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Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Close by, a police siren cuts through the almost continuous traffic drone. Commuters hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you anticipate to find a well-established vineyard. However one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants heavy with round purplish grapes on a rambling allotment situated between a line of 1930s houses and a local rail line just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people hiding illegal substances or other items in those bushes," states Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who runs a fermented beverage company, is among several local vintner. He's pulled together a loose collective of growers who make vintage from four hidden urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and community plots across Bristol. The project is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the Globe

So far, the grower's plot is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and over three thousand grapevines overlooking and within the Italian city. The Italian-based charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them throughout the globe, including cities in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens assist cities stay more eco-friendly and more diverse. These spaces protect land from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," explains the association's president.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a product of the soils the vines thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the grapes. "Each vintage represents the charm, community, environment and history of a city," notes the president.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the vines he grew from a cutting left in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the rain comes, then the birds may take advantage to feast once more. "This is the mystery Eastern European variety," he comments, as he cleans bruised and mouldy grapes from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, white wine grapes and additional renowned European varieties – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Throughout Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are additionally making the most of sunny interludes between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of wine from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about fifty vines. "I adore the smell of these vines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a container of grapes resting on her arm. "It's the scent of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly took over the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her household in 2018. She experienced an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has previously survived three different owners," she says. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Winemaking

A short walk away, the final two members of the collective are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated over 150 plants perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is harvesting bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her child, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's nature programming and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can make interesting, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a glass in the growing number of establishments focusing on low-processing wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can truly create good, traditional vintage," she states. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the natural microorganisms come off the skins into the liquid," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, pips and red liquid. "This represents how wines were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity active senior Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to plant her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a northern English physical education instructor who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in viticulture on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," admits Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

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

The unpredictable local weather is not the only problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has been compelled to erect a barrier on