El Dorado Rum

El Dorado is the rum of Demerara Distillers Limited at the Diamond estate in Guyana, and the reason it tastes unlike anything else is equipment rather than climate. As Guyana's sugar estates closed over the past two centuries, their stills were not scrapped. They were moved to whichever distillery was still running, and Diamond ended up with the lot.

Several of those stills are built from greenheart, a dense tropical hardwood. Wood is porous and holds residues in a way steel does not, and the spirit that comes off is heavier, oilier and far more aromatic as a result.

Three appear by name on bottles. Port Mourant is a double wooden pot still and gives the heaviest distillate, all liquorice, aniseed and tar. Enmore is a wooden continuous still, drier and more resinous. Versailles is a single wooden pot still and sits between them.

The core range runs 3, 5, 8, 12, 15, 21 and 25 Year Old.

History

Demerara takes its name from a river and a region on Guyana's northern coast. The country was once dense with sugar estates, each distilling its own rum, and the industry consolidated relentlessly through the nineteenth and twentieth centuries.

What makes Guyana unusual is what happened to the equipment. Rather than being broken up when an estate closed, the stills were dismantled and relocated. Port Mourant, Enmore and Versailles all take their names from estates that no longer exist as distilleries. The stills outlived them.

Demerara Distillers Limited is now the only distillery operating in Guyana, which means it holds the whole inherited collection, alongside modern column stills. No other rum producing country has anything comparable.

Guyanese rum has also long been a component in blended navy style rum, which is why the profile is so familiar to anyone who drinks Pusser's. The heavy, molasses driven character that defines the naval blend comes largely from this source.

Ageing happens in the tropics, where evaporation losses run far higher than in a temperate cellar and cask interaction is correspondingly faster. Age statements here are not directly comparable to Scottish or French ones. Our guide to Demerara rum and the wooden stills goes into the detail.

Those inherited stills are why El Dorado 15 Year Old keeps turning up in our eleven rums to try, still tasting of estates that closed generations ago.

How to drink it

From the 12 Year Old upward, drink it neat in a tulip glass at room temperature. Demerara rum is aromatic enough that ice closes it down noticeably, and the sweetness means it does not need water to open up.

Below that, the 3 and 5 Year Old are mixing rums. The 8 Year Old is the crossover, comfortable in a glass on its own but still robust enough for a cocktail.

In mixed drinks its natural role is backbone. Swapping Demerara rum into a daiquiri turns a bright, simple drink into something with a dark undertow. It is the traditional choice across a great deal of tiki, and it is the correct rum for a Rum Old Fashioned, where the natural sweetness lets you cut the sugar right back. El Dorado 151 is an overproof for floating and blending rather than sipping.

The High Ester bottlings push aromatic intensity much further and are the obvious next step for anyone who already enjoys Jamaican funk.

For contrast, taste it against rhum agricole at the opposite end of the spectrum, or Doorly's from Barbados in between.