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Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered train pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Close by, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the almost continuous traffic drone. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-draped fencing panels as rain clouds form.

This is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with round purplish grapes on a sprawling garden plot sandwiched between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just north of Bristol downtown.

"I've noticed individuals hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your vines."

The cameraman, 46, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of growers who make vintage from four discreet city grape gardens nestled in private yards and community plots across the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an official name yet, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

City Vineyards Around the World

To date, the grower's plot is the sole location registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of Paris's historic Montmartre area and over three thousand grapevines overlooking and inside the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them all over the globe, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help urban areas stay greener and ecologically varied. They protect open space from construction by creating permanent, productive farming plots within cities," explains the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in urban areas are a result of the earth the plants thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the people who care for the fruit. "Each vintage represents the charm, community, environment and heritage of a city," notes the spokesperson.

Unknown Polish Variety

Back in the city, the grower is in a race against time to harvest the vines he grew from a plant left in his garden by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation comes, then the birds may take advantage to attack again. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish grape," he comments, as he cleans damaged and mouldy grapes from the shimmering clusters. "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 don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Efforts Across Bristol

The other members of the group are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. On the terrace with views of Bristol's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with casks of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from about fifty vines. "I adore the smell of these vines. It is so evocative," she remarks, stopping with a basket of fruit resting on her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the car windows on vacation."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the United Kingdom from Kenya 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 previously endured three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can continue producing from the soil."

Terraced Gardens and Traditional Production

A short walk away, the final two members of the group are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, gesturing towards the tangled vineyard. "They can't believe they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is harvesting bunches of dusty purple dark berries from lines of vines arranged along the cliff-side with the assistance of her child, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbor's vines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce intriguing, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than £7 a serving in the growing number of wine bars specialising in low-processing vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing vintage."

"When I tread the fruit, the various natural microorganisms are released from the skins into the juice," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries add sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently add a lab-grown culture."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree another cultivator, who motivated his neighbor to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to pick white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who worked at the local university developed a passion for wine on regular visits to Europe. However it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to mildew."

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

The temperamental local weather is not the sole challenge faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to install a fence on