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Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Close by, a police siren pierces the almost continuous road noise. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as rain clouds gather.

This is perhaps the last place you expect to find a well-established vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated 40 mature vines heavy with round mauve grapes on a sprawling garden plot situated between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just north of the city town centre.

"I've seen individuals concealing illegal substances or other items in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's organized a loose collective of growers who make wine from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots across Bristol. It is too clandestine to possess an formal title so far, but the group's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Around the World

So far, the grower's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming global directory, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred plants on the slopes of the French capital's historic Montmartre neighbourhood and more than 3,000 grapevines overlooking and inside Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in Japan, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards assist urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces protect land from development by creating permanent, yielding farming plots inside cities," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a result of the earth the vines thrive in, the vagaries of the weather and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, community, landscape and history of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Eastern European Grapes

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Polish family. If the precipitation comes, then the pigeons may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the mystery Eastern European grape," he says, as he removes damaged and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of autumn rain. On the terrace overlooking the city's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about fifty vines. "I adore the aroma of these vines. It is so evocative," she says, pausing with a basket of grapes slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the car windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from Kenya with her household in recent years. She felt an strong responsibility to maintain the grapevines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already survived multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to someone else so they can continue producing from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Production

Nearby, the final two members of the group are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has cultivated over 150 plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, indicating the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can produce intriguing, enjoyable 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's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually create good, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very fashionable, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of producing vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, all the natural microorganisms are released from the surfaces into the juice," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Environments and Creative Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. However it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits Reeve with amusement. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages here, which is rather ambitious"

The temperamental local weather is not the only challenge faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a barrier on