Grenada is the second southernmost island in the Caribbean, just one hundred miles north of Venezuela. It is one of the smallest islands with just one hundred thirty four square miles, as compared to for example Puerto Rico, which is often called the smallest of the Greater Antilles and the largest of the Lesser Antilles, that has three thousand five hundred square miles. It is known as the spice island, as it is a big producer of nutmeg, cocoa, cloves and mace.

Grenada was discovered by Christopher Columbus in 1498 during his third voyage. The Spanish never settled the island so the French were the first settlers when in 1649 an expedition from Martinique led by Jacques Dyel du Parquet, established a permanent settlement there. French occupation lasted until 1762 when the British captured Grenada in the Seven Years' War and France formally ceded it to Britain in the Treaty of Paris of 1763. Two brief unsuccessful French occupations followed in the 1780s and 1790s lasting about four years and one year respectively. During the early years under British rule, sugar and rum production in Grenada was substantial for its tiny size, but after producing a high five and a half million liters of rum in 1832, its production started to decline in part due to Britain’s abolition of slavery in 1834. Eventually the island farmers shifted to other crops that required less labor force.

In the 1910s, all rum produced in Grenada was for local consumption. By 1940 there were nine distilleries in operation that produced a mere one hundred thirty six thousand liters of rum annually. After the coup that brought to power the People’s Revolutionary Government (PRG) in 1979, the government nationalized the Grenada Sugar Factory and its distillery, however, the three other sugar factories and distilleries operating at the time; Westerhall, River Antoine and Dunfermline were not. During the four years the PRG was in power until the US led military invasion in 1983 that reestablished a constitutional government, the agricultural activity started to dwindle and then Hurricane Ivan in 2004 and Hurricane Emily in 2005 caused severe damage to the island's agricultural infrastructure.

When the hurricanes struck, there were three distilleries, River Antoine, Grenada Distillers and Westerhall, all associated with sugar refineries. The Westerhall distillery which had stopped distilling in 1996 was demolished and the Dunfermline sugar factory and distillery had to permanently cease operations. Though the Westerhall distillery is today not in operation, Westerhall brand rum is still being produced. They import neutral spirits from Trinidad and do the blending, aging, and bottling locally. The estate is open to the public as a tourist destination where the old machinery and equipment can still be seen.

River Antoine Distillery

The River Antoine estate was established by French colonial planters, in 1724 it was sold to a British Army Captain Grant and later it was acquired by Thomas Henry De Gale II (1850-1923). Thomas Henry De Gale II married Henrietta Otway (1862-1946) and had twelve children, including Frank Claude De Gale (1887- ) who ran the estate. By 1946, the De Gale family owned eleven estates, including River Antoine, comprising two thousand eighty acres of land. The family temporarily los ownership of the estate during the PRG government (1979-1983) and since 1983 it has been owned and operated by a local cooperative consisting of the Richards, Edgar and Thomas families with Shirley Richards the most recently known manager.

The River Antoine distillery is located near Tivoli and La Poterie villages in St. Patrick Parish in the northeast part of the island near the river of the same name. It is the oldest rum distillery in Grenada dating back to 1785 and one of the oldest working rum distilleries in the Western Hemisphere. Not much has advanced here since its early days, its sugar mill is still powered by the only working waterwheel in the Caribbean installed in 1840, and all the process is done by hand. At their thirty seven acre estate, they cultivate sugarcane for the production of the Rivers Royale (aka Rivers) brand rum and also grow coconuts and nutmeg.

Rivers Royale rum is bottled unaged at 150˚ proof for local consumption and at 138˚ proof so that visitors and tourist can fly home with a bottle. You see, the maximum proof alcohol allowed on commercial airplanes is 140˚proof, any liquor exceeding this limit is considered hazardous and is prohibited in both carry-on and checked luggage due to flammability risks. Small quantities of the River Royale rum have been exported in the past but not on a consistent basis, it has basically not been a product made for export until a recent partnership made with La Maison & Velier to distribute the Rivers Royale rum internationally.

Since sugarcane hasn’t been grown in Grenada in significant amounts for many years, the availability of sugarcane to process dictates the production volumes at River Antoine distillery. Although not considered a rhum agricole, Rivers Royale is made from partially concentrated fresh cane juice, heated in what may be considered one of the few or maybe the only Jamaican train in use for commercial purposes, until it reaches the desired concentration. Fermentation occurs in open concrete tanks using wild yeast strains, followed by distillation in direct-fired copper pot stills.‍ ‍This YouTube Video is a good documentary to appreciate the River Antoine distillery operation today.

Renegade Spirits Grenada Ltd

Mark Reynier is a forty year veteran in the liquor industry who in 1980 began his career in the London. His first twenty years were in the wine industry when he developed a firm belief in the concept of terroir influenced spirit, that the soil where the raw material is grown is critical in the flavor of the final product. He sums up the meaning of terroir as “the complex interconnection of microclimate, soil, exposure, geology and topography on the fruit of the vine”. This vision was behind his projects at Bruichladdich, Waterford and Renegade.

In 1985 he formed La Réserve, a chain of London wine and spirits merchants sold to the Jeroboams Group in 2004, in 1994 he founded independent whisky bottler Murray McDavid and in December 2000 he purchased the Bruichladdich distillery, an Islay distillery founded in the 1880s that had been decommissioned in 1994. He revived the distillery and brand, created Botanist Gin there and in 2012 sold it to Rémy Cointreau. In 2014 he acquired a former Guinness brewery along the city’s riverfront at Waterford in the southeast of Ireland, transforming it into a distillery that started producing whisky in 2015. In addition to scotch, at Bruichladdich Reynier purchased neutral spirits, aged them and released them under the Renegade Rum label. He then wanted to replicate his Bruichladdich experience with rum so he explored the possibility of buying distilleries in Jamaica, St. Lucia, Barbados, Cuba and even in Fiji, Reunion, and Mauritius.  All the possibilities he identified were all too far away, too decrepit, or both.

In 2015, his associate John Adams who had a college classmate with a house on Grenada, suggested they go down ti the island and take a look. That’s all it took and the Renegade Rum Distillery project began based on a feasibility study in the Fall of 2015 by sugar consultants Booker Tate that concluded the plan for a sugarcane juice rum distillery in Grenada was viable but there were no farmers wishing to go into growing sugarcane. A further implementation study commissioned to Booker Tate completed in 2016, established the road map to leasing land to grow sugarcane. Soon Cane Co. that same year, the first land leases were secured and relationships with local farmers were established. Local talent was recruited, Bertrand John, Reynier was named Director of Agriculture and Graham Williams, former Managing Director for Westerhall Estate was named Project Director.

In July 2018 construction of the $30 million distillery began on the grounds of the old Dunfermline estate. By 2019 Cane Co. had some one hundred fifty acres planted with six varieties of sugarcane within an hour’s drive from the distillery, by reintroducing sugarcane cultivation in Grenada, they also supplied the neighboring River Antoine distillery. In 2022 the large blue modern buildings of the Renegade distillery finally started to produce rum from sugarcane juice, since as Reynier states; “molasses is perhaps, in my opinion, one of the reasons why rum has never really been taken seriously.”

However, the life of Renegade Rum Distillery was short lived as in November 2024 the Renegade Rum Distillery and the Waterford Distillery entered receivership. In March 2026 the assets of Waterford Distillery were acquired by Tennessee Distilling Group and Renegade Rum Distillery closed down awaiting sale. Their project was an ambitious one and their concept unique in the world of rum as their terroir-driven rum presented field-by-field variations in flavor, and bottling made by field name and cuvée blends. 

Grenada Distillers Ltd.

Grenada Distillers is the largest distillery in Grenada, established in 1937 on the site of one of the island’s large sugar factory estates in the southern parish of St. George’s near the capital city of St. George’s. It operates Clarke’s distillery which takes its name from Clarke’s Court Bay and the Woodlands Estate, once owned by Gedney Clarke II (1735-1777). Clarke II most valuable asset inherited from his father Gedney Clarke (1711-1764) was real estate along the Demerara and Essequibo Rivers, which together with Berbice and Surinam comprised the eighteenth century Dutch colonial settlements that today lie within Guyana. In 1762 Gedney Clarke II married Frances Lascelles (1738-1777), the niece of his father’s major creditor, London based financier, commission merchant and slave trader Henry Lascelles.

In 1767, Gedney Clarke II sold all of the family's Demerara plantations motivated by the colony's factional politics. With the proceeds from the sale, he purchased four new plantations, plus a share in a fifth property in Tobago and Grenada, including seven hundred eighty acres in Grenada known today as the Woodlands estate. In 1768 his new property in Grenada, Clarke's Court, produced only one hundred twenty casks of sugar barely producing income to cover debt payments. In 1776, since his plantations could only be sold at a great loss, Lascelles & Daling foreclosed on his loans and took possession of the properties. Clarke II and his wife Frances, did not have to bear the pain of their financial failure for long as in 1777 both died within a month of each other in Barbados. Lascelles & Daling operated and managed Clarke’s Court sugar plantation until selling it to Scotsman George Shand in 1791. A survey done in 1824 shows another change of hands of the then seven hundred seventy acre estate to John Ross used mostly for the growing of sugarcane. Following emancipation in 1834, the estate struggled to remain profitable, mortgagees like Rev. Henry Chaplin, Rev. James Ellice, and Vere Fane held the property in later years. In 1877, then property of the estate of Frederick Delacy Lord was advertised to be sold at auction.

Circa 1936, the Grenada Sugar Factory, a new central sugar mill and distillery, was built on the site of the old distillery at Woodlands Estate. Its main shareholder was Charles Felix Percival Renwick, a prominent early 20th-century lawyer, businessman, and political figure in Grenada. Among his other enterprises were The West Indian newspaper, the Grenada Co-operative Bank Ltd established in 1932, and was the first agent for Demerara Life in Grenada. Its site today is full of old machinery including a large historical water wheel, cane presses and other old equipment from when it was a sugar refinery including a steam engine dating back to the late 1800s. When it was built, sugar harvesting in Grenada was practically non existent, most of the sugarcane processed at the Grenada Sugar Factory was grown at its four estates; Woodlands, Hope Vale, Calivigny and Bardia and from one hundred seventy one small individual growers. It was a successful operation transitioning during its lifetime from the production of sugar to the production of cane syrup exclusively for its distillery. The sugar factory ceased to operate in the 1980s when the distillery switched to rum production from imported molasses.

As stated above, in 1979 the People’s Revolutionary Government in power nationalized the Grenada Sugar Factory and its distillery. Even though ownership was retuned in part to private hands after the People’s Revolutionary Government was removed from power by the Invasion of Grenada in 1983, it was not until 2001 that full ownership was returned to private investors when Leroy Neckels became its sole owner and who, to this day, is its CEO.

Fermentation is done using commercially sourced yeast in open vats for up to two days. The distillery operates a two column John Dore & Co. Ltd [1] Coffey still installed in 1983. to produce its base rums. Under the Clarke’s Court brand, it makes Pure White Rum: their flagship 69% ABV overproof white rum for the local market, Old Grog: a premium blend aged up to ten years in ex-bourbon barrels, Black Gold: a specialty dark rum heavily highlighted by local nutmeg infusions, Spicy Rum: a 69% ABV rum infused with authentic Grenadian spices like cinnamon and mace and flavored rums & liqueurs. Its facilities are well known for its s the official visitor, retail, and hospitality center named Nick’s Barrel House.

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[1] In in 1872, Philip Coffey, the son of Aeneas Coffey the inventor of the Coffey still, transferred Aeneas Coffey & Sons to his long time foreman John Dore, who then established John Dore & Co. Ltd as the successors to Aeneas Coffey & Sons. He supplied Coffey stills to Jamaica, Barbados, Guyana, St Vincent, St Lucia and Grenada. John Dore & Co. Ltd ceased to operate in the early 1990s although the trade mark was sold and has been since used on stills built by other copper works.