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Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel-powered train arrives at a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a police siren pierces the almost continuous road noise. Commuters hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is maybe the least likely spot you expect to find a well-established vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with round purplish grapes on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a line of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," states the grower. "But you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He's pulled together a informal group of growers who produce vintage from four hidden urban vineyards tucked away in private yards and allotments across the city. The project is too clandestine to have an official name yet, but the group's messaging chat is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, the grower's plot is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which features more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of the French capital's historic Montmartre neighbourhood and more than 3,000 grapevines with views of and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them throughout the world, including urban centers in Japan, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help urban areas stay greener and more diverse. They protect open space from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the climate and the individuals who tend the grapes. "Each vintage represents the beauty, community, landscape and heritage of a city," notes the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Returning to Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the vines he cultivated from a plant left in his allotment by a Polish family. If the rain arrives, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast again. "This is the mystery Eastern European variety," he says, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering clusters. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

Additional participants of the group are also making the most of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with casks of vintage from France and Spain, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from about fifty vines. "I adore the smell of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she says, stopping with a container of grapes slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from East Africa with her family in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Terraced Vineyards and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established more than 150 plants situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting bunches of deep violet dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that amateurs can make intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a glass in the growing number of wine bars specialising in low-processing wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an old way of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various wild yeasts are released from the skins into the juice," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "That's how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Challenging 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 one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. The former teacher, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is rather ambitious"

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