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Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered station. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers rush by collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

This is maybe the last place you expect to find a well-established vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated 40 mature vines sagging with plump purplish grapes on a sprawling allotment sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a local rail line just above the city town centre.

"I've noticed individuals concealing heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who runs a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who produce vintage from four discreet city grape gardens tucked away in back gardens and community plots throughout Bristol. It is too clandestine to possess an official name so far, but the group's messaging chat is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, the grower's plot is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming global directory, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of the French capital's renowned artistic district area and more than three thousand grapevines overlooking and within Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens assist cities remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They preserve land from construction by creating long-term, productive agricultural units inside cities," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a product of the soils the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, community, landscape and heritage of a city," adds the president.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he cultivated from a plant left in his garden by a Polish family. Should the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast once more. "This is the enigmatic Polish variety," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy grapes from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not treat them with chemicals ... this could be a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking Bristol's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of vintage from Europe and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty plants. "I love the aroma of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a basket of grapes resting on her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, unexpectedly took over the grape garden when she moved back to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her household in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has previously endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they can continue producing from this land."

Terraced Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established more than one hundred fifty plants perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the silty River Avon. "People are always surprised," she notes, indicating the tangled grape garden. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking clusters of dusty purple dark berries from lines of plants slung across the hillside with the assistance of her child, Luca. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that hobbyists can make interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of £7 a serving in the growing number of wine bars specialising in low-processing wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite fashionable, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of making wine."

"When I tread the grapes, the various natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the liquid," says Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, pips and red liquid. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and then incorporate a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits Reeve with a smile. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the only problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on