Emma and Alex Watson Launch Renais Gin In Florida

Photo Credit: Renais GinGrowing up in the hospitality industry, Alex Watson, co-founder of luxury gin brand Renais Gin was always fascinated by the word terroir, which is a French winemaking term meaning all of the environmental variables that shape a particular vintage of wine. When describing the flavor notes of Renais he co-founded with his sister Emma Watson, Alex enthusiastically states “it’s an expression of terroir. There’s so many layers and complexities to the flavor. I think it’s a completely unique gin experience. The flavor profile is smooth, citrus, mineral, and complex.”

Alex’s dream was to create a spirit that reflects terroir. While working at British alcoholic beverage company Diageo, Alex started involving himself more in the production process and found a way to receive the grape skins from his family’s vineyards and the neighboring vineyards, planting the first seeds for the birth of Renais in 2022.

Photo Credit: Renais Gin

Coming up with the flavor profile and the recipe for the luxury gin took the founders two years with many different iterations. The flavor mission was always to express the terroir of Chablis, the region where Alex and Emma’s father Chris Watson has been growing wine in Burgundy for 30 years. “There are three main flavor pillars in Chablis or Burgundy wine,” expresses Alex. “You get these beautiful, fresh white grape and floral notes, and we went after that with Chardonnay grape juice, Linden flowers, and Grand Cru grapes.”

Alex proudly adds “Chablis is also famous for its minerality it has from the limestone, which structures the body of the wine. So that’s why we use limestone and rock salt for the flavoring in our gin. Burgundy wines are also famous for this very crisp, acidic profile; the way that we tried to replicate that was with a lot of citrus in the gin with lemon and lime.”

The cofounder recommends the gin to be served neat over ice in a cocktail with a lemon peel to accentuate the acid profile for this very reason.

Reflecting upon his early years, Alex expresses, “We had a quite typical French upbringing where we sat around the dinner table with our parents when they were having a glass of wine, and we were allowed to taste a little bit. So, you know, alcohol was never this kind of forbidden, regulated substance. It was something that you could taste and learn about. As I got older, my dad would play all kinds of games with me and Emma, and would be like “taste this and tell me if you can guess the right tasting notes.”

Emma and Alex’s dad first got into winemaking because he was a linguist speaking six different languages with French being one of them, while he was working as a lawyer in Paris. During his time in France, Chris Watson met Alex’s godfather who was his best friend, and they would spend long weekends fishing and tasting wine in Burgundy. This is where their dad completely fell in love with this little village called Chablis. After five or six years of spending time there with the locals, Chris eventually found a plot of land to plant vines because the locals told him, “You’re kind of a French winemaker trapped in an English person’s body.” So, he did something that was very unusual and found himself a plot of land where, over the next 30 years, he produced award-winning wines and worked very hard to promote the region of Chablis and ended up serving as the ambassador for the region.

“As we got older and would have long holidays in France and work around the vineyards, my dad would take us to meet some of the winemakers, so then we would go and see where the grapes come from and how the wine is made.” Alex happily adds.

Chris Watson’s accolades include being named as a pilier for the winemaking region of Chablis in Burgundy, representing the UK, and he is the only non-French person to be a part of the prestigious winemaker’s guild Les Piliers Chablisien with 23 members total. This Bacchic brotherhood was founded in 1953 by Chablis notary René Sotty to honor individuals who champion the excellence and tradition of Chablis wines. “This has been an extraordinary journey for all of my life and Emma’s life over the last 30 years of my dad’s love affair with Burgundy and wine making, and it’s had a huge impact on my decision to work in drinks and shaped how I see the world of drinks,” expresses Alex.

Continuing his father’s legacy in Burgundy, the guild of winemakers every year choose one person to welcome into the guild in recognition of his or her services to the region and promoting the interests of the winemakers. Alex excitedly acknowledges “I was chosen to be initiated in October because of Renais and the work that the gin does in terms of celebrating the terroir of the region and promoting the interests of the region. That was a very special moment for me and my family.“

Going back to his early days, Alex was born in France, then he and his family moved back to the UK when he was four, but they spent a lot of holidays in France where he would work for long periods in the vineyards learning about winemaking, which had a big impact and really shaped Renais for him. The name “Renais” itself means “rebirth” and is a big nod towards their gin production process, which is very unusual in the world of spirits being that all of the alcohol for the gin is distilled from upcycling the grape skins from the winemaking process, so 99% of vodkas are distilled from grain because it is cost efficient and readily available. Alex wanted to find a way to not waste the grape skins that are left over after you extract the juice during the winemaking process. “When I told Emma there was this way to distill spirits very sustainably that also pays tribute to our family’s history and winemaking or ‘rebirth it,’ Emma enthusiastically wanted to move forward as the next generation of winemakers in our family,” Alex says.

Photo Credit: Renais Gin

Emma’s chief role for Renais is bringing creative direction to the gin label, working behind the scenes on branding, artwork, and production. For their U.S. debut, Emma designed a limited-edition sleeve featuring her own illustrations, referencing the iconography representing some of the botanicals found in Renais. The brand also released a campaign video completely directed and styled by Emma.

Since 2024, Renais has expanded to the U.S. where the brand has had launches in California, New York, and most recently Florida. When reflecting on the recent U.S. launches, Alex expresses, “What we’ve seen is that every state has a really different drink culture. The go-to market strategy we have is that we need to treat every state like it is a different country. We have a very differentiated product with a great story and an emphasis on quality, and there’s always been space in the market for that.“

In terms of challenges to overcome, Alex notes that scaling a 20-month-old company has been difficult. “We had distributors from all over the world trying to get hold of us, and right now, we’re already in 14 markets, and we’ll probably be in 20 by the end of the year. Figuring out how to scale our production process so that we could fulfill orders all around the world was immediately something that we had to get our heads around,” Alex explains.

The novelty of Renais is that it is one of the first in its category of luxury gin to launch and expand its movement to the U.S. There is a long history with gin in Europe, and there has been a huge amount of innovation in gin just within the UK. “I think that the U.S. is just beginning to get to grips with gin,” expresses Alex. It’s a smaller category in the U.S., and it hasn’t had its moment in luxury here yet, but luxury gin in the U.S. is one of the fastest growing spirit segments in the world, which is really exciting for us, because there are not a huge amount of luxury gins, and we’re one of them.”

Photo Credit: Renais Gin

Gin serves as the backbone of so many of the classic cocktails,  whether it is a martini, Negroni, or Tom Collins. Most U.S. consumers’ first introduction to gin is London dry gin, which is very Juniper-forward, bitter, and dry. “On the other end of the spectrum is Renais offering a fresh flavor profile of white grape citrus notes, a very smooth finish because of the grape spirit that’s in there, and these beautiful, delicate notes of minerality and salinity from limestone and rock salt that we use, and a little bit of acacia honey because sweetness accentuates a lot of the flavors,” adds Alex.

Gin is not just used for cocktails. For unique flavor pairings with Renais gin, Alex and his family made a syrup infusion to sweeten their tall stack they made for Pancake Day in England. “The beautiful thing is when you start making your own cocktails, especially in the same way when you start cooking, you start to care about the quality of your ingredients, which I think has led to this surge of premiumization in spirits that we’re seeing, which is people consuming their spirits, but trading up and drinking better because they care about what they’re making drinks with,” concludes Alex.

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