Cask & Still Magazine | 13 >>>
Look who’s back
Mark Reynier’s notions of terroir – and the associated non-chillfiltration, natural colouring and barley provenance – revolutionised Scotch whisky. Now he’s shaking up rum and Irish single malt Written by Robbie Armstrong
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decade ago, Mark Reynier was sitting outside Bruichladdich nursing his wounds, the distillery having recently been sold to the French spirits group Rémy Cointreau for £58 million. Reynier had been the sole board member to vote against the sale. He had successfully resurrected the Islay distillery since buying it from Whyte & Mackay in 2000. After seven years of silence, spirit had run from the stills in 2001, followed by over a decade of experimentation, innovation and – for some – perturbation, with Reynier as CEO. ‘One summer’s evening, a glorious evening – I can remember it was one of those Hebridean days where you can see for miles, we were looking over Lochindaal over the North Channel to the coast of Antrim, Northern Ireland – we were talking about some issue we’d had with barley,’ Reynier explains. He was sitting with the distillery’s general manager, the late Duncan McGillivray, who had worked at Bruichladdich since 1974. Staring out across the water, he
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explained to Reynier that the best barley he’d seen in his 40-year career came from the south of Ireland. Unbeknownst to McGillivray, he had planted the seed in Reynier’s mind for his next venture – born of the idea that his next distillery would make whisky from quality barley grown in more hospitable climes than the Hebrides. Just over ten years on, and Reynier is sitting on his couch with his two dogs, Badger and Mimi, on a windy Monday morning in Edinburgh. Badger is old enough that Reynier remembers him jumping all over the barrels at Bruichladdich. More sedate nowadays, Badger is snoring away as Reynier talks expansively of past and present projects. A third-generation wine merchant, Reynier began his career in London in the eighties as a cellar manager. Before long he was importing wine from Burgundy, the region famed for its patchwork network of micro-terroirs. Swapping wine for whisky, in 1996 he set up independent bottler Murray McDavid (named after his Scottish
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