IT IS perhaps Britain’s most fashionable brewery, popular with Hollywood actors, television presenters and pop stars.
But now the doors have shut on the London Fields Brewery after the criminal past of its founder – the flamboyant Jules de Vere WhitewayWilkinson – caught up with him.
Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson, a former public schoolboy from a well-to-do family, set up the brewery four years ago after being released from jail partway through a 12-year sentence for supplying millions of pounds’ worth of cocaine to City brokers and bankers.
He is now facing a return to prison over his failure to pay the Government an outstanding debt of £3.2million – the amount he is reckoned to have stashed away during his days leading a drugs supply gang.
MrWhiteway-Wilkinson had previously argued that he would soon be able to pay his debt from the profits from the brewery.
Robert Pattinson, the star of the Twilight series of blockbuster movies, spent New Year’s Eve at the brewery, partying with his girlfriend Tahliah Debrett Barnett, who is better known to a younger audience of music fans as the singer FKA twigs. David Schwimmer, star of the television comedy series Friends, was also in attendance. Others to have enjoyed hospitality at the brewery include Fearne Cotton, the BBC 1 radio presenter.
London Fields Brewery appeared to be a huge success. Except that in the past fortnight it has closed down and laid off its brewery staff.
The premises and MrWhiteway-Wilkinson’s home were raided by HM Revenue & Customs officers over allegations that the business had failed to pay VAT. The problems have been compounded by a decision in recent weeks to stop brewing beer at the premises in London Fields, in Hackney, east London.
The brewery remains open to the public as a popular party venue, but the venture has now outsourced its brewing operation to commercial breweries in Lincolnshire and Sussex. Last week, visitors to the brewery complained that the tour, which had proved a popular attraction, was no longer quite as billed.
Posted on the holiday website TripAdvisor under the headline “Not a Tour”, one visitor wrote last week: “Arrived at 2pm to be led by a man to what was the brewery (outsourced now) who pointed at a few barrels saying what they would have been used for. He wasn’t a brewer, nor even that clued up.
“His nervous references to crystal meth and cannabis could have caused offence. For the whole of the 30-minute tour, we stood still!”
One possible visitor was told last week: “We are still doing tours although currently we are not brewing visibly on site. We are using a larger brewer to brew for us.”
MrWhiteway-Wilkinson, 42, came from a prominent Devon family that made its fortune running pottery clay mines in the 19th century. His greatuncle, a submarine commander, was awarded the Distinguished Service Cross in the Second World War, while his immediate family made its fortune from property speculation, trading and farming.
He attended Quantock School in Somerset where he met James Long, who would go on to become a member of Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson’s drugs gang. They dabbled in cannabis in their teens before moving to London, where the pair set up a drugs supply business to City traders, dealing in cocaine, ecstasy and cannabis.
MrWhiteway-Wilkinson, the gang’s leader, bought a private plane, which he used to import drugs, and in one 13-month period spent more than £7.6million on cocaine to sell to his customers.
He told his parents he was a successful party planner to explain the purchase of an expensive sports car and a £600,000 flat in Hoxton, east London. He led a life of excess that included the making of sex films of himself with women, which he distributed to his friends.
When Mr WhitewayWilkinson was jailed in 2004 for 12 years, police said they had identified more than £4.5million of assets that were subject to confiscation orders, but that much more was believed abroad accounts.
He was freed in about 2010, having served half his sentence, and set up the brewery in 2011 as he went about rehabilitating himself. It became a booming success, lauded for such beers as the Hackney Hopster, described as “a debonair young chap of a Pacific pale ale”; and Love Not War, “first brewed barricaded in the brewery during the London riots”.
Pubs across London began stocking his ales as the fad for micro-beers grew. At a to be stashed in overseas
Fearne Cotton, left, Robert Pattinson, top, and David Schwimmer, above left, have visited Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson’s brewery
court hearing at the end of last year, he escaped being sent back to jail over his failure to repay in full a confiscation order of £2.1million plus a further £1.1million in interest.
A judge at Westminster magistrates’ court agreed to give him until May to pay a significant part of the debt after Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson argued that the brewery was becoming successful and the taxpayer would be better served if he could remain free to run it.
But a few weeks later, he was arrested on suspicion of tax evasion after a dawn raid at his home in north-east London. The brewery’s premises were also searched and documents taken away. Three months on and the beer-making operation has been shut down. It has been suggested that staff have been laid off, although the brewery was unavailable for comment on this.
The “handcrafted in Hackney” beer is now being brewed at sites outside London. A worker has said that the brewing arrangements had changed following Mr Whiteway-Wilkinson’s arrest over alleged tax evasion.
He faces a possible eightyear “default” sentence if he fails to repay at least some of the money by May.
A Crown Prosecution Service spokesman said a hearing was set for May 26.