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Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered station. Nearby, a police siren pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants heavy with round mauve berries on a sprawling allotment situated between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed people concealing heroin or other items in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several local vintner. He's organized a loose collective of growers who produce vintage from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and allotments across Bristol. It is too clandestine to possess an official name yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Grape Expectations.

City Wine Gardens Across the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming 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 grapevines overlooking and within Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in Japan, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens assist cities remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They protect land from construction by creating permanent, productive farming plots within urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a result of the earth the plants grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who care for the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, local spirit, environment and heritage of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a urgent timeline to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Eastern European variety," he says, as he cleans bruised and mouldy berries from the glistering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Activities Across the City

Additional participants of the collective are additionally taking advantage of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with casks of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from approximately fifty vines. "I adore the smell of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she says, stopping with a basket of fruit resting on her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her family in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the concept of environmental care – of handing this down to someone else so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Terraced Vineyards and Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the group are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has cultivated more than 150 plants situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she notes, indicating the interwoven grape garden. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is picking clusters of deep violet dark berries from rows of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her child, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a glass in the growing number of establishments specialising in low-processing wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly make quality, natural wine," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of making wine."

"When I tread the fruit, all the wild yeasts are released from the skins and enter the liquid," explains Scofield, partially submerged in a container of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "This represents how vintages were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then add a lab-grown yeast."

Challenging Environments and Creative Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who inspired Scofield to plant her grapevines, has gathered his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at the local university cultivated an interest in viticulture on regular visits to France. However it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to fungal infections."

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

The unpredictable local weather is not the only problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a barrier on