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Every 20 minutes or so, an older diesel-powered railway carriage pulls into a graffiti-covered stop. Close by, a police siren pierces the near-constant traffic drone. Commuters rush by falling apart, ivy-covered fencing panels as rain clouds form.

It is perhaps the last place you expect to find a well-established grape-growing plot. But James Bayliss-Smith has cultivated 40 mature vines heavy with round mauve grapes on a rambling allotment situated between a row of historic homes and a local rail line just north of the city town centre.

"I've noticed people concealing heroin or other items in the shrubbery," states the grower. "Yet you just get on with it ... and keep tending to your grapevines."

The cameraman, forty-six, a documentary cameraman who also has a fermented beverage company, is among several urban winemaker. He has pulled together a loose collective of cultivators who make wine from four hidden city grape gardens nestled in back gardens and allotments across the city. The project is too clandestine to possess an official name so far, but the collective's messaging chat is named Grape Expectations.

Urban Vineyards Across the World

To date, the grower's plot is the sole location listed in the Urban Vineyards Association's forthcoming world atlas, which features better-known city vineyards such as the 1,800 vines on the slopes of the French capital's historic artistic district neighbourhood and more than 3,000 vines overlooking and within the Italian city. The Italian-based non-profit association is at the forefront of a initiative re-establishing urban grape cultivation in historic wine-producing nations, but has discovered them all over the world, including cities in East Asia, Bangladesh and Uzbekistan.

"Vineyards help urban areas stay more eco-friendly and ecologically varied. They preserve open space from development by establishing permanent, yielding agricultural units inside urban environments," says the association's president.

Like all wines, those created in cities are a product of the soils the plants grow in, the unpredictability of the climate and the people who tend the grapes. "A bottle of wine represents the beauty, local spirit, environment and heritage of a city," notes the president.

Unknown Polish Variety

Back in the city, Bayliss-Smith is in a race against time to harvest the grapevines he cultivated from a plant left in his allotment by a Eastern European household. Should the rain arrives, then the pigeons may take advantage to feast once more. "Here we have the enigmatic Eastern European variety," he says, as he removes bruised and rotten grapes from the shimmering bunches. "We don't really know their exact classification, but they are certainly hardy. Unlike premium grapes – Pinot Noir, white wine grapes and additional renowned European varieties – you don't have to spray them with pesticides ... this is possibly a special variety that was developed by the Eastern Bloc."

Group Efforts Across the City

Additional participants of the group are also taking advantage of bright periods between bursts of autumn rain. At a rooftop garden with views of the city's glistening waterfront, where medieval merchant vessels once bobbed with barrels of vintage from France and the Iberian peninsula, Katy Grant is harvesting her rondo grapes from about fifty plants. "I adore the aroma of the grapevines. It is so reminiscent," she says, pausing with a basket of fruit resting on her shoulder. "It recalls the fragrance 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, inadvertently took over the grape garden when she moved back to the UK from Kenya with her household in 2018. She felt an strong responsibility to look after the vines in the garden of their recently acquired property. "This vineyard has already survived three different owners," she says. "I deeply appreciate the idea of environmental care – of passing this on to someone else so they continue producing from the soil."

Sloping Gardens and Natural Winemaking

Nearby, the remaining cultivators of the group are busily laboring on the steep inclines of the local river valley. One filmmaker has established more than one hundred fifty vines situated on ledges in her wild half-acre garden, which descends towards the silty local waterway. "People are always surprised," she says, indicating the tangled vineyard. "It's astonishing to them they can see grapevine lines in a city street."

Today, the filmmaker, sixty, is picking bunches of dusty purple Rondo grapes from lines of vines slung across the hillside with the assistance of her daughter, her family member. The conservationist, a wildlife and conservation film-maker who has contributed to streaming service's Great National Parks series and television network's Gardeners' World, was motivated to plant grapes after observing her neighbor's grapevines. She's discovered that hobbyists can produce interesting, enjoyable traditional vintage, which can command prices of upwards of seven pounds a serving in the growing number of wine bars focusing on minimal-intervention wines. "It's just incredibly satisfying that you can actually make quality, natural wine," she states. "It is quite fashionable, but really it's reviving an old way of producing vintage."

"When I tread the fruit, the various wild yeasts come off the surfaces and enter the juice," says the winemaker, ankle deep in a bucket of tiny stems, seeds and crimson juice. "This represents how wines were made traditionally, but industrial wineries introduce sulphur [dioxide] to kill the natural cultures and then incorporate a lab-grown culture."

Challenging Conditions and Creative Approaches

A few doors down active senior Bob Reeve, who motivated Scofield to establish her grapevines, has gathered his friends to pick Chardonnay grapes from the 100 vines he has laid out neatly across two terraces. Reeve, a northern English physical education instructor who worked at the local university developed a passion for wine on annual sporting trips to Europe. However 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 Bristol Channel. "I wanted to produce French-style vintages in this location, which is somewhat ambitious," says the retiree with a smile. "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 temperamental local weather is not the only problem encountered by winegrowers. Reeve has had to install a fence on