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Every quarter of an hour or so, an ageing diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a spray-painted station. Close by, a police siren cuts through the near-constant traffic drone. Daily travelers hurry past collapsing, ivy-draped fencing panels as storm clouds gather.

This is perhaps the least likely spot you anticipate to find a perfectly formed vineyard. However one local grower has cultivated 40 mature vines sagging with plump purplish grapes on a sprawling garden plot situated between a line of historic homes and a commuter railway just above Bristol town centre.

"I've noticed individuals concealing heroin or whatever in those bushes," says the grower. "But you simply continue ... and keep tending to your vines."

Bayliss-Smith, forty-six, a filmmaker who also has a kombucha drinks business, is among several local vintner. He has pulled together a loose collective of growers who produce wine from several discreet urban vineyards nestled in private yards and community plots across the city. It is too clandestine to have an official name yet, but the group's WhatsApp group is called Grape Expectations.

Urban Wine Gardens Across the World

So far, the grower's allotment is the only one registered in the City Vineyard Network's upcoming world atlas, which includes better-known city vineyards such as the 1,800 plants on the hillsides of the French capital's historic artistic district neighbourhood and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and inside the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a movement reviving city vineyards in traditional winemaking countries, but has discovered them all over the globe, including urban centers in East Asia, Bangladesh and Central Asia.

"Grape gardens help cities remain greener and ecologically varied. They preserve land from development by creating long-term, productive farming plots within urban environments," says the organization's leader.

Similar to other vintages, those created in urban areas are a result of the soils the vines grow in, the vagaries of the weather and the people who tend the fruit. "Each vintage represents the beauty, local spirit, environment and heritage of a urban center," notes the president.

Mystery Polish Variety

Back in Bristol, the grower is in a race against time to gather the vines he cultivated from a cutting abandoned in his garden by a Polish family. Should the rain comes, then the pigeons may take advantage to attack once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Eastern European grape," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten berries from the shimmering clusters. "We don't really know what variety they are, but they are certainly disease-resistant. Unlike noble varieties – Burgundy grapes, Chardonnay and other famous French grapes – you don't have to spray them with chemicals ... this is possibly a unique cultivar that was bred by the Soviets."

Group Activities Throughout Bristol

Additional participants of the group are also taking advantage of sunny interludes between showers of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's shimmering waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once floated with barrels of wine from Europe and Spain, one cultivator is harvesting her dark berries from approximately fifty plants. "I love the smell of these vines. It is so reminiscent," she says, stopping with a container of grapes resting on her arm. "It recalls the fragrance of southern France when you roll down the vehicle windows on holiday."

The humanitarian worker, fifty-two, who has spent over two decades working for humanitarian organizations in war-torn regions, unexpectedly inherited the vineyard when she moved back to the United Kingdom from Kenya with her household in 2018. She experienced an overwhelming duty to maintain the vines in the yard of their new home. "This plot has already survived multiple proprietors," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Terraced Vineyards and Traditional Production

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are hard at work on the steep inclines of the local river valley. Jo Scofield has established over one hundred fifty vines perched on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the muddy local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled grape garden. "It's astonishing to them they are viewing grapevine lines in a city street."

Currently, Scofield, 60, is picking clusters of dusty purple dark berries from lines of plants arranged along the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, Luca. Scofield, a documentary producer who has worked on streaming service's Great National Parks series and BBC Two's gardening shows, was motivated to cultivate vines after seeing her neighbour's grapevines. She's discovered that amateurs can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can command prices of upwards of £7 a glass in the increasing quantity of establishments specialising in low-processing vintages. "It is deeply rewarding that you can actually create good, traditional vintage," she says. "It is quite on trend, but really it's reviving an traditional method of producing vintage."

"When I tread the fruit, the various wild yeasts are released from the surfaces into the liquid," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of small branches, pips and red liquid. "This represents how vintages were historically produced, but commercial producers introduce preservatives to kill the wild yeast and then add a commercially produced culture."

Difficult Environments and Creative Approaches

A few doors down active senior another cultivator, who motivated Scofield to plant her vines, has assembled his friends to harvest Chardonnay grapes from the 100 plants he has laid out neatly across multiple levels. Reeve, a Lancashire-born physical education instructor who worked at Bristol University cultivated an interest in viticulture on annual sporting trips to France. But it is a difficult task to grow this particular variety in the humidity of the valley, with temperature fluctuations sweeping in and out from the nearby estuary. "I aimed to make French-style vintages in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," admits Reeve with amusement. "Chardonnay is late to ripen and particularly vulnerable to fungal infections."

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

The unpredictable Bristol climate is not the only problem encountered by grape cultivators. Reeve has had to install a barrier on