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Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered station. Nearby, a police siren pierces the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds gather.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with plump mauve grapes on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just above Bristol downtown.

"I've seen people hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," states the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of cultivators who produce vintage from several discreet urban vineyards nestled in private yards and allotments across Bristol. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 vines on the hillsides of the French capital's renowned Montmartre area and more than three thousand grapevines with views of and within the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a initiative reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them all over the globe, including urban centers in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve land from construction by creating permanent, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," explains the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a result of the soils the plants thrive in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who tend the fruit. "Each vintage represents the beauty, community, environment and heritage of a urban center," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a urgent timeline to harvest the vines he cultivated from a plant abandoned in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the rain comes, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he removes bruised and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across Bristol

The other members of the group are also making the most of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with casks of wine from France and Spain, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from about 50 plants. "I love the smell of the grapevines. It is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a basket of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the car windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the grape garden when she moved back to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her family in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously survived three different owners," she explains. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Terraced Gardens and Traditional Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established more than 150 plants perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is harvesting bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of vines slung across the hillside with the help of her child, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was inspired to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can make intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a glass in the growing number of wine bars specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly create good, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various natural microorganisms are released from the skins into the juice," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, pips and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add preservatives to kill the natural cultures and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to plant her grapevines, has gathered his friends to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a difficult task to cultivate this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to make French-style vintages in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental local weather is not the only problem encountered by winegrowers. Reeve has had to install a fence on