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Each 20 minutes or so, an older diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered station. Close by, a police siren pierces the almost continuous traffic drone. Commuters hurry past collapsing, ivy-covered garden fences as storm clouds form.

It is maybe the least likely spot you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. But one local grower has cultivated four dozen established plants heavy with round mauve berries on a rambling allotment situated between a line of 1930s houses and a local rail line just above the city downtown.

"I've noticed individuals hiding illegal substances or whatever in the shrubbery," says Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's organized a informal group of cultivators who make vintage from several hidden urban vineyards nestled in private yards and allotments across the city. The project is sufficiently underground to have an formal title yet, but the group's WhatsApp group is named Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Vineyards Across the World

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which includes better-known urban wineries such as the eighteen hundred vines on the hillsides of Paris's historic Montmartre area and more than three thousand vines with views of and within the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has identified them all over the world, including urban centers in Japan, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens help cities remain more eco-friendly and more diverse. They preserve land from development by establishing long-term, yielding agricultural units inside cities," explains the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in urban areas are a result of the earth the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the weather and the people who tend the fruit. "Each vintage embodies the charm, local spirit, environment and history of a city," adds the president.

Unknown Polish Grapes

Back in the city, the grower is in a race against time to gather the vines he grew from a plant abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. Should the precipitation arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to attack once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he comments, as he removes bruised and rotten berries from the glistering bunches. "The variety remains uncertain what variety they are, but they're definitely disease-resistant. In contrast to premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this could be a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across Bristol

The other members of the collective are also making the most of bright periods between showers of fall precipitation. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of vintage from Europe and Spain, Katy Grant is collecting her rondo grapes from about 50 vines. "I love the smell of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she says, stopping with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you open the car windows on vacation."

Grant, 52, who has devoted more than two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, inadvertently inherited the grape garden when she returned to the UK from East Africa with her household in 2018. She experienced an overwhelming duty to maintain the vines in the garden of their new home. "This plot has previously survived multiple proprietors," she explains. "I really like the idea of natural stewardship – of passing this on to future caretakers so they continue producing from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Production

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has cultivated more than one hundred fifty plants situated on terraces in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a city street."

Today, Scofield, 60, is picking bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of vines slung across the hillside with the assistance of her child, her family member. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's Gardeners' World, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbor's vines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce interesting, pleasurable natural wine, which can sell for upwards of seven pounds a glass in the growing number of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention vintages. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can truly make good, traditional vintage," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's reviving an traditional method of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the grapes, the various wild yeasts come off the skins and enter the liquid," explains the winemaker, partially submerged in a container of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and subsequently add a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Approaches

A few doors down active senior another cultivator, who motivated Scofield to plant her grapevines, has gathered his companions to harvest white wine varieties from the 100 plants he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. Reeve, a northern English PE teacher who worked at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However it is a difficult task to cultivate Chardonnay grapes in the dampness of the gorge, with cooling tides moving through from the nearby estuary. "I wanted to make Burgundian wines here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits the retiree with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the only challenge encountered by grape cultivators. Reeve has had to erect a fence on