THE GIN PASSPORT ATLAS - DISTILLERY STORY- PINNED ON THE MAP - EUROPE
RENAIS GIN, Lincolnshire, England
There is a good family story behind Renais. Emma and Alex Watson grew up with a connection to Chablis through their father, Chris, who has spent more than 30 years making wine at Domaine Watson. The vineyards were part of their childhood, so when the idea came about of turning something left behind from winemaking into a gin, it wasn't a case of finding a French wine region and building a story around it afterwards.
The idea was to give grape skins left over from pressing a second life. Alex was already working in the drinks industry and had experience on both the hospitality and brand side, while Emma brought her own creative experience to the project. Together they developed the concept that became Renais — a gin rooted in the family's connection with Chablis but made in England.
Alex's drinks background is worth knowing. Before Renais he worked in hospitality and then spent several years at Diageo, working with brands including Tanqueray, Ketel One and Johnnie Walker. He also holds a WSET qualification, so this wasn't entirely unfamiliar territory when the siblings decided to make a spirit.
The liquid itself was developed with London bartender and drinks specialist Jack Sotti. Sotti was involved from the early stages of the project through to liquid development, working with the Watson family to turn the idea of a Chablis-inspired gin into an actual recipe. The brief was to capture some of the characteristics they associated with the region: bright citrus, delicate floral notes and that distinctive mineral quality.
The resulting recipe makes considerable use of the place behind it. Grape skins left over from the Watson family's wine production are distilled alongside Grand Cru grapes and botanicals including juniper, coriander, lemon and lime, linden flower, cubeb, angelica, acacia honey and rock salt. There is also Kimmeridgian stone, referencing the limestone-rich geology beneath the Chablis vineyards and the ancient marine fossils found within it.
It is an unusually literal interpretation of terroir for a gin. Rather than simply borrowing the name of a wine region, Renais uses material connected to the family vineyard and ingredients intended to evoke its landscape. The distillation, however, takes place in England, at Louth Distillery, home of Giraffe Distillers in Lincolnshire.
The name Renais means “rebirth”, referring to the idea of giving the discarded grape skins a new life. It is a simple idea, but one that neatly ties together the wine connection, the unusual raw material and the finished gin.
The bottle was clearly considered part of that story too. Renais worked with Berlin Packaging's Studio One Eleven to create a bespoke bottle with what they describe as a French modern aesthetic.
The textured glass is designed to suggest rows of vines, while the label combines embossing, gold and silver foil and high-build varnish. It is deliberately elaborate and certainly isn't trying to disappear on a back bar.
That attention to detail extends beyond the bottle. Renais uses biodegradable mushroom packaging made by the Magical Mushroom Company to protect bottles during transport, replacing the sort of plastic-based protective packaging you might normally expect. It is an appropriately on-brand touch for a gin built around giving something discarded a second life.
Emma's role is different from Alex's. She is a genuine co-founder and has been closely involved in the creative direction of the brand, including its visual identity, campaigns and photography. There is no criticism to be made of the fact that Emma Watson's name is used to promote Renais. That is part of what celebrity brings to a brand, and there is no pretending otherwise. Her name gets the bottle noticed, generates press coverage and gives a new spirit an audience that would be very difficult to build from scratch.
The more interesting question is what that attention is worth when it comes to building the actual business. In 2024, Renais raised £4.95 million in investment, with backing including US spirits investor InvestBev and Jean-Sébastien Robicquet of Maison Villevert. The funding was intended to support international expansion, increased production capacity and further growth in the United States.
Would the same investment have been available if the name on the business wasn't Watson? There is no way to put a figure on the value of Emma's celebrity status, and it would be unfair to suggest that investors backed Renais solely because of her. There is a genuine business behind it, with relevant drinks-industry experience, established industry connections and a properly developed liquid.
What is difficult to ignore is the head start that fame provides. A new gin needs attention before it needs a loyal following, and Emma Watson brings attention on a scale that most new spirits brands could never afford to buy through advertising alone.
Whether that helped Renais secure £4.95 million of investment is impossible to prove, but it would be equally difficult to argue that it had no value.
That leaves Renais in an interesting position. The celebrity is very much part of the brand, but so are the family vineyard, the liquid development, the bottle, the packaging and the business that has been built around them. The question is not whether Emma Watson belongs on the label. It is how much easier the journey became once her name was on it.
"Hollywood glamour
meets French terroir"
Show me a bottle and
I'll tell you a story.
Atlas Note:
Celebrity involvement doesn't automatically mean a gin is bad, or that the celebrity has simply lent their name to somebody else's product. The useful question is what they actually bring to the business — and whether that translates into money, attention and commercial opportunities that an unknown founder would struggle to access.
Renais raised £4.95m in 2024; an SEC filing also records US$2.36m of equity sold to eight investors in 2024, although that appears to form part of the wider fundraising rather than being additional to the £4.95m.
As a comparison, Papa Salt was self-funded by its five founders, with no outside investment disclosed.
Aviation attracted Ryan Reynolds as an investor before Diageo acquired the brand for up to US$610m in 2020, although Reynolds' own investment amount has not been disclosed.
Cygnet has attracted a minority investment from Robb Report, but the amount has not been disclosed. No publicly disclosed funding figure has been found so far for O/\TH, The Gardener, Artingstall's or James Gin, although May has joked that he would seriously consider a £10m if offered!
Renais Gin has won the following awards: Gold, Gin Masters 2023, 2024 & 2026; Great Taste Award 2024 & 2026.