Columbus, Ohio — Echo Spirits unveiled the Queen’s Share Rum, a more intense version of its best-selling white rum. Crafted by re-distilling the most flavor-rich portion of the initial rum distillation, it’s an extremely rare spirit in the distilling community.
“We wanted to show off the best parts of our hard work,” said head distiller Nikhil Sharoff. “The Queen’s Share was historically the richest portions of the rum, reserved only for kings, queens, and heads of state. As rum became a spirit for the people, most distilleries stopped producing the Queen’s Share. There are only a few distilleries around the world still making this, and we feel we’re able to step up and contribute to that rich story.”
The modern Queen’s Share comes from turning the inefficiencies in their still into an advantage. Giant column stills, like those seen in Kentucky, are fine-tuned to be as efficient as possible, extracting nearly 100% of the drinkable alcohol in a single pass. As with most craft distilleries’ stills, the still at Echo Spirits leaves some of that ethanol blended in with the less-drinkable portions of the alcohol. Normally this content is blended into the next batch to be redistilled and extracted, or simply thrown down the drain.
“In our case, we wind up creating fewer bottles of our normal rum in order to make the Queen’s Share a reality,” said co-distiller Joe Bidinger. “Instead of redistilling, we save up those portions of the distillation until we have enough liquid to redistill on its own. From there, we have to distill very carefully to separate the good bits from the leftovers. It takes a lot of discipline to keep only the parts we want to keep and ignore the rest. But that’s what makes the Queen’s Share so special.
With such a unique way of creating the spirit, it isn’t a surprise that there simply isn’t much of it. “We are only able to fill one barrel of Queen’s Share for every ten to twelve times we distill our normal rum,” said Sharoff. “We only have one barrel to show off this year, and likely only one will be ready next year.”
Echo Spirits plans to make this a yearly release each November. “This is the perfect bottle to take to Thanksgiving dinner and distract your uncle from religion and politics,” said Bidinger.
Echo Spirits Queen’s Share Rum is currently only released through their on-site bottle shop at 985 W. 6th Ave. Columbus, OH 43212. The bottle retails for $70.00.
For More Information:
https://echospirits.com/spirits/queens-share-rum