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Every quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel train pulls into a spray-painted station. Nearby, a police siren cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers rush by collapsing, ivy-draped garden fences as storm clouds gather.

This is perhaps the last place you expect to find a well-established vineyard. But one local grower has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with round purplish berries on a sprawling garden plot sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a local rail line just above the city downtown.

"I've seen people hiding heroin or other items in the shrubbery," states the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's pulled together a informal group of growers who make vintage from several hidden urban vineyards tucked away in back gardens and allotments throughout Bristol. It is too clandestine to have an formal title yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Vineyards Around the Globe

So far, the grower's allotment is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned artistic district neighbourhood and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and inside Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them throughout the world, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help urban areas remain more eco-friendly and more diverse. These spaces preserve land from development by creating long-term, yielding farming plots inside urban environments," explains the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those created in urban areas are a product of the soils the vines grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the people who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, community, landscape and history of a urban center," adds the president.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to harvest the vines he grew from a plant left in his garden by a Polish family. Should the precipitation comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish grape," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten grapes from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely hardy. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Activities Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are additionally taking advantage of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with casks of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from about 50 vines. "I love the aroma of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she says, pausing with a container of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to someone else so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established over one hundred fifty vines perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Currently, the filmmaker, 60, is harvesting bunches of dusty purple dark berries from lines of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than £7 a glass in the growing number of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually make quality, natural wine," she states. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the natural microorganisms are released from the surfaces into the juice," explains Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers introduce sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and then add a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Environments and Creative Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her grapevines, has gathered his friends to pick white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who worked at the local university developed a passion for wine on regular visits to Europe. But it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with amusement. "This variety is late to ripen and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

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