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Every quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel train arrives at a spray-painted station. Close by, a police siren cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Commuters hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds form.

This is maybe the least likely spot you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. But one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with plump purplish grapes on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of the city town centre.

"I've noticed people hiding heroin or other items in the shrubbery," says the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your vines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who runs a fermented beverage company, is among several local vintner. He's organized a loose collective of growers who make wine from four hidden urban vineyards tucked away in private yards and community plots across Bristol. It is too clandestine to possess an formal title yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

City Vineyards Across the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which features more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and over 3,000 grapevines overlooking and inside Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them throughout the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities remain greener and more diverse. These spaces preserve open space from construction by establishing long-term, productive farming plots inside cities," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, local spirit, landscape and heritage of a urban center," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting left in his allotment by a Polish family. If the rain arrives, then the birds may take advantage to attack again. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European grape," he comments, as he cleans bruised and rotten grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you don't have to spray them with chemicals ... this could be a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Activities Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between bursts of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is harvesting her rondo grapes from about fifty plants. "I love the smell of these vines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a basket of grapes resting on her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her household in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has previously survived three different owners," she explains. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can continue producing from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines situated on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, Scofield, 60, is picking bunches of dusty purple dark berries from rows of plants slung across the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for more than £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of wine bars specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she states. "It's very fashionable, but in reality it's reviving an old way of making wine."

"When I tread the grapes, the various natural microorganisms are released from the skins and enter the juice," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of small branches, pips and red liquid. "That's how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently add a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to France. However it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes 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 very sensitive to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only challenge faced by winegrowers. The gardener has been compelled to install a barrier on