It is not likely such facilities can produce truly fine wine, grapes being rather finicky travellers, but arguably - whether crushed, frozen, pressed or fermented - the fruit has been moved successfully around the world for decades by merchants who buy the produce from growers and bottle it under their own name.
More than a few cult wines have begun in city wineries. High-fliers who appreciate the good life truck in grapes to so-called 'custom-crush facilities', or ship juice to warehouse-like facilities often located in business parks.
Sonoma County, in California, has a highly rated Siduri pinot noir that is produced in a Santa Rosa business park warehouse. I once crushed grapes for the Betz Family Winery, whose wines consistently appear on top 100 lists in the US, which is flanked by insurance offices, medical clinics and a Mexican restaurant in a Seattle business park. Proponents argue that urban winemaking is not only cheaper but that shipping juice or wine in bulk for onsite bottling lessens the carbon footprint. In a move mimicking the microbrew phenomenon, some budding vintners are fermenting juice and serving it onsite in wine bars or retail outlets.
City-centre vineyards are less common, though they can be found tucked away in old-world churchyards. The last vineyard in Paris huddles within the walls of the great basilica, Sacre Coeur, atop Montmartre. Vineyards surround Vienna and their simple bounty is served in pub-like establishments called heurigen, whose seasonal openings are indicated by suspending conifer or fir boughs over their doors. City dwellers from Manhattan to Barcelona, meanwhile, are planting cabernet sauvignon and other varieties on rooftops and balconies, with one fifth-floor Washington DC blogger providing almost daily postings and highly detailed photographs of his three-trunk vineyard.
The beloved grape vine has not been overlooked by green movements. In response to a London initiative to convert unused plots of land into food-generating gardens, a dumping ground in King's Cross was recently perforated with brown spindly sticks whose nubby buds burst into leaf last month.