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Each 20 minutes or so, an ageing diesel railway carriage arrives at a graffiti-covered stop. Nearby, a law enforcement alarm cuts through the almost continuous road noise. Commuters hurry past falling apart, ivy-draped garden fences as rain clouds form.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has managed to four dozen established plants sagging with plump purplish grapes on a rambling allotment sandwiched between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just above the city downtown.

"I've seen people concealing illegal substances or whatever in those bushes," states the grower. "But you just get on with it ... and continue caring for your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a filmmaker who runs a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He has organized a informal group of cultivators who produce wine from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots across the city. It is sufficiently underground to possess an official name yet, but the collective's WhatsApp group is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's allotment is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming world atlas, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred plants on the hillsides of Paris's renowned Montmartre area and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the vanguard of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has identified them all over the globe, including urban centers in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They preserve land from construction by creating permanent, productive farming plots within urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a product of the earth the plants thrive in, the unpredictability of the climate and the people who care for the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the charm, community, landscape and heritage of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Eastern European Grapes

Returning to the city, the grower is in a urgent timeline to harvest the grapevines he grew from a plant left in his garden by a Eastern European household. If the precipitation arrives, then the birds may take advantage to feast once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Polish variety," he comments, as he removes bruised and rotten berries from the glistering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly hardy. In contrast to premium grapes – Pinot Noir, Chardonnay and additional renowned European varieties – you need not treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Efforts Throughout the City

The other members of the collective are also taking advantage of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's glistening waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from approximately 50 vines. "I adore the aroma of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she says, pausing with a basket of fruit slung over her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of Provence when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, 52, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in conflict zones, unexpectedly took over the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her family in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to maintain the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously endured three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to someone else so they can continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Winemaking

A short walk away, the remaining cultivators of the group are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established over 150 plants perched on terraces in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she says, gesturing towards the interwoven vineyard. "They can't believe they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking clusters of deep violet Rondo grapes from lines of plants slung across the cliff-side with the help of her child, her family member. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has worked on Netflix's Great National Parks series and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to plant grapes after observing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce interesting, pleasurable natural wine, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually create quality, natural wine," she says. "It's very on trend, but in reality it's resurrecting an traditional method of making wine."

"When I tread the grapes, all the wild yeasts are released from the skins into the juice," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a container of small branches, seeds and red liquid. "That's how vintages were made traditionally, but commercial producers introduce sulphur [dioxide] to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently add a lab-grown yeast."

Difficult Environments and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who inspired Scofield to establish her vines, has gathered his companions to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born PE teacher who taught at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the gorge, with temperature fluctuations moving through from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make French-style vintages here, which is somewhat ambitious," admits Reeve with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"I wanted to make Burgundian wines in this environment, which is rather ambitious"

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the sole problem faced by grape cultivators. Reeve has had to erect a fence on