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Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a police siren cuts through the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you anticipate to find a well-established grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines heavy with plump mauve berries on a sprawling garden plot situated between a line of historic homes and a local rail line just above Bristol downtown.

"I've noticed people concealing heroin or other items in the shrubbery," says the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who runs a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He has organized a loose collective of growers who make vintage from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots throughout Bristol. The project is too clandestine to have an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which features more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 vines on the hillsides of the French capital's historic Montmartre neighbourhood and more than 3,000 grapevines with views of and inside Turin. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing city vineyards in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens assist cities remain greener and ecologically varied. They preserve open space from construction by creating long-term, yielding farming plots inside cities," explains the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in urban areas are a product of the earth the vines grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the individuals who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, local spirit, environment and history of a urban center," adds the spokesperson.

Unknown Eastern European Variety

Back in Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the vines he grew from a plant left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the rain comes, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely hardy. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across the City

Additional participants of the group are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's shimmering waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with casks of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from about 50 plants. "I love the aroma of these vines. The scent is so reminiscent," she says, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she returned to the UK from Kenya with her household in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has already endured multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they continue producing from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Production

Nearby, the final two members of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has cultivated over one hundred fifty plants perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her daughter, her family member. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can produce intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of wine bars specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually create good, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's reviving an traditional method of producing wine."

"When I tread the grapes, the various wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the liquid," explains the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and then add a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Solutions

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired his neighbor to establish her vines, has assembled his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. However it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines in this location, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with amusement. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

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

The unpredictable local weather is not the only challenge faced by winegrowers. Reeve has had to erect a fence on