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Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel train pulls into a spray-painted stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous road noise. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as storm clouds form.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with round purplish berries on a rambling allotment situated between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just above Bristol town centre.

"I've seen individuals hiding illegal substances or other items in the shrubbery," states the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He has organized a loose collective of cultivators who produce wine from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots across Bristol. It is sufficiently underground to have an formal title yet, but the collective's messaging chat is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the Globe

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's historic Montmartre neighbourhood and more than three thousand grapevines with views of and inside the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist urban areas remain greener and more diverse. They preserve land from development by establishing long-term, productive agricultural units within urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in urban areas are a product of the soils the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the weather and the people who care for the fruit. "Each vintage embodies the beauty, community, landscape and heritage of a urban center," adds the spokesperson.

Unknown Polish Variety

Returning to Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the rain comes, then the pigeons may take advantage to attack once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish grape," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Soviets."

Collective Efforts Across the City

Additional participants of the collective are additionally making the most of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. On the terrace overlooking the city's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with barrels of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from about 50 vines. "I love the aroma of these vines. It is so evocative," she remarks, stopping with a container of grapes resting on her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly took over the grape garden when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her household in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established more than 150 plants situated on ledges in her expansive property, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she notes, gesturing towards the interwoven vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, 60, is picking clusters of dusty purple dark berries from lines of vines slung across the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbor's vines. She has learned that amateurs can make intriguing, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a glass in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, all the wild yeasts come off the surfaces and enter the liquid," says Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce preservatives to kill the natural cultures and then add a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her grapevines, has assembled his friends to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to France. However it is a difficult task to cultivate this particular variety in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make French-style vintages here, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the sole problem encountered by winegrowers. Reeve has had to install a fence on