her vines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for wine on regular visits to France. However it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the dampness of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a fence on