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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted station. Nearby, a police siren pierces the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you anticipate to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. However one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants heavy with plump purplish grapes on a sprawling allotment situated between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," states the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He's pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who make wine from several hidden urban vineyards tucked away in private yards and community plots throughout the city. It is too clandestine to possess an official name so far, but the group's messaging chat is called Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Across the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming global directory, which features better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 vines on the hillsides of Paris's historic artistic district area and over three thousand vines overlooking and inside Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement reviving city vineyards in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them throughout the globe, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help urban areas stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces protect land from construction by creating long-term, productive agricultural units inside cities," says the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in urban areas are a result of the earth the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, community, landscape and heritage of a urban center," adds the spokesperson.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he grew from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain comes, then the birds may seize their chance to attack again. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he removes bruised and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely hardy. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Throughout Bristol

The other members of the group are additionally making the most of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of wine from France and Spain, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty vines. "I love the smell of these vines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her family in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has already endured multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the concept of environmental care – of handing this down to future caretakers so they continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Vineyards and Traditional Production

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has cultivated over 150 plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "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."

Today, Scofield, sixty, is picking bunches of deep violet dark berries from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the help of her daughter, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that amateurs can make intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually create good, natural wine," she states. "It is quite on trend, but really it's resurrecting an old way of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, the various wild yeasts are released from the skins and enter the liquid," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Conditions and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to establish her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a difficult task to cultivate this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make French-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers," admits the retiree with amusement. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing 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 faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a fence on