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Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel train arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a police siren cuts through the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as storm clouds gather.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve berries on a sprawling allotment sandwiched between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just above Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed individuals hiding illegal substances or whatever in those bushes," states the grower. "But you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who produce wine from several discreet urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and allotments across the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an formal title yet, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, the grower's plot is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which features more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 vines on the slopes of the French capital's renowned Montmartre area and over 3,000 vines with views of and within Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them throughout the globe, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities stay greener and ecologically varied. These spaces protect land from construction by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units within cities," explains the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a result of the soils the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the charm, community, environment and history of a city," notes the spokesperson.

Mystery Polish Variety

Returning to the city, the grower is in a urgent timeline to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Eastern European household. If the rain arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish variety," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten berries from the shimmering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Efforts Across Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I love the aroma of the grapevines. It is so evocative," she says, pausing with a container of grapes resting on her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her household in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already endured three different owners," 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 Natural Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established over 150 plants perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, gesturing towards the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Currently, the filmmaker, 60, is picking bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, her family member. The conservationist, a documentary producer who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can make intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for more than £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on low-processing vintages. "It is deeply rewarding that you can truly create quality, natural wine," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but really it's reviving an old way of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, all the wild yeasts are released from the skins into the liquid," explains Scofield, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and then add a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to establish her vines, has assembled his companions to pick white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who taught at the local university cultivated an interest in wine on regular visits to Europe. But it is a challenge to cultivate 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 in this location, which is a bit bonkers," says the retiree with a smile. "This variety is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

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

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