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Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Close by, a police siren cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is maybe the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. But one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with round mauve berries on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed individuals concealing heroin or whatever in those bushes," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He's pulled together a loose collective of growers who make wine from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in private yards and allotments throughout the city. It is sufficiently underground to possess an formal title so far, but the group's WhatsApp group is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the World

So far, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming global directory, which features better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's renowned artistic district neighbourhood and over three thousand vines overlooking and within Turin. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards assist urban areas stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from construction by establishing permanent, productive agricultural units within urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the climate and the individuals who care for the grapes. "A bottle of wine embodies the charm, local spirit, landscape and history of a urban center," adds the president.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Back in the city, the grower is in a race against time to harvest the vines he cultivated from a cutting left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to attack again. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European variety," he comments, as he removes damaged and rotten grapes from the shimmering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Across the City

Additional participants of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. On the terrace with views of the city's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of vintage from Europe and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her dark berries from about 50 vines. "I love the smell of these vines. It is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you roll down the car windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from Kenya with her household in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the concept of environmental care – of handing this down to someone else so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Terraced Vineyards and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than one hundred fifty plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is harvesting clusters of dusty purple dark berries from lines of vines slung across the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's vines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for more than seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually make good, natural wine," she states. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing vintage."

"When I tread the fruit, all the natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the liquid," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then add a lab-grown culture."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Solutions

A few doors down sprightly retiree another cultivator, who motivated his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who worked at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. However it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

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

The temperamental local weather is not the sole problem encountered by grape cultivators. Reeve has had to install a barrier on