Waterford Goes Into Receivership After Funding Efforts Fall Short

Waterford Distillery, the terroir specialist of Irish whiskey, has fallen into receivership following unsuccessful attempts to raise more funding to keep it afloat. The Irish Times reported that the business entered receivership following an emergency board meeting this week, and distillery staff were informed of the news on November 27th. The Waterford online shop was taken offline the same day. The receivers will seek a new buyer for the business, but if that doesn’t materialize, the distillery and its stocks could be put up for sale.

Located in the city of Waterford in the southeast of Ireland, Waterford was launched by Mark Reynier in January 2016 from a former Guinness brewery along the city’s riverfront. Four years earlier, Reynier had exited his position at Islay’s Bruichladdich Distillery, having voted against its acquisition by Rémy Cointreau. From the outset, Waterford enabled Reynier to take his vision of terroir-driven whiskey making to new heights, drawing on his wine industry background and his role with Islay-grown and organic barley at Bruichladdich to lay the groundwork for single farm origin Irish whiskeys. As well as standalone bottlings, these parcels would subsequently serve as unique components for blending into single malt cuvées to elevate the Waterford tasting experience.

With Reynier at the wheel, Waterford had real swagger, and its intrepid, ambitious, and assertive approach inspired whiskey lovers to follow its progress, making them feel they were part of the adventure. Reynier used terroir brilliantly as propaganda for their cause, and before even a drop had been sold, the fact that their innovative approach was unorthodox and different from the majority of multinational distillery companies only helped to solicit greater admiration from the wider whisky community. Waterford championed the provenance and flavor of Irish-grown barley in whiskey, shining the spotlight on its farming partners. Harvests were gathered from a patchwork of neighboring farms across Ireland, each batch malted and stored separately until it was ready to be distilled. If Reynier had flair as Waterford’s influential frontman, then head brewer Neil Conway and head distiller Ned Gahan made for a formidable rhythm section and always had his back. Where else but Waterford would a distillery employ an agronomist, collaborate with an agricultural scientist to publish a scientific paper on terroir, and subsequently invite a terroir specialist to join the team?

The inaugural release, in its cobalt blue bottle, arrived in 2020, followed by wave after wave of new single farm origin expressions in different markets. Each bottle came with a téireoir code on the back, enabling Waterford drinkers to access unprecedented amounts of information on the making of their bottle (note, at Waterford, Reynier chose to spell whisky without an ‘e’). Maps, weather reports, soil conditions, cask recipes, and even sound recordings were all there for the whiskey lover to discover and digest: it was truly groundbreaking. With the single farm origin series in full swing, Waterford made hay while the sun was shining as more innovative barley projects began to ripen; organic, biodynamic, and peated expressions followed, along with the resurrection of lost heritage varieties of Irish barley.

Back in the early years of Bruichladdich’s reopening in 2001, there was a noticeable profusion of new whisky releases using the maturing stock laid down by the distillery’s former owners, which master distiller Jim McEwan later admitted was a necessity to keep the independent distillery afloat and cover the wages bill. It was not until the Rémy Cointreau buyout that Bruichladdich could consider planning and budgeting for a five-year plan. Given the significant extra work and expense involved in producing single farm, organic, and biodynamic whiskeys, Waterford had to charge a premium price for young whiskeys at a time when numerous other new Irish distilleries were coming on stream with more affordable options. Waterford batches were generously sized and aimed at the curious drinker rather than the collector, but that didn’t stop an abundance of bottlings flooding the secondary market. Hammer prices sunk to around 50%-60% of the retail price, undercutting the enthusiasm among regular auction users to pay full retail prices when they could pick up two bottles of Waterford at auction for almost the same sum.

This is not the first distillery to go into receivership in 2024 either. In August, Sweden’s Mackmyra distillery went bankrupt, though it was subsequently brought out of administration in October after being purchased by a consortium of investors.