What is it with free labour these days? Only a fortnight ago I wrote about a Wiltshire condiments magnate who was sending out gangs of primary school children to pick crab apples for him. Now it’s the turn of an English winemaker to put the squeeze on every able-bodied soul he can muster.

Each autumn, Richard Balfour-Lynn opens the doors to Hush Heath Estate in the Weald of Kent and persuades friends, family and associates – from next-door neighbours to staff from his other business interests – to bring in the grape harvest.

So, secateurs in hand, they may find themselves groping among the vines alongside a director of Liberty or a chambermaid from Malmaison. “I throw together a whole mix of people,” says Balfour-Lynn, chairman of the Alternative Hotel Group. “It’s a great leveller, sitting on a bucket, picking grapes. You can’t be too pompous.”

Over consecutive weeks, three parties of 40 will harvest the three classic champagne grapes – chardonnay, pinot noir and pinot meunier – that go into his Balfour Brut Rosé. They’ll pick all day and then sit down to a candlelit dinner in the manor house at the end. “It’s a great way to spend a bit of time. I love getting customers down here. If they’re associated with my drink, they should get involved with it.”

That’s why, this year, in among the vines, you’d have found a couple of buyers from Marks & Spencer, which is stocking the 2005 vintage for the first time. In wine speak, it has “fragrant red fruit on the nose – perhaps more strawberry than raspberry – and an elegant light brioche toastiness”, and sales are doing well, despite the hefty £35 price tag.

Balfour-Lynn has no problem with it being three times the price of the average English wine. “In the mind of the consumer, price and quality are inextricably linked. So, if you sell sparkling at £10, what message will he get? He’s not going to think, ‘That’s a good comparison to top champagne.’”

And that is very definitely where he wants his rosé to be. “The UK used to grow lots of Germanic grapes, such as Müller-Thurgau, which gave English sweet wines rather a poor reputation. But we have the conditions to make very good sparkling wines. It’s no surprise – Champagne is in northern France, after all, and we have the same cool temperatures, acidity and freshness, and a similar soil of clay, chalk and sand. There is no reason that we can’t make champagne as good as they make it there.”

He agrees we will struggle to match the complexity of some of the great marques, but does think we can compete with much of what Champagne has to offer. “Rosé is something the champagne houses don’t do awfully well,” he says. “Only Laurent-Perrier and Billecart-Salmon stand out, and those are my targets as competitors. I’ve set the quality and geared the price to reflect that.”

The 2004 vintage picked up a gold in this year’s International Wine Challenge – the only English wine to do so. Not bad for someone whose wine career started on a whim, when he put his hand up at an auction and found himself wondering what to do with the 400 acres of land around his house. Six years later, production is up to 22,000 bottles, which he hopes will reach 100,000 within the next three years.

“The secret is to treat it as a hobby. I started making pink sparkling wine because that’s what my wife and I like to drink. At one million bottles it’s a business, but at 100,000 bottles it’s still a passion. And anyway,” he says with a shrug, “if it doesn’t sell, I’m very happy to drink it myself.”

Balfour Brut Rosé costs £35 from selected Marks & Spencer stores, or online from www.hushheath.com

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