On balconies, in gardens and on the facades of their houses, Londoners are growing vines to create their own ‘urban wine’ – although the great vineyards of the world have little to fear just yet.

In 2007, urban regeneration specialist Richard Sharp was on holiday in France and became fascinated with the ‘community spirit’ of French villages during the harvest, wondering whether the same could be achieved in Britain.

“A lot of people have vines (in London) but don’t know what to do with the grapes,” said Sharp.

He placed an advertisement in a newspaper asking amateur viticulturalists to contribute to a collective, and set out to look for a wine press to make wine.

The ad attracted “a lot of interest”, he said, and so the Urban Wine Company was born.

After an initial, highly limited season that yielded just 20 bottles of rose, the idea rapidly spread around the gardens of London and southeast England.

For an annual fee of £125 (€140), every member of the collective, about 100 growers in all, gets six bottles of that year’s rose – complete with personalised labels.

The rest is sold to members at £8 per bottle, and whatever is left after that to the public at £9 via the collective’s website and a specialist wine merchant in London.

The project pressed 1.5 tonnes of grapes in 2010, mixing it all to produce 1,300 bottles of rose.

All 1,200 bottles from the 2009 season were sold, a few hundred of them to outside clients.

Any profits are to be ploughed back into Urban Wine, based in Tooting, south London, though currently the organisation is breaking even.

Some growers contribute only the minimum of three kilos of grapes per season, while others like Jane Reed give around 100 kilos.