The Queen's Share

After a handful of international awards, Echo Spirits has carved out a comfortable home among Columbus’ elite distilleries

By Melinda Green / Photos by Sumner Howells / Story Design by Atlas Biro

cho Spirits Distilling Co. has become a small distillery doing big things. It might not be long, though, before they’re a big distillery doing even bigger things.

“I think to a large degree, we're on the same trajectory as a lot of [the other local distilleries],” co-owner Joe Bidinger said. “We just had a couple years of pandemic that hit at the wrong time to slow it down. We were just ready to launch. We had the white rum, which is not a retail friendly product, in five liquor stores, and then suddenly all of you know, everything shuts down. We don't have any other products. All of our customers are completely gone. We essentially kind of burnt a good year there easily.”

But in the last year, Echo has started to accelerate as a company. They now have two salespeople, two social media presences (for the distillery and the bar), a marketing coordinator, and even an intern.

It’s hard to stand out in a city full of big players, Bidinger admitted. Watershed is known for gin and bourbon. Middle West, vodka and whiskey. Noble Cut, cellos and flavored whiskeys. Echo, meanwhile, has been finding its focus.

“Product wise, spirit wise, we're trying to reinvent ourselves,” Bidinger said. “People used to ask me, ‘What do you make?’ And I’d say, ‘Oh, we make mostly rum— but we're also known for this and this and this…’ and that kind of became this trailing, never ending sentence of things that we make. We were like the ‘rum and this and this and this’ guys. We wanted to reorient or kind of evolve ourselves as the rum and whiskey company.”

And it’s working. Their Queen’s Share rum, aged in bourbon barrels from Watershed and Noble Cut, won Double Gold at the San Francisco World Spirits Competition (the largest spirits competition in the world) in both 2022 and 2023.

“If you win double gold three years in a row, it's platinum,” Bidinger said. “And that's pretty rare that anybody gets that. So I'm kind of stressed about that for next year already, because, you know, that stuff's already in barrels—and we know which barrel it is. Boy, I hope this works.”

Not only that, but their White Rum and Genever received silver medals at the 2022 SFWSC, and their White Rum won a Double Gold in the 2022 New York International Spirits Competition. Their Spiced Rum (perfected after more than 50 test recipes) won Silver at the super-prestigious 2023 American Distilling Institute International Spirit Awards.

In 2021, Echo’s Pineapple Rum won a gold medal at the Berlin International Spirits Competition, and they received the award for USA Flavored Rum Distillery of the Year. The distillery’s even been voted one of the top ten rum distilleries in the country by USA Today readers.

They’re also selling online in 48 states. And they’re rebranding a bit, changing their tagline from “Know Your Distiller” to “Gather Round the Still.”

“At first, it was just Nikhil [Sharoff, coowner] and me and we were like, ‘Hey, make this personal connection with the people who make your things,’” Bidinger explained. “Now, there's a very good chance that the first interaction you have with Echo Spirits is not one of the two of us. But we can still be true to that message of, like, creating a community, creating an inclusive space and getting to know people on a personal level—that we're not just some big brand out there.”

Now, they’re moving further into the whiskey arena, with their first bourbons ready to be released—but only as each barrel is truly ready. And their cocktail menus continue to be among the most creative in the city. The bar staff begins working on the next menu as soon as one is released, working solo and collaboratively.

“They're excited. We got people in here just kind of doing R&D all the time, and it's kind of fun to be sitting there in the office and somebody comes in ‘Here, try this; what do you think?’ It's not such a bad gig from that perspective,” Bidinger said.

Their barrels are being used to age products such as beer, honey, and maple syrup. One of their rye barrels currently is aging coffee at The Coffee Mess in Hilliard. “Yeah, it might not [work], but hopefully it will. Is it an upper? Is it a downer? I don't know,” Sharoff said, laughing. “That's cool because it's layering the flavors on.”

Those barrels come back and are used to age new spirits, with unique flavors that have developed over time. The team enjoys doing these one-offs and other limited releases.

“There’s only so many times you can make the same thing before OK, now it's just the production process,” Bidinger explained. “You can get to a point where you strip out all the creativity and all the fun parts of it. It's a hard, hard business to be in. You’ve got to keep it fresh to stay motivated.” And they’re definitely on track with that.

To learn more, visit echospirits.com