One of the spirits industry’s most influential figures has put his rum distillery in Grenada up for sale four years after it was established.

Mark Reynier, best known for reviving the fortunes of Islay’s Bruichladdich whisky distillery at the start of this century and later founding the Waterford Distillery in Ireland, established the Renegade rum producer in Grenada in 2022.

The project has taken a terroir-driven approach to making rum from sugar cane rather than molasses, sourcing cane from 12 neighbouring farms and including a code on each bottle tracing it back to the exact farm, plot and harvest date.

Its rums are listed by leading spirits retailers in the UK, including The Whisky Exchange, Master of Malt and Hedonism Wines.

Maria Daniel, managing partner at consultant EY Parthenon Caribbean, which is leading the sale, said the sustainability and social impact angle added an extra dimension for prospective buyers.

“Across the spirits industry, sustainability happens at the margins: lighter packaging, cleaner inputs,” she said.

“The core imbalance stays the same: value sits downstream, while farmers capture only a fraction of it. Renegade was built to close that gap.

“Farm-to-bottle isn’t a marketing line, it’s a structural model: cane locally sourced and processed on site, by-products returned to the soil, an all-female, entirely neighbourhood production team.”

The company said that the 2023 acquisitions of Diplomático by Brown-Forman and Don Papa by Diageo showed an “appetite among big spirits players for credible, traceable, premium rum assets”.

Reynier led a team of private investors who bought Bruichladdich in 2000, selling it to Rémy Cointreau 12 years later.

Waterford went into receivership in November 2024 and was taken over by the Tennessee Distilling Group earlier this year.

Renegade has been contacted by Drinks Retailing about the reasons behind Reynier’s decision to sell the rum operation.