While many distillers recycle their heads and tails into subsequent distillations to boost efficiency, some are pairing that approach—or replacing it outright—with a process that American rum distillers have dubbed the “queen’s share” or “queen’s run.”
The process gets its name—incongruously, perhaps—from a European tradition that gave royalty the rights to a certain share of a distillery’s production. These days, the queen’s share refers to a method historically used by cognac, Scotch, and likely other distillers, who would take the late distillate from a finishing run—referred to variously as tails, feints, or seconds—and redistill it, on its own. This process creates a unique spirit that is distinct from that made by distilling low wines.
Courtesy Privateer Rum Distillery, Ipswich, Massachusetts
The Queen’s Share at Privateer
Privateer Rum Distillery in Ipswich, Massachusetts, was an early adopter of the term. Along with Maggie’s Farm Rum in Pittsburgh, Privateer helped re-establish this term for an otherwise mundane process of recycling subpar distillate into a premium product.
Privateer’s team doesn’t recycle heads at any point in their process, and they don’t recycle their late distillate into subsequent batches, says production director Dylan Turner. Instead, they take a small (10- to 20-gallon) cut after the hearts on their regular rum finishing distillation. Referring to this cut as “seconds,” Privateer adopted the method specifically through their understanding of cognac distilling traditions.
Turner says they no longer do a complete tails collection. They used to, he says, but they found that they were getting diminishing returns when collecting past the initial 10 or 20 gallons.
“Eventually, it became this thing where there was a lot of tails present when I was distilling,” Turner says. “So, I started to tone it back a little bit, where I’m only collecting the ripest of the seconds. I think it actually has improved our queen’s share expression.”
Over time, they collect enough seconds—about 180 gallons—for its own distillation. First, they dilute it from about 150 to 155 proof down to 80 before redistilling with Privateer’s eight-plate column still. Making the heads cut on the queen’s share run, using flavor and aroma, is the same as for their regular runs. However, because of the unique composition in the still, Turner says the tails cut can arrive much more abruptly, and with a more aggressive presence, than it does during a regular rum distillation.
“I’m always watching this still very intently, but with queen’s share, I’m standing directly next to it at all times,” he says. “I’m watching it like a hawk because the tails can creep up on you if you’re not paying close enough attention. And, in my opinion, the tails come over even more intense.”
The Queen’s Run at Copperworks
In Seattle, Copperworks Distilling cofounder Jason Parker says he took a cue from what he saw Scotch distillers doing in 2011, when he was in Scotland buying stills.
He saw distillery-exclusive bottles with names such as Distiller’s Cut and Distiller’s Reserve. When he asked what those products were, the distillers explained that they were spirit produced from charging the still only with “feints”—a mixture of heads and tails.
Parker was familiar with the process as done at Privateer and some other American rum distillers, but it wasn’t until later—in discussions with fellow Seattle distiller Matt Hofmann of Westland—that Parker realized how recycling a portion of feints into subsequent batches of whiskey helped to increase the house character.
At Copperworks, the team makes tight cuts on their signature malt whiskey to focus on expressing the barley they’re using. Yet Parker saw that there was a lot of potential flavor left at the margins—before his heads cut and after his tails. Of course, there also was a risk of capturing more off-flavors.
“We knew that the middle of the hearts cut wasn’t the one that was the most expressive,” Parker says. “It was definitely nice and round—it had all sorts of good flavors—but it didn’t have those two end points that kind of give the intrigue and can be the problem. By having a very narrow cut, you take away the risk, but you also lose some of the opportunity.”
As a result, their feints run—which Copperworks dubs the queen’s run—contains a high proportion of those very light heads compounds and rich, heavy late-boilers that live at the edges of their hearts fraction. Parker says they use their standard cut points for the queen’s run to get an apples-to-apples comparison, but they still get a spirit with more character.
“We are concentrating those flavors that are at the edge of coming into hearts and leaving hearts, and those are where the intriguing flavors exist,” he says. “You just can’t go too much. You have to be tight on the cuts. You might have a smaller hearts cut, but that’s still going to be very flavorful.”
Courtesy Echo Spirits, Columbus, Ohio
Echo’s Top-Shelf Queen’s Share Rum
Joe Bidinger, founder of Echo Spirits in Columbus, Ohio, says he came across the technique while in the process of opening the distillery.
He went to a rum-tasting event that included the distiller from Maggie’s Farm Rum, who had a selection of their products to sample.
“He brought a bottle of his queen’s share, and I’d never heard of it before at that point,” Bidinger says. “When he [was] passing the samples around, it just kind of blew my mind.” He fell in love with the idea, so they had to include a Queen’s Share release on their roster.
“It comes down to the sections of your spirit, when you’re making your cuts, the sections of your spirit that are the least drinkable,” Bidinger says. “They have the most off-putting components [but] also have the most flavorful components with them. This is taking something that would otherwise probably get thrown out and turning it into our most premium special-release product.”
He says that they make aggressive cuts on their base rum, and that they usually recycle heads and tails into subsequent batches until the undesirable components become too concentrated. When preparing to make a batch of Queen’s Share, though, they sacrifice some of the yield on their regular production, collecting the heads and tails in a 270-gallon tote.
Filling that tote is a slow process, and they let the spirit rest before distilling it. Bidinger says he believes the extra time allows some of the components to intermingle and react with each other to create a better final product.
“The good ethanol mixing with all of those esters and other flavor compounds for a period of time,” he says, “and giving them a chance to hopefully bond to some of the cleaner alcohols in there, gives us the best shot of getting some of that transferred … into something we think of as more drinkable, at least in the unaged stage.”
Because Ohio isn’t a high-demand rum state, Echo releases only one barrel of its Queen’s Share Rum each year. It’s something of a passion project, released the week before Thanksgiving as their highest-priced, premium release—something special to take to the family gathering or share with friends over the holidays.
“It’s one of our favorite releases of the year, certainly,” Bidinger says. “One barrel a year and, when it’s gone, it’s gone. If this was on the shelf all the time, it kind of loses some of that mystique.”
Barrel Aging the Queen’s Share
Echo’s Queen’s Share releases, which always age in used bourbon barrels, have increased in age over time.
They started at 18 months, then 20 months, and they went up from there; they sold the 2024 release at just under four years old. They set aside a few extra barrels of Queen’s Share one year so they can continue to increase the age statement, aiming to eventually reach six, eight, or even 10 years.
It’s Echo’s top-shelf, premium product, and Bidinger says the rum reflects that. It tastes “quite a bit like our regular white rum,” he says, but it’s more intense and has a richer body. “It’s not so much about a flavor change. It’s about mouthfeel and flavor intensity. It’s just richer; it’s more concentrated.”
Copperworks also ages their Queen’s Run limited release in used barrels—their own once-used malt-whiskey barrels—to keep the barrel character from overwhelming the subtlety of the whiskey. They select barrels organoleptically, and Parker says he hasn’t noticed whether Queen’s Run barrels take longer. They fill used barrels at a higher proof—120 versus 115 for first-fill barrels.
“We really don’t give two hoots as to what the age of the whiskey is,” Parker says. “We’re just trying to capture what we think is its best flavor profile. That's been, for a first-fill [barrel], between three-and-a-half and five years and for a second-fill between five-and-a-half and eight years.”
Parker says he picks up an enhanced ester profile compared to their standard whiskey. “Depending on which recipe we’re doing, we get a lot of tropical fruits and stone fruits,” he says. “But when we let the Queen’s Run go, we get more dark berries than tropical fruits. I get more raspberry, prunes, dried blueberries, and things that are a little more dark-fruit in the Queen’s Run.”
Ultimately, he says—depending on a distiller’s unique practices—using the technique on a feints run might lead to getting something similar to your standard product, something totally unique, or (more likely) something in the middle that could work as a single-barrel release or unique blending component.
Turner says aging Privateer Queen’s Share allows a complex rum to fully blossom. While they have a variety of cooperage types available—including used barrels from calvados, armagnac, and their own products—Privateer mostly relies on new American oak for Queen’s Share.
“I think that helps a lot because it gives a little bit more structure, and I feel like it almost guides the aging process just enough that it actually helps quite a bit,” he says. “I think it’s fantastic in a new-oak cask.”
Privateer Queen’s Share was originally a single-cask product aged at least two years. It’s now a blended four-year product, and they’re preparing to transition it to a blended seven-year designation. With the higher levels of funky, tailsy compounds, Turner says, the rum benefits from the additional time maturing and esterifying.
“Once you give it enough time to mature, it opens up into something really unique and very lovely,” Turner says. “On the Queen’s Share, I generally get a lot of vibrant red-fruit notes. It’s much more vibrant, a more lively kind of taste. Once it’s in full bloom, it is a truly phenomenal, interesting expression, and it just needs that time to get to that point.”