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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel train arrives at a spray-painted station. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the almost continuous traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as storm clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a well-established vineyard. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with plump purplish berries on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people concealing illegal substances or whatever in those bushes," states the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who also has a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has organized a informal group of growers who make vintage from several hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots throughout the city. It is too clandestine to possess an formal title so far, but the group's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Across the Globe

So far, the grower's allotment is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming world atlas, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 vines on the slopes of the French capital's renowned Montmartre neighbourhood and over 3,000 vines overlooking and within Turin. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has identified them all over the globe, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens help urban areas remain greener and more diverse. These spaces preserve open space from construction by creating long-term, yielding farming plots within cities," says the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a product of the soils the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the beauty, local spirit, landscape and history of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Back in Bristol, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a plant left in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the precipitation comes, then the birds may take advantage to feast once more. "This is the mystery Polish variety," he says, as he removes damaged and mouldy berries from the glistering clusters. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Activities Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are additionally taking advantage of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. On the terrace overlooking Bristol's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with barrels of vintage from France and Spain, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about 50 plants. "I adore the aroma of these vines. The scent is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you roll down the car windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has spent over 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, inadvertently inherited 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 vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This plot 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 can keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Production

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established over 150 plants situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, Scofield, 60, is harvesting bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from rows of plants slung across the hillside with the help of her child, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can make interesting, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for more than seven pounds a serving in the growing number of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually make quality, natural wine," she states. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's reviving an old way of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, the various wild yeasts are released from the surfaces into the liquid," explains Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how wines were historically produced, but industrial wineries add preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then add a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Solutions

A few doors down active senior another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her vines, has assembled his companions to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. But it is a challenge to grow Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce Burgundian wines in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says Reeve with a smile. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers"

The unpredictable local weather is not the only challenge faced by winegrowers. The gardener has been compelled to erect a fence on