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Every 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered station. Close by, a police siren cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Commuters rush by collapsing, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.

This is maybe the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. But one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve grapes on a rambling allotment situated between a line of 1930s houses and a local rail line just north of the city downtown.

"I've noticed individuals concealing heroin or whatever in those bushes," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who runs a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's organized a loose collective of cultivators who produce wine from several discreet city grape gardens tucked away in back gardens and community plots throughout the city. The project is too clandestine to have an formal title yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Around the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming global directory, which features more famous city vineyards such as the 1,800 vines on the hillsides of Paris's renowned artistic district neighbourhood and more than 3,000 vines with views of and within the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a initiative re-establishing city vineyards in historic wine-producing countries, but has identified them all over the globe, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Vineyards assist cities stay greener and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve open space from development by establishing long-term, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," says the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a product of the earth the vines grow in, the vagaries of the climate and the people who care for the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, local spirit, environment and history of a urban center," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Back in the city, the grower is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting left in his garden by a Eastern European household. Should the precipitation arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast again. "Here we have the mystery Eastern European variety," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned French grapes – you need not spray them with chemicals ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Collective Efforts Across Bristol

Additional participants of the collective are additionally taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening harbour, where historic trading ships once floated with casks of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her dark berries from about fifty plants. "I adore the smell of these vines. It is so evocative," she says, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of southern France when you open the car windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her household in recent years. She experienced an strong responsibility to maintain the vines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously survived multiple proprietors," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Vineyards and Natural Production

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has cultivated over one hundred fifty plants perched on ledges in her expansive property, which tumbles down towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, indicating the interwoven vineyard. "They can't believe they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, 60, is picking bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of plants arranged along the cliff-side with the help of her child, Luca. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was inspired to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that amateurs can make interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can command prices of more than seven pounds a serving in the growing number of wine bars specialising in minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can actually make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but in reality it's reviving an old way of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various natural microorganisms are released from the skins into the juice," explains the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "That's how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers introduce sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the natural cultures and subsequently add a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Environments and Creative Solutions

A few doors down active senior another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her grapevines, has assembled his friends to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred plants he has laid out neatly across two terraces. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who taught at Bristol University cultivated an interest in viticulture on regular visits to France. But it is a difficult task to cultivate this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is a bit bonkers," says the retiree with a smile. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to fungal infections."

"My goal was creating Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

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