Urban Vintage

That abandoned plot outside the city may be the perfect spot to plant a vineyard
Urban Vintage
Outside of Vienna, Austria

When you conjure images of wine country in your mind’s eye you are, no doubt, transported to pastoral settings probably to remote valleys like Napa or the Douro. But such is the primal urge to grow wine that you’ll find vineyards in urban settings around the world. Last year I saw a row of vines that had been planted in the median of an East Vancouver suburban street. Here follows a city guide to urban vineyards in the unlikeliest of settings.

Berlin: In Humboldthain Park on the top of a tobogganing hill is a tiny vineyard that produces an annual harvest of some 200 bottles of sparkling wine. They aren’t for sale but are given away on special occasions. There are also two small vineyards on the southern slope of the Kreuzberg hill, where since the 1960s they’ve been producing about 600 bottles of a wine called Kreuz-Neroberger.

London: In the north London district of Enfield is a new organic vineyard at Forty Hall Farm planted mainly to Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier, the classic varieties for Champagne. In total there are 7,000 vines, including Ortega and Bacchus.

Los Angeles: In the Echo Park area, Heather and Joe D’Augustine grow Syrah. They harvest about 500 pounds of grapes “in a good year,” from which they produce a red and a rosé. The biggest threats to D’Augustine Vineyard are drought and forest fires. They don’t sell their wines as they need to be licensed and bonded.

New York: Believe it or not, there’s a 47-acre farm in eastern Q ueens, 1.5 acres of which are dedicated to Chardonnay, Cabernet Franc, Cabernet Sauvignon and Merlot. Q ueens County Farm Museum Winery first produced a Cabernet Franc blend in 2006.

Paris: In Montmartre near Sacré Coeur is a vineyard of Gamay and Pinot Noir grapes measuring just over one-third of an acre. On this hill the Romans built a temple dedicated to Bacchus, the god of wine; and there has been wine production here since the 12th century, when the Benedictines built an abbey (subsequently destroyed during the French Revolution). The vines were killed off by phylloxera in the early 20th century and the land lay fallow until 1933 when a group of local artists petitioned the government to allow them to replant the vineyard. It now produces 1,500 half-litre bottles of red blend called Cuvée Les Trois Baudets.

Local artists design the labels and the bottles are auctioned off for children’s charities at 45 euros a pop. You can’t actually visit the terraced vineyard without making arrangements through the Montmartre tourist office, but you can contemplate its history over a glass of wine across the steep, cobbled street at Au Lapin Agile, the oldest cabaret bar in Paris. The best view of the fenced-off plot is from the corner of rue des Saules and rue Saint Vincent, facing the Musée Montmartre. This isn’t the only urban vineyard in Paris; in fact there are around 150 such initiatives in greater Paris, financed by a dedicated group of winemakers who call themselves Les Vignerons Franciliens.

San Francisco: The Neighbourhood Vineyards Project, the brainchild of winemakers Elly Hartshorn and Jenny Sargent, planted 230 vines of Pinot Noir in their urban vineyard in 2013. Their debut bottling, to be released this year, will be the first wine to be grown in the city in over a century. San Francisco was once ringed by vineyards, but the 1906 earthquake that burned 500 city blocks put paid to winegrowing in the city.

Thessaloniki: One of Greece’s top winemakers, Evangelos Gerovassiliou, has teamed up with a local university to plant the country’s first urban vineyard for educational purposes. The two-acre site between apartment towers and Kaftanzoglio Stadium is home to native varieties only: white Robola and Malagousia and red Agiorgitiko and Xinomavro.

Venice: Among the chain of islands that dot the Venetian lagoon is Mazzorobo, linked to Burano by a wooden bridge and home to the walled Venissa Vineyard. The ancient white Dorona grape, enjoyed by the Doges in yesteryear, is grown here. The wine is bottled in Murano glass and decorated with gold leaf.

Vienna: The only world capital producing wine in commercial quantities within its city limits, Vienna boasts 1,700 acres of vineyard tended by 600 vintners. A short metro ride from the city centre will take you to the suburb of Grinzing (shown in map to the left), famous for its Heuriger wine taverns. Here they serve the new Grüner Veltliner wines within days of fermentation the Austrian equivalent of Beaujolais Nouveau.

While there are five wineries in the Ottawa area and one across the river in Q uébec, there are no vineyards yet – to my knowledge – within the nation’s capital. Although Rideau Hall would be a good place to start. Nor are there any vineyards in Toronto, although the south-facing slope outside Scaramouche Restaurant in Benvenuto Place might be an ideal site.

All we need is a little more global warming.

Tony Aspler is the author of 17 books on wine, including his latest, Canadian Wineries.