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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered train arrives at a spray-painted stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm pierces the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines heavy with plump purplish grapes on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've seen individuals concealing heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," states Bayliss-Smith. "But you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who make wine from four discreet city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and allotments throughout the city. It is sufficiently underground to possess an formal title so far, but the collective's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Across the Globe

To date, the grower's plot is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's upcoming world atlas, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's historic artistic district neighbourhood and over three thousand vines overlooking and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them throughout the globe, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from construction by creating long-term, productive farming plots inside cities," 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 weather and the individuals who care for the fruit. "Each vintage represents the beauty, local spirit, environment and heritage of a city," notes the president.

Mystery Eastern European Grapes

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast again. "This is the enigmatic Polish grape," he says, as he cleans bruised and rotten berries from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you need not treat them with chemicals ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Soviets."

Collective Activities Across Bristol

The other members of the group are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from about fifty plants. "I love the smell of these vines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit resting on her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you roll down the car windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades 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 strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has previously endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the final two members of the group are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 plants perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she notes, gesturing towards the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is picking bunches of dusty purple dark berries from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can produce intriguing, pleasurable natural wine, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a glass in the growing number of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly create good, natural wine," she says. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing wine."

"When I tread the fruit, all the wild yeasts come off the surfaces into the liquid," explains Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add preservatives to eliminate the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Solutions

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to pick Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University cultivated an interest in viticulture on regular visits to Europe. However it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with amusement. "This variety is slow-maturing and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

"I wanted to make European-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the sole challenge faced by winegrowers. The gardener has had to erect a barrier on