A council has thwarted a billionaire businessman’s attempt to build Britain’s biggest winery.
After three hours of deliberation, councillors in Medway, Kent, voted unanimously not to back plans for the Kentish Wine Vault, instead deferring the decision over concerns about the impact of traffic from visitors, the wine-searcher.com reported.
The £30 million project, designed by Lord Foster of Thames Bank, would include a restaurant, tasting room and café, and would be double the size of a football pitch, with most of the site underground. The proposed site is on green belt land in a designated Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty around the village of Cuxton.
The plans were put forward by MDCV UK, owned by Mark Dixon, a self-made billionaire who started out selling burgers from a van in Essex before making a fortune with the office-space business Regus. Dixon, who lives in Monaco and owns wine estates in Provence, has stated his ambition to make five million bottles of English wine at the Kentish Wine Vault by 2025. MDCV, Britain’s biggest wine estate, also owns Seddlescome organic estate in West Sussex and vineyards in Essex. It plans to invest £60 million by 2023 to double its present vineyard area.
MDCV’s focus is on cheaper prosecco-style wines, as opposed to classic English sparkling wines, which has ruffled the feathers of the English industry. Having released the Harlot this year, its first fizz, MDCV plans to release two new sparkling wines in 2022. Although backed by the Environment Agency and Natural England, the Kentish Wine Vault plans are not supported by Cuxton parish council or Kent Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. Water waste, landscape and lighting issues and the building of a new road are among the points of contention.
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During the meeting, Matt Fearn, a Cuxton councillor, described the project as “a large commercial mixed-use development masquerading as agricultural [wine production] by trying to meet exceptional criteria required for construction in a protected area”.
Councillors fear that already congested local roads will become gridlocked with lorries, buses and cars. Barring one abstention, Medway planning committee voted unanimously last week to defer the decision.
