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Each quarter of an hour or so, an older diesel railway carriage arrives at a spray-painted station. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the near-constant road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds gather.

This is maybe the last place you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with round purplish berries on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a row of 1930s houses and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only urban winemaker. He has organized a loose collective of growers who produce wine from several hidden urban vineyards nestled in private yards and community plots across Bristol. It is sufficiently underground to have an official name so far, but the group's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Across the Globe

To date, the grower's plot is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the 1,800 plants on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and over three thousand vines with views of and within Turin. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them throughout the globe, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards assist urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units within cities," explains the association's president.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a result of the soils the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the weather and the individuals who tend the fruit. "A bottle of wine represents the charm, local spirit, environment and heritage of a urban center," adds the president.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Back in Bristol, the grower is in a urgent timeline to harvest the vines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "This is the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he says, as he cleans bruised and mouldy grapes from the glistering clusters. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you need not spray them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Across the City

The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's shimmering harbour, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from France and Spain, one cultivator is collecting her dark berries from about fifty vines. "I adore the smell of these vines. It is so evocative," she remarks, pausing with a container of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has devoted more than 20 years working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she returned to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her household in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to look after the vines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously survived three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the concept of environmental care – of handing this down to someone else so they keep cultivating from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Winemaking

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has cultivated more than 150 vines perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she notes, indicating the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, sixty, is harvesting bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes 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 worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated to plant grapes after seeing her neighbour's vines. She's discovered that amateurs can make interesting, pleasurable traditional vintage, which can sell for upwards of seven pounds a serving in the growing number of establishments focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just deeply rewarding that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she states. "It's very fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an old way of making vintage."

"When I tread the fruit, the various natural microorganisms are released from the surfaces and enter the liquid," says Scofield, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Environments and Creative Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated his neighbor to plant her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 plants he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a challenge to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the valley, with cooling tides moving through from the Bristol Channel. "I aimed to produce French-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to fungal infections."

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

The temperamental local weather is not the sole challenge faced by winegrowers. Reeve has had to erect a fence on