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Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Close by, a police siren pierces the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a well-established vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with round purplish grapes on a sprawling garden plot sandwiched between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of the city downtown.

"I've seen people hiding heroin or other items in those bushes," states Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of growers who make wine from several discreet urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and allotments across the city. It is sufficiently underground to possess an formal title yet, but the group's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Around the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming world atlas, which features better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and over 3,000 vines overlooking and within Turin. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them throughout the globe, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities stay greener and more diverse. They preserve land from development by creating long-term, productive agricultural units within urban environments," explains the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those created in urban areas are a product of the earth the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, community, landscape and history of a urban center," adds the president.

Unknown Eastern European Grapes

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a plant left in his allotment by a Polish family. If the precipitation comes, then the pigeons may take advantage to attack once more. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he says, as he removes damaged and mouldy grapes from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Throughout the City

Additional participants of the collective are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's shimmering waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with casks of vintage from France and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from about fifty vines. "I love the smell of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she says, pausing with a container of grapes resting on her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the car windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for charitable groups in conflict zones, unexpectedly took over the vineyard when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her family in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Vineyards and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established more than one hundred fifty vines situated on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, indicating the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting clusters of dusty purple dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She has learned that amateurs can make interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can sell for more than £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in low-processing vintages. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she states. "It's very on trend, but really it's resurrecting an old way of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, the various wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the liquid," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of small branches, pips and crimson juice. "That's how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Environments and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who motivated his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has gathered his companions to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for wine on regular visits to France. But it is a challenge to cultivate this particular variety in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to produce French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"I wanted to make European-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers"

The unpredictable local weather is not the sole challenge encountered by grape cultivators. The gardener has had to erect a fence on