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Each 20 minutes or so, an older diesel-powered train pulls into a spray-painted station. Close by, a police siren pierces the almost continuous road noise. Daily travelers 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 grape-growing plot. However James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated four dozen established plants sagging with plump mauve grapes on a rambling garden plot situated between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just above Bristol town centre.

"I've seen people concealing heroin or other items in those bushes," says Bayliss-Smith. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

Bayliss-Smith, 46, a documentary cameraman who runs a kombucha drinks business, is among several urban winemaker. He's organized a loose collective of cultivators who make wine from four discreet city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and community plots across Bristol. It is too clandestine to have an formal title yet, but the collective's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

City Wine Gardens Across the Globe

To date, Bayliss-Smith's plot is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's forthcoming world atlas, which includes more famous city vineyards such as the eighteen hundred vines on the hillsides of Paris's historic artistic district area and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement reviving urban grape cultivation in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them all over the globe, including urban centers in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Grape gardens assist urban areas remain more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. These spaces preserve land from development by creating long-term, yielding agricultural units within urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those produced in cities are a product of the earth the vines grow in, the unpredictability of the climate and the people who tend the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the charm, local spirit, landscape and history of a city," adds the president.

Mystery Eastern European Variety

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting left in his allotment by a Polish family. If the precipitation arrives, then the birds may seize their chance to feast once more. "This is the enigmatic Polish grape," he says, as he removes damaged and mouldy grapes from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they're definitely disease-resistant. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and other famous European varieties – you don't have to treat them with pesticides ... this could be a special variety that was bred by the Soviets."

Collective Efforts Throughout the City

Additional participants of the group are additionally taking advantage of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. On the terrace overlooking Bristol's glistening waterfront, where historic trading ships once bobbed with casks of vintage from Europe and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about 50 plants. "I love the smell of the grapevines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a container of fruit slung over her shoulder. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the vehicle windows on holiday."

Grant, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for charitable groups in conflict zones, unexpectedly inherited the grape garden when she returned to the UK from East Africa with her household in 2018. She experienced an overwhelming duty to look after the grapevines in the yard of their new home. "This vineyard has previously survived three different owners," she explains. "I deeply appreciate the idea of natural stewardship – of handing this down to someone else so they can keep cultivating from this land."

Sloping Gardens and Traditional Production

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has established over 150 plants situated on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the silty River Avon. "Visitors frequently express amazement," she notes, gesturing towards the interwoven grape garden. "They can't believe they can see rows of vines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is harvesting bunches of deep violet Rondo grapes from rows of vines slung across the cliff-side with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. Scofield, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to Netflix's nature programming and television network's gardening shows, was inspired to plant grapes after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She has learned that hobbyists can make intriguing, enjoyable natural wine, which can command prices of more than £7 a serving in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It is incredibly satisfying that you can actually create good, natural wine," she says. "It's very on trend, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of making vintage."

"When I tread the grapes, the various wild yeasts are released from the surfaces into the juice," says the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of tiny stems, pips and crimson juice. "That's how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers add preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently add a commercially produced culture."

Challenging Environments and Inventive Approaches

In the immediate vicinity active senior another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her vines, has gathered his friends to pick white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has arranged precisely across multiple levels. The former teacher, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who taught at the local university developed a passion for viticulture on regular visits to Europe. However it is a difficult task to grow Chardonnay grapes in the humidity of the gorge, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make French-style vintages in this location, which is a bit bonkers," says Reeve with a smile. "This variety is slow-maturing and very sensitive to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages in this environment, which is a bit bonkers"

The temperamental Bristol climate is not the sole problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has had to erect a barrier on