The Grapes Of Wealth Revisited...

Monaco-based billionaire Mark Dixon is the driving force behind Jersey-based Regus (now IWG), a hugely successful multinational corporation that provides serviced offices to clients on a contract basis.  He is less well-known as the owner of Vineyard Farms UK Ltd, the company that acquired the 300 hectare spread of CourtFarm and Brookers Farm back in 2019 for a sum of around £7m, with the ostensible intention of establishing one of the UK’s largest vineyards in Luddesdown.

Luddesdown valley, summer 2017 pre-vineyard...

With Regus as his main money-spinner, it would seem that vineyards are very much just a hobby for Mr. Dixon. Indeed, he recently told American lifestyle magazine Wine Spectator that he had “given up golf and has taken up farming as something to do on the weekends”.

Immediately after his Luddesdown acquisition, an open evening was held at the nearby Golden Lion pub to present plans for an “organic” vineyard (whatever that is), a gesture much appreciated by the local residents. 

The Gravesham Conservatives web-page was full of the promises made that evening:

“Planting of the young vines (Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier) will start in April, harvest in 3 years time, with sales of sparkling wine at the door of the vineyard in 2022. There will be lots of community involvement in helping to make this a success, particularly at harvest time when everything will be done by hand”, it gushed.

Local enthusiasm soon began to evaporate, however, as the real impact of the new vineyard upon the area became apparent. Long-established hedgerows were crudely hacked back and the land deep-ploughed, rendering ancient footpaths almost unusable and turning the previously verdant fields into unsightly, dusty, chalk-strewn deserts.

Luddesdown valley. deep ploughed...

Unabashed and as shrewd as ever, however, Mr. Dixon saw that Brexit had caused the price of UK farmland to collapse as its supporters had intended, turning the economics of UK land acquisition by overseas investors from “unreasonable” to “reasonable” (as he said in the aforementioned The Wine Spectator). At the time, there was also a lot of EU cash slopping about in the form of CAP grants for vineyards (and vineyards certainly became suddenly fashionable in the UK) but whether Mr. Dixon and others took advantage of this largesse before Brexit slammed the door on such things, I don’t know.

Luddesdown vineyard, May 2021. Two years on, so where are the vines, then...?

Following this Brexity zeitgeist, he subsequently proceeded to buy Upper Bush Farm (from Mexican-based Cemex) in the adjacent village of Cuxton, but with a lot less public fanfare or local outreach than the Luddesdown acquisition. Vine planting in Bush Valley started in May 2020, albeit in a far less extensive or destructive fashion than in Luddesdown. Indeed, some locals wondered why the planting had only occurred in limited areas of the valley. What could be going on, they wondered?

Fast forward to now, and the vines planted in Luddesdown valley in 2019 still seem to be struggling. Any harvesting in 2022 will be lucky to fill a couple of buckets, hardly enough to make commercial wine production commercially viable.

As for the staffing of the Vineyard Farms Ltd UK portfolio, a combination of Brexit and coronavirus is anticipated to render the hiring of overseas labour a whole lot harder in the future.

Coronavirus has also not been good for Mr. Dixon’s office-renting business. Last time I checked, he was down to his last $1.7 billion dollars (or half a Bernie Ecclestone, which sounds really small when you put it that way). Working from home has now become the norm, rendering the concept of renting office space from a third party rather passé, at least temporarily. Indeed, IWG’s share price collapsed from 460p in January 2020 to 160p by mid-March, once the first lockdown started to bite.

Court Farm, June 2021. Note the big steel tanks...

Whatever the reasons, Mark Dixon now appears to have lost interest in running established UK vineyards: his two other working UK wineries (Kingscote in West Sussex and Sedlescombe in East Sussex) are both up for sale after only a few years of ownership.

Vineyard Farms Ltd has also moved on. Its holding company changed its name to MDCV UK Ltd in May 2019, with one of its two remaining directors curiously listed as “Yellowstone Holdings S.A.R.L.” a name appearing in the notorious “Paradise Papers”.

Company names are normally changed when a business is in trouble, or is changing its focus. What can it all mean for Luddesdown and Cuxton?

The site manager of MDCV UK Ltd is Holly DeWale, whose LinkedIn profile lists her previous occupations as a marketing manager, an English teacher, a freelance publicist and an “events and gala co-ordinator”: she is also the daughter of one Mark Dixon (owner of MDCV Ltd). Looking at the bigger picture, Holly’s background seems to be ideally suited to the hospitality arena, which possibly tells us all we need to know about the focus of MDCV UK Ltd (Mark Dixon’s Corporate Vineyards?).

Planting vines, May 2020, Upper Bush...

Still, in these Johnsonian times, who needs experts? After all, her father’s business empire can doubtless provide any expertise she might need for all things associated with modern UK viniculture, such as estate surveying, pushing through planning permission and then building on the land.

Indeed, overseas speculators already own huge swathes of the UK – “taking back control” I think it’s called. Predictably, the latest Queen’s speech announced measures that drive a bulldozer through current planning regulations, in much the same way that Boris’s chums will soon be driving bulldozers through the green belt to rake in the Brexit bonanza that they lied and schemed so hard for. They are even trashing wildlife protection for the same reason, although it will still (for the moment) be illegal to harass and even kill badgers and plough up their setts, simply because they are in the way of a landowner’s plans...

The price of development land in North Kent was around £7 million per hectare in 2017. It won’t have gone down since then, that’s for sure. MDCV’s investment in prime, London-adjacent, easily accessible areas of Cuxton and Luddesdown covers around 450 hectares and is looking good for them. 

Indeed, MDCV wasted little time on that score. A geological survey team was soon seen out in Upper Bush, taking samples to test the land’s suitability for bearing what will ostensibly be a new wine factory and visitor’s centre, to be plonked on the hill overlooking Bush Valley, with a new access road to be smashed up near what was once the historic, peaceful and beautiful little hamlet of Upper Bush. After all, they wouldn’t want all that mess and disruption in their own backyard in Luddesdown now they’ve got a much more accessible site in Cuxton to build on, would they?

Court Lodge, Luddesdown, listed headquarters of Vineyard Farms/MDCV UK Ltd...

Cuxton Parish Council’s first “Vineyard Update” told us:

“The current plan is to create a Vineyard Vault Visitors Centre in land to the south of Upper Bush and create a new entrance way leading from Bush Road to a car park, from which visitors can walk to the vault centre. This is going to comprise a semi underground design which will apparently blend into the landscape no doubt visual presentations of the design will soon be available. Much discussion took place on the way that the whole project will be organic and bio-diverse and achieve net zero carbon emissions. The proposed development will also provide 75-100 local employment opportunities. This is a major planning application which will affect the village and whilst it appears every effort is being made by the company and world renowned architect Lord Foster to reduce the environmental impact of the Vineyard Vault…”

In amongst all the empty, trendy eco-clichés, the most shocking thing was the involvement of “world renowned architect” Lord Foster. As a result, you can absolutely 100% guarantee that this planned “visitor centre” will be huge, expensive, and vainglorious.

This, as it transpires, has already proved to be perfectly correct. No sooner was the electronic ink dry on this page than dear old local click-bait news site Kent Online released some “architect’s impressions” of Mr. Dixon’s new baronial castle. 

No garish glass boxes for him a la that arch-destroyer of Kent’s countryside, developer Mark Quinn, who has just gained permission for a similar sort of venture only thirty miles or so down the A2 at Canterbury. (One wonders how the “market” can support two such similar facilities so close together…)

Instead, Mr. Dixon has gone for the full "Bond villain" feel, a subterranean plonk factory, no less. One can almost imagine him at the head of a polished table in front of his terrified business associates, sitting in a steel swivel chair and stroking a long-haired white cat...

Well, maybe not. Nevertheless, the scale and grandiosity of the proposals are breath-taking. It is a true Fosterian design, a futuristic flying-saucer of a monument to his client’s wealth and power. 

Lord Foster's Flying Saucer...

Close Encounters of the Foster Kind...

Poor old Cuxton (and particularly Upper Bush) won’t know what’s hit it.

Upper Bush is a lovely, peaceful place with a rich local history, having been farmed for hundreds of years by working class folk who scratched a hard living from its soil. The nature of the valley has already changed in many respects, with the planting of the dull monoculture of vines and the erection of its ugly galvanised scaffolding and miles of associated steel wire. It looks more like some sort of giant radio aerial rather than a vineyard at the moment. The flying saucer and the wine factory won't really change things that much more from a visual perspective, though the traffic noise and congestion will. Lower Bush and Cuxton are going to get a lot busier. And all in the name of a passing fad...

It has to be admitted that the design being proposed for the visitor’s centre is spectacular, although whether the promised vision materialises in reality is another question. Indeed, many local people want to see this thing built.

Foster's Flying Saucer in situ

Every bit of countryside in Kent is under attack from developers, it seems. Not a week goes by without more “exciting developments” being announced that devour yet more of our ever-dwindling local countryside. This is an overcrowded part of the world. We all need unspoiled open spaces to get away from each other every now and then. We have to stop believing in this “build to grow” mantra. It's not the sixties any more. 

There is no actual need for Foster’s Flying Saucer and its associated industrial buildings in Upper Bush, or anywhere else. What is the imperative? Where is the pressing public demand for such a thing? Wineries? Fancy restaurants? Corporate hospitality venues? Wine processing plants? Kent has lots of them already.

Should precious habitat be sacrificed for just another plonk shop, a glorification of Vineyard Farms/MDCV UK’s business (which, as already explained, is really only all about owner Mark Dixon’s weekend hobby)?.

In an ideal world, no, it shouldn’t. But, of course, things are far from ideal…

Bush Valley, June 2021...

The UK has been effectively destroyed by forty years of free-market Tory kleptocracy. Our rulers have sold off our basic industries, our utilities, our transport and our communications systems to their shady supporters, nearly all of whom are overseas speculators. As a nation, we now make nothing of value and pretty soon, will own nothing of value.

And now the very land under our feet is in their sights. UK farmers are being deliberately driven out of business and left with no option but to sell their land to speculators, many of whom are not UK-based. Our farmland is the country’s final set of Crown Jewels, one which provides the most basic of human needs, the means to grow food. Lose this and we lose the ability and skills to even feed ourselves. At the same time, a bonfire of the planning regulations will allow said speculators to build houses, houses, houses on what was once prime agricultural land, fuelling the ongoing Southsea Bubble-style property market and allowing them to leech yet more billions out of the country and into their tax-free offshore bank accounts before it all comes crashing down.

What other country in the world is run like this?

Flying saucer incoming. Bush Valley, June 2021...

Against this background, the plans for Upper Bush put forward by Vineyard Farms Ltd look positively philanthropic. Ten years ago, proposals like these would have been laughed out of the planning department offices. “You want to build a WHAT?! On green belt prime farmland…?”

Now we are reduced to be being pathetically grateful for them, like a whipped dog that is grateful to its abusive master for merely slapping it, rather than kicking it. “At least its not houses...”, we’ll mutter.

In reality, it appears that this development is the least worst option of those actually available, other than just leaving us alone. We can be consoled with the thought that at least the area already has a history of rich men’s vanity projects. Think Darnley mausoleum…

Vanity building projects in the area are not a new thing...

Despite it being a product of sixties baby-boomer urban sprawl, Cuxton has a pleasant vibe about it which is very unusual, almost unique these days. The majority of its people have a fierce pride in their village, its history and its surrounding countryside, in a way that you just don’t find in other superficially similar places (although some newcomers to the village seem to have a more selfish and insouciant attitude, sadly).

Having written that, local reaction to Vineyard Farms' proposals have been strangely muted so far, early days though it is.

Most people seem to be resigned to the project already being a done deal. After all, the Tories who run Medway Council still have vainglorious aspirations to “city” status (ever since its blundering led to Rochester losing that title) and, given the offer of a swanky new development with the cachet of Lord Foster, will unreservedly throw its backing behind the lofty promises of Vineyard Farms/MDCV UK Ltd, whatever the local impact. Our local MPs are all tame Tory lobby fodder (and like the idea of rich people doing just as they please anyway) and so will do nothing of practical value.

Thus begins the charade of “consultation” with the local peasantry.

The Luddesdown experience has already demonstrated the Vineyard Farms UK Ltd modus operandi: act first, sort out any problems or seek permission later. Ploughing up ancient footpaths because ploughing around them would be inconvenient? Oh, OK, we’ll run a tractor up and down them later to flatten them out a bit. Planning permission for big steel tanks in Court Farm? Nah, we’ll worry about that after we’ve put them up.

Coronavirus has given them the perfect excuse to hide from any angry or concerned Cuxton residents behind a wall of remote video conferences and PR exercises. Questions must be submitted in advance, and so far they haven't answered any awkward ones. What about construction traffic and tourist access problems in already-congested Bush Road? What are they going to do with the tens of thousands of tonnes of chalk spoil that the construction of their underground bunker is going to create? How will the long-established footpaths be kept open, if at all?

Not important. Mere quibbles put up by a bunch of NIMBYs.

Welcome to Tory, Brexity England, where the distant whim of an overseas billionaire tax exile can now blight a little village like Cuxton and its inhabitants with impunity. The village of Cuxton is to be subsumed to the glory of Vineyard Farms UK/MDCV UK Ltd. and there is nothing anyone can do about it. Even protesting about such things is being made much more difficult.  And any little difficulties with planning permission can soon be sorted out with a small donation to the Tory Party if push comes to shove, anyway...

Historic little Cuxton, gateway and overflow car park for the Kentish Wine Vaults. The village is about to become subordinate to the demands and purposes of Foster’s Flying Saucer. The initials say it all, really. 

So it seems likely that the people of Cuxton will just have to get used to the construction traffic, the associated dust and noise, the alien influx of construction workers, the annexation of a big part of their habitat and the subsequent roar of high-powered German cars and 4x4s as the rich tourists and visiting businessmen speed down little Bush Road through the village, trying to overtake all of the grape juice tankers, wine bottle lorries and factory delivery vehicles to get to Mr. Dixon’s new Xanadu (at least, until the inevitable Cuxton by-pass gets smashed through what’s left of the local countryside from the Peters bridge roundabout to join up with the proposed new Thames crossing).

Whatever happens, another quiet corner of North Kent will be gone forever, to be replaced by nothing of long-lasting, real substance whatsoever. Give it twenty years and it will all have been sold on for housing anyway. The current fashion for sparkling wine in the UK will change as Brexit bites and people go back to buying stuff they actually need (like food, which already is becoming expensive and scarce – ooh, those sunlit uplands…). Billionaires also tend to get bored of their possessions pretty quickly: they always want a larger super-yacht, a more impressive personal jet, or a bigger vineyard for that matter (Mr. Dixon soon sold off his other UK vineyards when this one came on to the horizon). In the longer term, climate change will not be good for the delicate little vines should the UK get cooler and drier as predicted...

All I can suggest is for you to get out there and enjoy the Upper Bush valley countryside now, this minute, while you can, before the fences and barbed wire go up and the excavators start hollowing out the hillside and piling up the mountains of chalk Lord knows where. 

In particular, take in the sweeping view of the valley from the top of the hillside just off the footpath on the other side of the trees leading up from Dean Valley.

View from where the flying saucer is going, looking west. June 2021...

Take pictures to remind our children and our grandchildren of how wonderful it all used to be. I am sure that Vineyard Farms (or whatever they want to call themselves) will be fencing it off pretty soon.

They won’t want the non-paying peasantry walking all over the green roof of their new luxury bunker or through their exclusive vineyards, will they?