A landmark centre for English wine designed by Norman Foster, which supporters say will produce an affordable rival to prosecco, could be given planning approval within days.
Gary Smith, the chief executive of MDCV UK, the winemaker behind the £30m Kentish Wine Vault project, said he was hopeful about his plans to transform the country’s wine sector by producing 5m bottles of English wine a year at the new location, after months of doubt.
He hopes the site will produce sparkling whites and rosés that tempt some of the booming British market for Italian prosecco to try homegrown fizz from the garden of England.
A proposed visitors’ centre attached to the vineyard, along with a restaurant, tasting room and cafe, although built mostly underground, would be located under the plans on green belt land in a designated area of outstanding natural beauty around the village of Cuxton.
Despite Medway council recommending approval of the plans, last March a planning committee decided that the project and the expected influx of an estimated 300 visitors a day posed too much of a risk to the area’s wildness and natural beauty.
Smith said, however, that his legal team had backed an appeal and that it had been finalised on 4 April. A decision from the planning inspector is expected within the next few weeks, with Smith planning to roll out a “drink English” campaign if the plans are successful.
Smith said that there was an opportunity, if not to “knock prosecco off its perch”, to take some of the market by producing a similar style of English wine at the Kentish Vault through the Charmat method of production where the sparkle is achieved via fermentation in large stainless steel tanks.
He said: “There’s 80m bottles of prosecco shipped from Italy every year. If we’re producing up to 5m bottles of wine and a large proportion of that could be prosecco style, we have an opportunity to tap into that market and bring people into English wine.
“Whereas at the moment, there’s quite a lot of English wine that’s out of the reach of normal consumers. You know, the average price of sparkling wine in the UK is around £13. Most English wine is £30 pounds plus for a bottle. So we’re creating accessibility.”
Smith said that while he had not supported the UK leaving the EU it could be a “really good news Brexit story”, as English wine might take advantage of the greater import costs facing vineyards on the European continent.
“I think English wine is a really an industry that’s in its infancy, and I think it could be huge going forward,” he said. “We are seeing warmer weather, drier weather in Essex and Kent, which is going to start to allow us to produce the really high-quality stuff that you’ll see coming out now.”
Smith added that the bubble shape of the visitors’ centre, described as a Teletubby palace by its critics, in a reference to the popular children’s TV show, would provide the English wine scene with greater visibility on the world stage.
The building was designed by architect Lord Foster, whose projects include City Hall and the Millennium Bridge in London, as well as Wembley Stadium. The project had the backing of both the Environment Agency and Natural England before Medway council’s planning committee rejected it last year.
Smith said: “What we don’t have is, like other new world or even old world wine regions, is an iconic winery and landmark building that really identifies: ‘That’s a fantastic wine.’
“We feel that the Kentish Wine vault is going to be hopefully that statement and is really going to put Kent on the map. Kent has some fantastic terroir, soil. It’s the right place.”
The organic winery will also produce still whites and rosés and use a variety of grapes including pinot noir and chardonnay, securing 1,600 acres for long-term agriculture.
The appeal against the planning committee’s decision focused on the fact that the site is already within hearing distance of the M2 and under flight paths.
He said: “We thought we ticked all the boxes and fingers crossed the inspector thinks we have a good solid plan. I would put it as hopeful. We put our best foot forward.”
