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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered train pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a police siren pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-covered garden fences as rain clouds gather.

It is maybe the least likely spot you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated 40 mature vines sagging with plump purplish grapes on a sprawling allotment sandwiched between a line of 1930s houses and a local rail line just above the city town centre.

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

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who runs a fermented beverage company, is not the only urban winemaker. He has organized a loose collective of growers who make vintage from several discreet urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and community plots throughout the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an formal title so far, but the collective's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Around the World

To date, the grower's plot is the sole location listed in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which features better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of the French capital's historic Montmartre neighbourhood and more than three thousand grapevines with views of and within the Italian city. Based in Italy non-profit association is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them all over the globe, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Vineyards help cities remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from construction by creating permanent, productive farming plots within urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Like all wines, those produced in cities are a product of the soils the plants thrive in, the vagaries of the climate and the people who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine embodies the beauty, local spirit, environment and history of a urban center," notes the spokesperson.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Returning to the city, the grower is in a urgent timeline to harvest the vines he grew from a cutting left in his garden by a Eastern European household. If the rain comes, then the birds may take advantage to attack once more. "Here we have the mystery Polish variety," he comments, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly disease-resistant. In contrast to noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across Bristol

The other members of the group are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. On the terrace with views of the city's shimmering waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with barrels of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from approximately 50 vines. "I love the aroma of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has devoted more than two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she returned to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She experienced an overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has already endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

A short walk away, the final two members of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established over one hundred fifty plants situated on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "They can't believe they are viewing grapevine lines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is harvesting bunches of deep violet dark berries from rows of vines arranged along the hillside with the help of her daughter, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can produce intriguing, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of wine bars specialising in low-processing vintages. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can truly create good, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, all the wild yeasts are released from the skins and enter the juice," explains the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries add preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then incorporate a commercially produced yeast."

Challenging Environments and Creative Solutions

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree Bob Reeve, who inspired Scofield to establish her grapevines, has assembled 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 PE teacher who taught at the local university cultivated an interest in wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the dampness of the valley, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with amusement. "Chardonnay is slow-maturing 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 only problem encountered by grape cultivators. Reeve has been compelled to install a fence on