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Each quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel train arrives at a spray-painted stop. Nearby, a police siren pierces the near-constant road noise. Daily travelers rush by falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.

It is perhaps the least likely spot you expect to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has managed to 40 mature vines sagging with round mauve grapes on a rambling allotment situated between a row of historic homes and a commuter railway just above the city town centre.

"I've seen individuals hiding heroin or whatever in the shrubbery," says the grower. "Yet you simply continue ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

The cameraman, 46, a filmmaker who runs a kombucha drinks business, is not the only local vintner. He's organized a loose collective of growers who make vintage from several discreet urban vineyards nestled in back gardens and community plots throughout the city. It is sufficiently underground to possess an official name so far, but the group's messaging chat is called Vineyard Dreams.

Urban Wine Gardens Around the Globe

To date, the grower's plot is the only one registered in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming global directory, which includes more famous urban wineries such as the 1,800 vines on the slopes of Paris's renowned Montmartre neighbourhood and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. Based in Italy charitable organization is at the forefront of a movement re-establishing city vineyards in traditional winemaking nations, but has discovered them throughout the world, including cities in East Asia, South Asia and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens help cities remain greener and more diverse. They preserve land from development by creating permanent, yielding agricultural units within cities," explains the association's president.

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 individuals who care for the grapes. "Each vintage embodies the beauty, local spirit, environment and history of a urban center," adds the president.

Mystery Polish Grapes

Returning to the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a urgent timeline to gather the grapevines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his allotment by a Polish family. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast again. "This is the mystery Polish variety," he comments, as he cleans damaged and mouldy berries from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly disease-resistant. In contrast to premium grapes – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous European varieties – you don't have to treat them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Activities Throughout the City

The other members of the group are also taking advantage of bright periods between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden overlooking the city's shimmering harbour, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of wine from France and the Iberian peninsula, one cultivator is collecting her rondo grapes from about 50 plants. "I love the aroma of these vines. The scent is so reminiscent," she remarks, stopping with a container of fruit slung over her arm. "It's the scent of Provence when you open the car windows on vacation."

The humanitarian worker, 52, who has devoted more than 20 years working for charitable groups in war-torn regions, inadvertently inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the UK from East Africa with her household in recent years. She felt an overwhelming duty to maintain the vines in the yard of their recently acquired property. "This plot has already survived multiple proprietors," she says. "I really like the idea of environmental care – of handing this down to future caretakers so they can continue producing from this land."

Terraced Vineyards and Traditional Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are hard at work on the precipitous slopes of Avon Gorge. Jo Scofield has cultivated over one hundred fifty vines perched on ledges in her expansive property, which descends towards the muddy River Avon. "People are always surprised," she notes, indicating the interwoven vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing rows of vines in a urban neighborhood."

Today, the filmmaker, 60, is harvesting clusters of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of vines arranged along the hillside with the help of her daughter, Luca. The conservationist, 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 seeing her neighbor's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can make interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can sell for upwards of £7 a serving in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in minimal-intervention wines. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually make good, natural wine," she says. "It is quite fashionable, but really it's resurrecting an traditional method of producing vintage."

"During foot-stomping the fruit, all the wild yeasts come off the surfaces and enter the juice," explains the winemaker, partially submerged in a bucket of small branches, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how vintages were historically produced, but industrial wineries add preservatives to eliminate the wild yeast and subsequently incorporate a commercially produced yeast."

Difficult Conditions and Inventive Solutions

In the immediate vicinity sprightly retiree another cultivator, who inspired his neighbor to plant her vines, has gathered his friends to harvest white wine varieties from one hundred vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at the local university cultivated an interest in viticulture on annual sporting trips to Europe. But it is a challenge to grow this particular variety in the dampness of the valley, with cooling tides sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make French-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers," admits the retiree with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and very sensitive to mildew."

"My goal was creating European-style vintages here, which is a bit bonkers"

The unpredictable local weather is not the sole problem faced by grape cultivators. The gardener has had to install a fence on