The Name

Three women who burned it down

In 1878, three extraordinary women helped lead one of the most powerful labor revolts in Virgin Islands history — the Fireburn. Fed up with brutal working conditions barely distinguishable from the slavery that had come before, workers rose up. They drank rum. They set fire to the plantations. And three women led the charge.

Their legacy is woven into the DNA of this island. And when Amber and Mike were searching for a name worthy of this building, this history, and this community — only the Queens would do.

Our building once housed enslaved people. The Queens were fighting for the same dignity those people deserved. Naming this distillery after them isn’t just a nod to history — it’s a commitment to carry their spirit forward, one bottle at a time.

The Building

Two hundred years of stories in the walls

When Amber and Mike first walked through the doors of 13 Wimmelskafts Gade during Covid, the building was trying to return to the earth. Stone walls crumbling. Roof full of holes. Trees growing straight through the masonry and into the sky. Water ran where it pleased. The floors were buried under layers of debris, garbage, and things best left undescribed.

Most people would have walked away. These two started making plans.

The property was part of a grand estate owned by wealthy Corsican merchants in the 1700s and 1800s. The enslaved people who lived within these walls didn’t just survive here — they lived here. They loved, laughed, and threw parties that crossed the color line, fueled by homemade rum. That tradition? It never left.

Nearly five years of meticulous, obsessive, occasionally maddening restoration later, the building breathes again. The old stone is exposed and proud. The garden blooms. The still runs. And the rum is better than anything those Corsican merchants ever tasted.

The People

Amber, Island Mike, and four future distillers

Amber was born and raised on St. Thomas. She is, in every sense, an island girl — sharp, warm, hilarious, and possessed of a mind that operates on frequencies her husband cannot locate. She also has the sense of humor of a teenage boy, which keeps things lively.

Island Mike, her self-described interloper husband, is a history buff and community amateur historian who never met a rabbit hole he didn’t want to dive into headfirst.

Together, they do everything. Fermenting. Distilling. Aging. Bottling. Labeling. Arguing about labeling. More fermenting. A friend in the distillation business planted the seed and walked them through the process — and now Amber is one of the only Black women in the world slinging barrels in her own distillery. Mike thinks that’s pretty awesome. He’s right.

The kids have done demolition, cleanup, painting, and guest greeting. When they’re a little older, they’ll be manning the still and pouring the rum. This is, officially, a family operation in the most chaotic and wonderful sense of the word.

The Experience

Come find us on Back Street

Step through the gate and let your shoulders drop. The smell hits you first — rum, oak, and a hint of coffee drifting through centuries-old stone. Then the sounds: birds, chickens in the back garden, the occasional cluck of something that doesn’t know it lives in a distillery. Look up and you’ll find blue sky, palm shade, and a white cloud or two passing overhead.

The garden behind the building is a lush oasis — the kind of place you didn’t know you needed until you’re standing in it with a glass of rum, wondering why you’d ever leave.

Touch the walls. They’ve been here for 200 years. They can handle it.

The Spirits

Three spirits. Zero compromises.