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Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

It is maybe the last place you anticipate to find a well-established vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants heavy with round purplish berries on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only local vintner. He has pulled together a loose collective of growers who produce wine from several discreet city grape gardens nestled in private yards and community plots across the city. The project is too clandestine to possess an official name so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association'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 over three thousand grapevines overlooking and inside the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them all over the globe, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help urban areas stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating permanent, yielding farming plots inside urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a product of the earth the plants grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, community, environment and history of a city," notes the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Grapes

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to harvest the grapevines he cultivated from a plant abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the rain comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast again. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he comments, as he removes bruised and mouldy berries from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was developed by the Soviets."

Collective Activities Across the City

The other members of the group are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between bursts of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately 50 plants. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit resting on her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, unexpectedly took over the vineyard when she moved back to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her household in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured three different owners," she explains. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they can continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has cultivated over one hundred fifty plants situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, 60, is picking bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of plants slung across the cliff-side with the assistance of her child, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbor's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce intriguing, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of upwards of seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an old way of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the natural microorganisms are released from the skins and enter the liquid," explains the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who motivated Scofield to plant her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across two terraces. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to produce French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," says the retiree with amusement. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines here, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only challenge faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has had to install a barrier on