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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel train arrives at a spray-painted station. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds form.

This is perhaps the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines heavy with plump purplish berries on a sprawling garden plot sandwiched between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed people hiding illegal substances or other items in those bushes," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of growers who produce wine from four hidden city grape gardens tucked away in back gardens and community plots throughout the city. It is sufficiently underground to possess an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the World

So far, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location listed in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred plants on the slopes of Paris's historic Montmartre area and over three thousand vines with views of and within Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing 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 assist cities stay greener and more diverse. They protect open space from development by creating long-term, yielding farming plots within urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those created in urban areas are a product of the soils the vines grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the people who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, community, landscape and history of a city," adds the spokesperson.

Mystery Eastern European Grapes

Returning to Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the vines he grew from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the rain comes, then the birds may seize their chance to feast once more. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European grape," he comments, as he removes bruised and mouldy berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across the City

The other members of the collective are additionally taking advantage of bright periods between bursts of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of wine from Europe and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she says, stopping with a container of grapes resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her household in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she explains. "I really like the concept of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they can continue producing from this land."

Terraced Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines situated on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking bunches of dusty purple dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing wine."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the natural microorganisms come off the surfaces into the juice," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries add preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and then incorporate a lab-grown yeast."

Challenging Conditions and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to establish her vines, has gathered his friends to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. The former teacher, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the dampness of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to make French-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers," says the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only challenge encountered by winegrowers. The gardener has been compelled to erect a barrier on