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Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a police siren pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as storm clouds gather.

This is maybe the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with round purplish berries on a sprawling allotment sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just north of the city downtown.

"I've seen individuals concealing heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only urban winemaker. He's pulled together a loose collective of growers who produce vintage from four hidden city grape gardens tucked away in back gardens and allotments throughout Bristol. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the group's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Around the Globe

To date, the grower's allotment is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which features better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of the French capital's historic Montmartre area and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them all over the globe, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from development by creating permanent, yielding agricultural units inside urban environments," explains the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a product of the soils the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, community, environment and heritage of a urban center," notes the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a plant left in his garden by a Polish family. If the rain comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast once more. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he removes damaged and rotten grapes from the shimmering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Throughout Bristol

The other members of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from Europe and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her dark berries from about fifty plants. "I love the aroma of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a container of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently took over the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her household in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to look after the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has already survived three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Vineyards and Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has established more than one hundred fifty vines situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, 60, is harvesting bunches of deep violet dark berries from rows of vines slung across the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, 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 observing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that amateurs can make interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can sell for upwards of seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually make quality, natural wine," she says. "It's very fashionable, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of making vintage."

"When I tread the fruit, all the natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the liquid," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the wild yeast and subsequently add a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Solutions

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to plant her vines, has gathered his friends to pick white wine varieties from the 100 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 regular visits to France. But 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 produce French-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers," says the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages here, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole challenge encountered by winegrowers. Reeve has had to erect a fence on