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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Close by, a police siren pierces the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as storm clouds gather.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a well-established grape-growing plot. But one local grower has cultivated 40 mature vines heavy with plump mauve berries on a sprawling garden plot situated between a line of 1930s houses and a local rail line just north of the city town centre.

"I've seen individuals hiding heroin or other items in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a documentary cameraman who runs a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of growers who make wine from several hidden urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and allotments throughout the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Around the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming world atlas, which features more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's historic artistic district neighbourhood and over three thousand grapevines overlooking and within the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has identified them throughout the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist urban areas remain greener and more diverse. These spaces preserve open space from construction by establishing long-term, yielding farming plots within cities," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a product of the earth the plants thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who care for the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the beauty, local spirit, landscape and history of a urban center," notes the president.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to harvest the vines he grew from a cutting left in his garden by a Eastern European household. If the precipitation arrives, then the birds may take advantage to attack again. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he cleans bruised and rotten grapes from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Across Bristol

Additional participants of the group are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with barrels of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty plants. "I love the smell of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, stopping with a basket of fruit resting on her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently took over the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her household in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has previously endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they continue producing from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Natural Winemaking

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established over one hundred fifty vines situated on ledges in her expansive property, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the interwoven vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually create good, natural wine," she says. "It's very fashionable, but really it's reviving an old way of producing vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, all the wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the liquid," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a container of small branches, pips and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and then add a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who motivated his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has assembled his companions to pick white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. However it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to make French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines here, which is rather ambitious"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the only challenge faced by winegrowers. The gardener has had to install a barrier on