English wine centre in Kent hopes for planning approval within days
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
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