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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a police siren pierces the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-draped fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you anticipate to find a well-established vineyard. However one local grower has managed to 40 mature vines heavy with plump mauve berries on a rambling garden plot sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just above the city downtown.

"I've seen individuals concealing illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a informal group of growers who make wine from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and allotments across the city. The project is too clandestine to possess an official name so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the Globe

So far, the grower's allotment is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which features better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's historic artistic district neighbourhood and more than 3,000 grapevines with views of and within the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the forefront of a initiative reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help urban areas stay greener and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve land from development by establishing permanent, productive agricultural units inside urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in urban areas are a product of the earth the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the climate and the people who care for the fruit. "Each vintage represents the charm, local spirit, environment and heritage of a city," notes the spokesperson.

Unknown Eastern European Grapes

Returning to Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the vines he grew from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast again. "This is the enigmatic Polish variety," he comments, as he cleans damaged and mouldy grapes from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you need not spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across the City

Additional participants of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from approximately fifty vines. "I adore the smell of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of grapes slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you open the car windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently took over the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has cultivated more than 150 vines perched on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is picking clusters of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a serving in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on low-processing wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she states. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of making vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, the various wild yeasts come off the surfaces into the liquid," says Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and then add a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Solutions

A few doors down sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to establish her grapevines, has assembled his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the sole challenge faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has had to erect a barrier on