Alex Smith, urban vintner, King's Cross, London, UKA newsclipping about an urban vineyard that had just been planted in King's Cross -- an inner-city, somewhat industrial or let's just say "well used" part of central London -- came across my newsfeed several months ago. It was hardly mainstream news, but it piqued my interest. Read the article here.

After some rooting around, I found a consulting company devoted to helping urban vintners in the London area. I became intensely intrigued in the fact that backyard grape growers were producing bottles of "Chateau Tooting - Furzedown Blush" and wondered what the terroir of the Furzedown neighbourhood of Tooting, in South London might yield. Could be absolutely horrible, but who am I to say without trying it.  I also do have an affinity for the underdog, especially since I grew Pinot Gris grapes for a number of years in a miraculously hot part of my garden in Edmonton (Northern Canada; 53 degrees North and about 113 degrees West). They were obviously planted close enough to the house's concrete foundation that they could survive even a few weeks of -35 C with some creative mulching and coddling.

I started firing off emails to see if I could get a peek at one of these urban vineyards. I emailed Alara Foods' general "info@" email address explaining who I was and what my book was about, with the prospective dates that I'd be in the UK. Was I able to perhaps come by, see the vineyard, and interview the person crazy enough to plant grapevines in central London?

I got a speedy reply from Alex Smith, the owner of Alara Wholefoods, predominantly a muesli company in an industrial park area of London. He said he'd be happy to show me his vineyard.

This was actually the catalyst for my UK-Paris-Toronto trip.

My recording setup and a ripe tomato from King's Cross

Day One> Urban Vineyard's in King's Cross, London: Loaded down with a friend's fantastic, but heavy, professional SLR camera, my usual load of notetaking equipment and other essentials, I get a mid-morning train from Bristol to London's Paddington Station. From there I take the "pink" City Line train out to King's Cross station, just a bit north of the Thames in the centre of London. As I walk past the very shiny-and-new St. Pancras Eurostar station, next to King's Cross Tube station, I'm having serious second-thoughts about the real possibility of finding a food garden, let alone a vineyard, in this busy, dense, construction-equipment strewn area, that is about as beautiful as most railway yards tend to be. 

But as I walk north along Camley Street, I hear a few birds and the industrial mood of the street lightens. Less than a five minute walk from the stations, there is the entrace to a 2-acre wildlife nature preserve clawed back from a coal yard in 1984. The Camley Street Natural Park is wildspace along a portion of Regent's Canal. I walked in just to satisfy my curiosity, but also to make sure I was heading in the right direction to the "vineyard." The guy in the cottage "office" knows exactly where I am heading and assures me that I'm on the correct route.

Sure enough, after about 15 minutes walking north on Camley Road, past smallish factory buildings and a few residential developments, I find Alara Wholefoods Ltd. My first clue is the huge mound of compost and the raised gardening boxes along the sidewalk side of the otherwise nondescript two-storey warehouse.

Alex Smith, wearing a suit!, meets me and immediately takes me over to his vineyard, just steps from the warehouse office. I have to admit, this is most micro-vineyard I've seen next to my two Pinot Gris vines at home, but I'm not sure why I expecting a half-acre of grapes in central London. This vineyard is 30 vines on a narrow south-facing slope against a chainlink fence.

closeup of the vines and the rondo grapes that escaped harvestThe grapes are a Rondo grape, an early ripening / frost and downy mildew-resistant grape, which seems like a wise choice. The vines looked rather tall and leggy for two-year olds, as it's probably a little difficult to restrict the water they get, and he had already harvested by the time I got there. They harvested 35 kg of grapes which will yield about "25 bottles of wine" when the time comes to bottle says Alex. But for now, the juice, he tells me, is happily fermenting away at his house. It will be his first vintage.

Alex then shows me around the gardens, which wtih a first stop at his shipping container that he's using as a garden shed in the shade of an old elderberry tree. He offers me a glass of Elderflower "Champagne" that he's made from a tree. It sounds like a hell of an idea, actually, as navigating through a completely foreign (to me) city, has taken a little bit of a toll. The first bottle lacks the fizz that he is looking for, so he cracks another bottle and pours two flutes of pale straw-coloured bubbly. It's sharp and citrusy (grapefruit), but completely palatable.

Elderflower "Champagne" ... not bad...

To prepare the area for the gardens and to provide seating and outdoor areas for the staff, Alex, staff and volunteers cleared 50 tonnes of rubbish, "the sort of detritus that you'd get in a dark corner within walking distance of a train station," he quips. Insalubrious is the other word he elegantly uses to describe the state of this yard before the clean up. There efforts were not without their rewards. They found two large Roman-era flat stones (limestone?), a pre-Roman stone plus another Georgian stone, which they made into a throne-like outdoor seat.

Food gardens at Alara Wholefoods, King's CrossAround the other side of the warehouse. Productive, edible landscape in action.The sheer number of fruit trees, veggies and vines (asian pears, apples, blackberries, kiwi, table grapes, mulberry, asparagus, tomatoes, Chinese pears, gooseberries, pineapple guava, pomegranate, goji berries, blueberries, raspberries, Japanese wine berries, plus a number of food plants I've never-ever heard of, etc.) and the herb gardens are lovely. Plus that sweetness from happy earth was a nice change from the diesel-coated air I had been breathing in just moments ago.

Blue perennial bean tree. Has anyone ever seen one of these? It was a new one on me.

Asian Pears; behind the tree old tires used for "potato condos"

Beehives in the gardenThere are also four beehives right in the garden, and a future fish pond for aquaculture is being prepared. The gardens have been a work in progress since moving to the site five years ago.

The food from the gardens becomes lunch in the employee lunchroom at Alara. Schools kids also come to the garden for food education and to graze and eat food from the garden.

Alex then walks me over to Booker Wholesale, a bulk grocer next door, where he's planted about 30 fruit trees as a community orchard with the blessing of the owners of the cash & carry grocer. Maybe by next year, the Camden neighbourhood residents will be toasting the harvest with a neighbourhood wine while gleaning plums, peaches, pears and cherries from the community orchard as the Eurostar train screeches by whisking travellers off to Paris in 2 hours and 15 minutes.