05 Feb The story of Queen’s Rum how a family tradition inspired a young entrepreneur
In 2021, Justin Queen started developing his own spiced rum.
Last fall, Justin was an exhibitor at The Art Of Drinks, where we were also introduced to his rum.
A pleasant introduction!
Recently we were able to speak to him longer about how he got started with this rum and what his plans are.
Read below the story of this entrepreneur and rum enthusiast with Scottish and Canadian roots. Can you tell a little about your background? I am half Canadian.
My father, Ejay Queen, is from Canada and once came to Holland to play ice hockey, met my mother and stayed here.
I have a Creative and Marketing background, specializing in Project Management.
I worked at Converse EMEA and others for 7 years and grew up (and now live again) in The Hague, although I lived in Amsterdam for 8 years. How did you get the idea to start your own beverage brand? I come from a family generation of sports heroes and rum fanatics where my ancestors (my father e.g. as ice hockey champion and grandfather as mayor) had the tradition of drinking a rum on a victory, not only with sports but in life.
I thought “I’m going to do something with this someday.
And so it happened. How long ago did you start developing your rum?
And where did you start, with the identity or with the recipe? Great question.
In 2021 I got in touch with Pascal and Robin from The Stillery, with whom I immediately clicked and together we approached E & A Scheer to develop the rum.
So the recipe was developed first using a flavor profile from the heritage story. How did you arrive at this recipe?
And with/with whom do you make this rum? The rum the Queen family always drank after a victory was mild and sweet.
So the flavor profile was very clear and honed from the get go.
Within six months we sampled and found the basic rum blend with Scheer.
Then we started blending it off at The Stillery with the spices to come up with a soft, sweet dark rum recipe that fit well with the Heritage and the positioning of what Queen’s Rum had to stand for. 
Can you tell a bit about the ingredients, i.e. which rums and which spices? It is a blend of 5 rums from Central America: Trinidad (5 yrs), Dominican Republic (3 yrs), Panama (3 yrs), Guatamala (3 yrs), Jamaica (0 yrs).
The aged rums come from ex bourbon oak wood and the blend is primarily a Spanish rum blend.
Spices like vanilla, cinnamon, clove, cardamom, lemongrass, red fruit, goji are blended simultaneously to arrive at the final recipe.
With a little caramel coloring which gives the dark golden hue. Why did you choose a spiced rum and not a “regular” rum? I wanted to follow and recreate the original recipe my family drank at victories in life.
That in combination with my own interpretation of the ideal taste, this rum was then created. How did you arrive at these spices?
And which ones were dropped in the process? All In collaboration with Pascal from The Stillery who led the process based on my flavor profile.
Not all types of red fruit made it I believe.
And neither did nutmeg. How many test rums did you taste before arriving at this final version? Within six months (about 10 test rums) we found the basic rum blend with Scheer.
And after 15 rounds of testing with The Stillery, and the help of friends and bartenders in the area, we found the final recipe.
All this took 1 year of development process. All beginnings are difficult.
Can you tell a bit about your early days, that is, from when you had your bottles bottled and in storage?
Where did you start, at bars, liquor stores, events?
How did you go about your marketing? I had set up an investment round, ‘Club of 100’ it was called where friends & family had the chance to buy a special first edition bottle.
And then mainly within The Hague, where I am from, and the network and often the gun factor is, I was able to take the first steps.
The old shoes have been put on and I want as many nice tents within the slightly more high end hospitality industry as possible to taste Queen’s Rum.
Last year we made the move to cocktail fairs where Art Of Drinks was a good touch point moment to give national hospitality and liquor companies a taste as well. If you could go back in time 2 years now and give the Justin of that time some good advice, what would it be? Again, a great question!
I think I would advise him to be even more shitty and even more side hustle to get a good grasp of the world.
Put in an even quicker sales guy who can help you make meters for potential clients to find and sample.
Now this is just time consuming in the beginning. What are your focal points now?
You still have a full-time job, how well does it combine with Queen’s Rum? Still indeed.
But if things go the way they are now, sooner or later the time will come to go full steam ahead.
And that might come soon.
The focus and potential for Queen’s Rum is mainly in the slightly higher segment where we want to introduce more customers in the more high end hospitality industry and bartenders to the rum and the family story.
Among other things, we want to do more partnerships this year to make this happen. Where do you see the biggest growth for the spiced rum segment?
Is it in the home market?
Or specifically at the liquor store? Hard to say.
The threshold to cocktails and spirits is getting smaller and smaller so anything is possible in the coming years.
We have with Queen’s Rum a consumption moment in the form of “drinking at victories in life” that we communicate from and this is applicable to wherever the market moves. The market is currently moving tremendously in the direction of RTD.
Are you also developing your own canned mix? Not yet, although we have some ideas we are playing with.
Priority is first to get the master product, the 500ml stoneware bottle, properly marketed. What is the ideal mix to drink Queen’s Rum? Pure sippin’ rum.
It’s meant for the enthusiast.
But more importantly, with Queen’s Rum I want to enable people to celebrate their victorious moments in life with a rum.
For some that may be with a blend, for others pure. What are your favorite cocktails to make with Queen’s Rum? I personally love the Rum & Ginger cocktails.
The Queen family in Canada, where the family is from, used to put Ginger Ale in their rum all the time.
Those remain delicious, already accessible.
We recently played with some Manhattan classics and Rum Old Fashioned and our Rob Roy version e.g. went down well so we want to introduce bartenders to that next year.
Am very curious to see what they think of it. Where do you prefer to drink your cocktail? Not so much where, but more under what circumstance is key for me.
A special moment where there is usually something to celebrate.
Something where your closest friends and/or family are present! Check out where to buy Queen’s Rum here. 
No Comments