Deal Of The Day...

Trouble brewing: process tanks and pallets of wine bottles at Brookers Farm, September 2021... 

As Cuxton and Luddesdown residents recently found out, a big chunk of their ancient and historic parishes have now been unilaterally renamed the “Silverhand Estate”. It’s a name that means nothing locally, one that appears to have been plucked out of the air by some computer game-fixated marketing wonk working for our local mega-vineyard and wannabe tourist-trap operator, MDCV/Vineyard Farms.

It seems that Vineyard Farms/MDCV Ltd. are now trying to position the Silverhand Estate brand in the market place, via a deal with Marks and Spencer that sees the launch of M&S’s own “Bramble Hill”  brand of sparkling wine.

"Bramble Hill" sadly just seems to be another made-up marketing name (unless it's a passing nod to Bramble HALL Farm in Oakenden Road). Other local wineries, such as Meopham Valley, seem proud to advertise their links with the local community, as can be seen in their branding. But then, of course, MDCV/VF seem to be much less keen on the concept of community involvement...

As the May 23^rd edition of the Daily Express tells us (as part of the blurb for its “Deal of the Day”):

“Most English wines are made via the traditional method where their bubbles are produced during a second fermentation in the bottle it’s sold in, similar to champagne and Cava.

However, Bramble Hill has its bubbles made in a pressurised tank and then bottled so that it’s extra dry. (It’s called the “Charmat Method ”…)

It’s made in the Kent countryside by Silverhand Estate and has English-grown Chardonnay, Pinot Noir and Pinot Meunier grapes (the same grapes used in Champagne) and Bacchus grapes.

Sue Daniels, winemaker for M&S said: “We know families across the country will be looking for the perfect way to raise a toast to the Queen on her Platinum Jubilee, and what better way than with a great-value fizz with all the delicious floral aromas of the British countryside. And at a fraction of the price of other English sparkling wines, it really is Britain’s answer to Prosecco!”…”

So basically, it’s inauthentic fizz labelled with an inauthentic brand name made on an equally inauthentically-named estate. (Update: Even the Sun - whose wine buff's picture weirdly seems to show her as having a head a quarter the size of her body in an epic PhotoShop fail...) rates it as pretty average stuff...)

Still, it may be inauthentic fizz: but at least it’s M&S inauthentic fizz…

The “Bramble Hill” name conjures up a vision of a bucolic, old-fashioned family-run operation, but the old farm sheds down at Court and Brookers Farm in Luddesdown are now buzzing with industrial-scale  activity.  They have sprouted an impressive array of steel tanks and pipework, in addition to the original fermentation vessels (ones that Vineyard Farms somehow missed getting planning permission for...).

Court and Brookers Farm, Luddesdown, May 2022...

It seems unlikely that the grapes or grape juice for the manufacture of this mass-market brew come from Vineyard Farms’ Ironfist (sorry, Silverhand) estate. From what I've seen, they are still at least a year or so away from any significant harvest and indeed, have only just started training some of their vines onto their supports.

Given that the Goldfinger (sorry, Silverhand) estate is currently a grape-free zone, the banks of food-grade nitrogen and carbon dioxide cylinders at Brookers farmyard suggest that production of “Bramble Hill” in the “Kent Countryside” at Luddesdown is limited to simply bringing grape juice on to site, fermenting it, gassing it up and then bottling it. 

Blowing bubbles: food grade (purple) nitrogen bottles and carbon dioxide bottles (black). 

This process could be done anywhere, (and probably done much better elsewhere) given the poor access into Luddesdown via the little country lane that is Luddesdown Road.

This manufacturing process also seems to be at odds with the argument Vineyard Farms puts forward in its Shrimplin-authored planning statement in an attempt to justify that their proposed massive underground wine factory simply HAS to be constructed on green belt AONB land, because (so they claim) transportation of grapes off-site (even for a few miles) would adversely affect the quality of the product.

Yet they seem to have no problem with buying in stored grape juice from Lord knows where to make their Bramble Hill fizz.

So for your projected four million bottles a year of own-brand output, why not press your grapes on site and then ship the juice offsite to a local industrial estate? You’ve shown you can make wine like that, because you’re doing it now it (unless you’re admitting that Bramble Hill is just poor quality plonk, of course). From a logistics and infrastructure perspective, it’s a no-brainer. 

But of course, we all know that it’s the tourist trade Vineyard Farms really wants, with the glamour and cachet of a £30m Lord Foster design hoping to attract 350,000 yuppie DFL punters every year to what will become the UK’s biggest vineyard - twice the size of the UK's largest working winery, Denbies in Surrey.

The manufacturing side is secondary to all of that.

The Vineyard Farms’ boast about its plan to “kick-start a wine revolution” in the British wine market appears to boil down to simply flooding said market with mass-produced fizzy plonk like “Bramble Hill.” It’s a boast that now looks trivial, other-worldly and out of touch with the day-to-day economics of its original target customers.

The world has suddenly and drastically changed, but Vineyard Farms (or whatever they want to call themselves) are still living in the happy days of a pre-Covid/Brexit/Ukraine invasion past, a past in which the UK still had a domestic economy and where bottles of fizzy plonk weren’t an unnecessary and pointless luxury.

In a country where food shortages are now a real threat, it seems crazy to put 1200 acres of good quality agricultural land under vines, let alone under concrete or 200,000 cubic meters of chalk spoil to make a rich person's tourist trap out of a precious green belt AONB.

But when did “crazy” ever stop the billionaire oligarchs who actually run this country from doing exactly as they please, no matter what the consequences for the rest of us…?

The Grapes of Wealth...

Luddesdown from Wrenches Shaw, late evening - enjoy while you can?

Towards Cobham from Wrenches Shaw - late evening:  Enjoy while you can?

A while back, I found out that much of the farmland around Luddesdown had been put up for sale.  This area is one of the few remaining unspoiled areas of North Kent, offering spectacular views of the seasonal changes of a classic English North Downs agrarian landscape. 

Naturally enough, this has caused some unease in the local community. Very little of North Kent has managed to avoid the rapacity of greedy developers, and the merest thought of Luddesdowne vanishing under yet more high-density, low-cost/quality housing for London refugees is too horrible to contemplate.

So today, I set out to the Golden Lion in Luddesdown, to attend a public meeting with the new owners of Court Farm and Brookers Farm. These arable farms are archetypal English farmland and have remained pretty much unchanged in character for the last hundred years, and contribute so much to the beauty of the area.

To be honest, I had been half-expecting to have to listen to some stuffed suits explaining how the new overseas owners had added Luddesdown to their land investment portofolio and had no present plans to significantly change blah blah blah - other than putting up lots of barbed wire and making public access difficult a la Church Hill in Cuxton (as foreign owners of English land so often do...).

Instead, the “new owners”, Holly and Neil, turned out to be a very pleasant and very English young married couple. Holly (rather nervously) took the microphone to explain her background to the sixty or so people packing the Golden Lion bar, before outlining their ambitions to turn the area into an eco-friendly vineyard.

Holly is the eldest daughter of the entrepreneur Mark Dixon, the colourful Monaco-based English billionaire businessman best known as the founder of serviced office business Regus.

Mr Dixon himself is no stranger to the vineyard business, already owning the Chateau de Berne vineyard and spa complex in Provence and the Kingscote estate in Sussex, and has undoubtedly provided the financial backing for his daughter and son-in-law to develop Court and Brookers Farm, although not necessarily along the same lines.

In terms of local employment opportunities, they will certainly be created.  Whether anyone local has what's needed for starting and running a vineyard is debatable.  In conversation with their business manager (a forthright lady whose name I forgot to ask), it seems that the initial start-up crew (40-odd strong) will be itinerant in nature, and will be hired in and housed in a temporary camp site for the duration of the initial vine planting.

Quite what the effect of all this upon Luddesdown and its surrounding countryside remains to be seen. A vineyard and bottling plant (and, I suspect, the inevitable spa/hotel/conference centre) will undoubtedly increase the amount of traffic down the narrow country lanes around Luddesdown.  

And replacing the annual cereal crops with permanent vines will inevitably mean an end to the glorious and colourful ever-changing seasonal views across the valley. The green fields will no longer undulate gently in the valley breezes as they turn to gold in the summer. The spectacular wildflower vistas of blues, reds, yellows and whites that once flourished amongst the oats and barley will be lost in the monoculture of the vineyard.  Better than a sea of houses, though...

Sadly, the view itself from Wrenches Shaw may well be lost should the vines be strung up the hill from the east of Cutter Ridge Road.  Two metre-high vine canes would effectively fence off the view from Bassett’s Seat with a wall of vines. 

Holly and Neil seem like very likeable and I really wish them all the best. They genuinely seem as if they want to preserve the character of the area as far as they can. I just hope that they can find the time to walk the paths around their land, and in particular, to take in the view of their land from Ray and Eiley Bassett’s memorial bench up on Wrenches Shaw, before it all gets blanketed under vine poles.

And to reflect upon what they hold in their hands.

It would be a tragedy if that view were to be blotted out by the dull, dreary monoculure of vines.

But at the end of the day, change happens. We can all be thankful that as changes go, a new vineyard springing up on the landscape is not a disaster, just something different...