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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel train pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm pierces the near-constant road noise. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-draped garden fences as storm clouds gather.

This is maybe the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve grapes on a rambling allotment situated between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above Bristol downtown.

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

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's organized a informal group of growers who make wine from several discreet city grape gardens tucked away in private yards and allotments across Bristol. The project is sufficiently underground to possess an formal title so far, but the group's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Across the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which features better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of the French capital's historic artistic district neighbourhood and over 3,000 grapevines overlooking and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them all over the world, including urban centers in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help urban areas stay greener and ecologically varied. These spaces protect land from development by creating long-term, yielding farming plots within urban environments," explains the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a result of the soils the vines thrive in, the unpredictability of the climate and the individuals who care for the grapes. "Each vintage represents the beauty, local spirit, environment and heritage of a urban center," adds the president.

Unknown Eastern European Grapes

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a plant left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation arrives, then the birds may take advantage to attack once more. "This is the enigmatic Polish grape," he comments, as he removes damaged and rotten grapes from the shimmering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

The other members of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from Europe and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from approximately fifty plants. "I love the smell of these vines. It is so evocative," she says, pausing with a basket of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently 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 look after the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to future caretakers so they can keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Winemaking

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established over one hundred fifty vines situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is picking bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can make intriguing, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of upwards of seven pounds a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's resurrecting an old way of making vintage."

"When I tread the fruit, the various natural microorganisms come off the skins and enter the liquid," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, pips and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Environments and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who motivated Scofield to plant her grapevines, has assembled his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. However it is a challenge to grow this particular variety in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with amusement. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is rather ambitious"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the sole challenge encountered by winegrowers. The gardener has had to erect a fence on