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Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a police siren cuts through the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as storm clouds form.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated 40 mature vines sagging with round mauve grapes on a sprawling garden plot sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just north of the city town centre.

"I've seen individuals concealing illegal substances or other items in those bushes," states Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a informal group of cultivators who make vintage from several discreet city grape gardens tucked away in private yards and community plots across the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the group's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred plants on the slopes of Paris's renowned artistic district area and more than three thousand vines with views of and within the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the globe, including urban centers in Japan, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens help cities stay greener and more diverse. These spaces preserve land from construction by creating permanent, productive agricultural units within cities," says the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a product of the soils the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who care for the grapes. "Each vintage represents the charm, community, environment and heritage of a city," notes the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Back in the city, the grower is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he grew from a cutting left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation comes, then the birds may take advantage to feast again. "This is the enigmatic Polish variety," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten grapes from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Throughout the City

Additional participants of the group are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of autumn rain. On the terrace overlooking Bristol's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately 50 plants. "I adore the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she says, pausing with a basket of grapes resting on her shoulder. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has spent over 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, unexpectedly took over the vineyard when she returned to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of handing this down to someone else so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the collective are hard at work on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. One filmmaker has established more than 150 vines perched on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is harvesting clusters of dusty purple dark berries from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can make intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of seven pounds a serving in the growing number of wine bars specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can actually create quality, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's reviving an traditional method of producing wine."

"When I tread the fruit, all the wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the liquid," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and subsequently add a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Solutions

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his friends to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at the local university cultivated an interest in viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental local weather is not the only problem encountered by grape cultivators. Reeve has been compelled to install a barrier on