Emma Watson Family Wine

The entrepreneurial bug has struck a Harry Potter film alum again, with Emma Watson and her brother Alex expanding into new business opportunities. The siblings, along with their father, Chris, sat in conversation with the

The brainchild of Alex Watson, Renais gin (pronounced like Renée) is ready to hit the ground running in the spirit market. Emma backed her brother wholeheartedly in his new venture. She found herself on the creative side of production, overseeing all design and art aspects of Renais and bringing her business experience after investing in other start-up companies.

Alex is the expert on gin, and dad is the expert on wine, but it’s really nice to be asked to be involved. […] I couldn’t bear to let someone else do it because it’s our family, our history. We have to sell a product, but I think it would have hurt my soul if it had been done in a way that didn’t feel personal.

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Renais boasts a unique flavor extracted from upcycled grand cru grape skins from Chablis, France, that would otherwise be discarded after the grapes are harvested for wines. The Chablis wine district sits in the northernmost part of France’s Burgundy region. The raw alcohol for this gin comes from a distillery in Beaujolais, France,

Including one owned by the Watson family. These critical ingredients and various other flavoring ingredients are blended and distilled in a northern region of England. Alex says it’s a combination of the best of both the English world and the French world.

It takes the inspiration and the quality of the ingredients and the philosophy of France and applies that to an English drink. And we’ve made every effort to ensure that the juice is good, as they say.

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Renais is hardly a beverage or company built on a whim. The Watson family history is flush with the culture of French food, wine, spirits, and business expertise. Emma and Alex spent their infancy and early childhood in France but later moved to England with their parents. However, they

Chris has an established presence in the Chablis district. Since the purchase of his first vineyard in 1991, he has worked to make his business a locally loved and supported part of the region. He now owns seven vineyards across Chablis.

It was a huge battle. I had to tick every box to be treated as a local. […] Initially, there was all this resistance, but once they realised I was not some outside speculator hoping to make a killing, but rather more Chablisien than the Chablisiens, it was fine.

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Emma and Alex were introduced to alcohol at a young age. Of course, no tiny drunk members of the Watson family were running around. But a small amount of wine with lunches was their method of exposure. Emma recalled wine as an extension of the meals and an ingrained part of French food culture instead of an illicit or mysterious substance.

I was quite surprised when other children were very excited about the idea of getting their hands on alcohol. Dad had been giving me water with wine at lunch since I was a child. I didn’t think alcohol was for getting wasted. So I was quite confused when I was a teenager and everyone thought alcohol was this forbidden fruit.We use cookies and other data for a number of reasons, such as keeping Sites reliable and secure, personalising content and ads, providing social media features and to analyse how our Sites are used.

Aer a long absence from the spotlight, the actress is back…  with a premium gin. She invites us to France to talk terroir, family and taking time out to find herself again

Actress Emma Watson And Her Brother Alex Launch Renais Gin

To call Emma Watson’s father an oenophile would be undercooking it. “He’s a mega-nerd, ” says Emma over a long lunch last September, with a bias towards regional classics, at Bistrot des Grands Crus in Chablis.

Amega-nerd.” Chris Watson loves France, and the French. More specifically, he lovesrural Burgundy, in the eastern-central part of the country, and especially Chablis, the small Burgundian town famous for its white wine.

, to toast a new venture: the launch of a gin, the brainchild of Alex Watson, Emma’s younger brother, who until recently wasan executive in the drinks industry. It’s called Renais, or “rebirth”, pronounced like “Renée”. And, uniquely foragin, it is as much French as it is English, just as theWatsons feel themselves to be.

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“What I really love is the culture here of the harvest, ” says Emma. “I like the rituals around it and the history and the connection with the people here” © Rich Stapleton

At least partly a tribute to Chris, and to the land – the terroir – that the Watsons love, Renais will go on sale for the first time today, initially in the UK. Flavoured by the skins of grapes handpicked in the steepest, most prestigious grand cru vineyards of Chablis, it is, in Alex’sdescription, “quite an esoteric product”. And, in its way, a very modern one: the grape skins are organic and the gin is certified carbon-neutral.

Chris Watson, 65, is a high-flying City lawyer, a partner in a large international law firm, with a focus on communications law. He is also an accomplished linguist. As well as French, Watson speaks German, Spanish, Italian, and his Russian is good enough to decode complicated legal documents. His English is also decent. But Chris’s real passions are for game fishing, music and wine-making – and wine-drinking.

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He first came to Chablis in 1987, “to pick grapes and carry a hod up and down a hill”, as he puts it, sounding very much like a man who would like nothing more than to be doing exactly that right now. Back then, he was a young English barrister recently relocated to Paris with his then wife, Jacqueline, also a lawyer. During their seven years in France, they had two children, Emma, born in 1990, and Alex, two years later. And even though the family moved back to England when Alex was a toddler, Chris and the kids kept coming back to Chablis year aer year. (Chris and Jacqueline divorced in 1995, and Emma and Alex have long since acquired new siblings on both sides.)

Chris bought his first vineyard in 1991. This was easier said than done. It took him eight years to satisfy the criteria of the local authorities so that he could plant his vines. Bureaucracy, I am not the first person to note, is a French word. Then again, so is entrepreneur.

“It was a huge battle, ” Chris says. “I had to tick every box to be treated as a local. You had to pay your social security as an agricultural labourer. You had to own half a tractor. You had to own a barn. Initially there was all this resistance, but once they realised I was not some outside speculator hoping to make a killing, but rather more Chablisien than the Chablisiens, it was fine.”

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Today he owns seven vineyards with friends, and his life is stitched into the fabric of the region. He is one of 25Piliers, a group of local wine-making worthies and representatives of Chablis (suggested collective noun: a “crate” of Piliers?) who officiate at festivals and events.

“I represent Chablis in the UK, ” Chris says. “I am the designated person. You have to give an oath to defend them. You have to appear at ceremonies every year…”

Emma offers an indulgent eye-roll in confirmation. But there is also photographic evidence, which we examine on Chris’s phone. Here he is in his finery: green and gold robes and a not unfunny hat. And oh, look! Here’s one of him with Miss France.

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They must both do quite a bit of this. When Chrissegues into some juicy local gossip Emma intervenes. “Don’t say anything you don’t want in the article, justspeaking as someone who has been interviewed a number of times.”

As our hors d’oeuvres are replaced by main courses, the stories of Chris’s adventures in viticulture give way to the genesis of his son’s gin. As a teenager, Alex would come to Chablis in school holidays. “I’d help out in the vineyards, ” he remembers. “I’ve always thought it wasvery special.”

I can’t say where the journey will go. I’m sure we’ll make mistakes. But I can vouch forAlex, I know who he is. I’ve seen what this is. I’ve literally picked the grapes myself Emma Watson

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As the younger brother of a movie star, plenty of opportunities came his way. “I was being pushed towards modelling or acting, ” he says. He signed with a modelling agency, but he didn’t enjoy it. Rather than walking the catwalks of Paris and Milan, Alex took a first in philosophy at Bristol, but academia didn’t appeal as a career either. Since he was 16, he’d worked in pubs and restaurants: “I fell in love with hospitality.”

“He had lots of offers and he turned them down, ” saysEmma. “For an 18-year-old boy who, at that point, was on a strict allowance from Dad, to say no to all that: Ithought that