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Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel-powered train pulls into a spray-painted station. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers rush by collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as storm clouds form.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a well-established vineyard. However one local grower has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with plump mauve berries on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just above the city town centre.

"I've noticed individuals concealing heroin or other items in those bushes," states Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who runs a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of growers who make wine from several hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots across the city. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the group's messaging chat is called Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Around the World

To date, the grower's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming world atlas, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned Montmartre area and more than three thousand vines with views of and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in Japan, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help cities stay greener and more diverse. They protect open space from development by establishing permanent, yielding farming plots inside urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a product of the soils the plants grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who tend the grapes. "Each vintage represents the charm, community, landscape and history of a urban center," adds the president.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting left in his garden by a Polish family. If the precipitation comes, then the birds may take advantage to feast again. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten berries from the shimmering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not treat them with chemicals ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Soviets."

Group Activities Across Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with casks of vintage from Europe and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I love the aroma of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she says, stopping with a container of grapes resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly took over the vineyard when she returned to the UK from East Africa with her household in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has previously survived three different owners," she says. "I really like the idea of environmental care – of handing this down to someone else so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Production

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established over 150 plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the interwoven vineyard. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, Scofield, 60, is picking clusters of deep violet dark berries from rows of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to plant grapes after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce intriguing, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for upwards of £7 a glass in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly create good, natural wine," she states. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of producing wine."

"When I tread the fruit, all the natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the juice," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries add preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently incorporate a commercially produced yeast."

Challenging Conditions and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down active senior another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has assembled his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from the 100 plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is rather ambitious"

The temperamental local weather is not the only problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a barrier on