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Each 20 minutes or so, an older diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a police siren pierces the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped fencing panels as storm clouds gather.

It is maybe the last place you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with round mauve grapes on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just above Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed individuals hiding heroin or other items in those bushes," states the grower. "But you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only local vintner. He has pulled together a informal group of cultivators who produce vintage from four discreet city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and allotments across Bristol. The project is sufficiently underground to possess an formal title so far, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the sole location registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 vines on the hillsides of Paris's renowned artistic district area and more than three thousand grapevines overlooking and within Turin. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them all over the globe, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help urban areas remain greener and ecologically varied. They protect land from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units inside cities," says the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those produced in urban areas are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the climate and the individuals who care for the fruit. "Each vintage represents the charm, local spirit, environment and heritage of a urban center," notes the president.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Returning to the city, the grower is in a race against time to harvest the vines he grew from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Eastern European household. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may seize their chance to feast again. "Here we have the mystery Polish grape," he says, as he cleans damaged and rotten berries from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely hardy. Unlike premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you need not spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of autumn rain. On the terrace overlooking Bristol's glistening harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with barrels of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is collecting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I adore the aroma of the grapevines. The scent is so evocative," she says, pausing with a container of fruit slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the car windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly took over the grape garden when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her family in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to look after the grapevines in the garden of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured three different owners," she says. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Vineyards 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 cultivated more than 150 plants perched on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is picking bunches of dusty purple dark berries from lines of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her child, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can truly make good, natural wine," she states. "It is quite on trend, but really it's reviving an old way of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, all the natural microorganisms come off the skins into the liquid," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently incorporate a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Creative Approaches

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to pick white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English PE teacher who worked at Bristol University developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," says the retiree with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to mildew."

"I wanted to make European-style vintages in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole problem faced by winegrowers. The gardener has been compelled to erect a barrier on