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Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel train arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Nearby, a police siren pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated 40 mature vines heavy with plump mauve berries on a sprawling allotment situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've seen people hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only local vintner. He has organized a informal group of cultivators who produce vintage from four hidden city grape gardens tucked away in private yards and allotments across Bristol. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the sole location listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which features more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the hillsides of Paris's historic artistic district area and more than three thousand grapevines overlooking and inside Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them all over the world, including cities in Japan, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from development by creating long-term, productive agricultural units inside cities," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a product of the soils the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, community, environment and history of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to harvest the vines he cultivated from a plant abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. If the precipitation arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to feast again. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he says, as he cleans damaged and rotten berries from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this could be a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Collective Activities Throughout Bristol

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 glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from France and Spain, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty vines. "I love the smell of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she says, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from Kenya with her family in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured multiple proprietors," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, indicating the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is picking clusters of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her child, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that amateurs can produce intriguing, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for upwards of £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly create good, natural wine," she states. "It's very fashionable, but in reality it's reviving an old way of producing wine."

"When I tread the grapes, all the natural microorganisms come off the skins and enter the liquid," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently add a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to establish her vines, has assembled his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English PE teacher who worked at Bristol University developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this location, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with amusement. "This variety is late to ripen and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only challenge encountered by winegrowers. Reeve has been compelled to erect a barrier on