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Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped fencing panels as storm clouds gather.

This is perhaps the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve berries on a rambling garden plot situated between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed individuals concealing illegal substances or whatever in those bushes," states the grower. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your vines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several local vintner. He has pulled together a informal group of cultivators who make wine from several hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots across the city. It is too clandestine to have an formal title so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming world atlas, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of the French capital's historic artistic district neighbourhood and over 3,000 vines with views of and within Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them all over the world, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist cities stay greener and ecologically varied. They protect land from development by creating permanent, yielding agricultural units inside cities," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a product of the soils the vines grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine embodies the charm, local spirit, landscape and history of a city," adds the spokesperson.

Mystery Polish Variety

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the vines he grew from a plant left in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast once more. "This is the mystery Eastern European grape," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the glistering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely hardy. In contrast to premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you don't have to spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Activities Throughout Bristol

The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's glistening waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of wine from France and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from about 50 vines. "I love the smell of these vines. It is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a basket of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her household in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of handing this down to someone else so they can continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 plants perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking clusters of deep violet Rondo grapes from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can make interesting, pleasurable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of producing wine."

"When I tread the fruit, the various wild yeasts are released from the surfaces into the liquid," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who motivated Scofield to plant her vines, has gathered his friends to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at the local university cultivated an interest in viticulture on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines in this location, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

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

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole challenge faced by winegrowers. The gardener has had to install a fence on