Sometimes I like to wander through the rum section of a new store I’m visiting and see if I’ve missed anything I should be checking out. Usually I walk away with nothing, but this time I saw a manager’s recommendation raving about El Dorado rum from Guyana.
I had to get it and see if he was right. I mean Guyana? Really? I’m not sure more than half the population of any country besides Guyana even knows what continent it’s on. It’s a small country on the eastern coast of South America that has one of the largest unspoiled rainforests in the the world. It helps that 90% of the population lives on the coast.
It also has some sizable sugar cane plantations, apparently. I guess that’s what they do with the flat land before where the think jungle starts.
This is no upstart spirits company though. The El Dorado rum lineage goes all the way back to 1670, a good 100 years before the 13 colonies in what is now the USA declared independence. This is actually one of the oldest active distilleries in the Americas.
I picked up the 12-year version of El Dorado rum, not ready to risk 50% more for the 15-year one. Now that I’ve tried this one, however, I’m ready for the splurge. This beats nearly every Caribbean rum I’ve tried and is worth being considered along with the best in Central America. It’s complex, well-balanced, and downright pleasurable from start to finish. It’s a gorgeous reddish amber in the glass and comes in a box adorned with an old sailing vessel, making it look classy enough for a gift.
Tasting El Dorado From Guyana
The initial nose is slightly more alcoholic than some others I’ve tried, but don’t let that sway you. The overwhelming notes are caramel and vanilla that will make you salivate and nothing seems out of place. The first sip explodes across the tongue like a toffee bath, lighting up the taste buds without the backbite or burn so often encountered in lesser rums sipped neat.
The pleasurable next sensation is heavy on the sugar, a lot like Centenario in Costa Rica, then the finish is smooth and warm, without any bad surprises. The whole experience is surprisingly balanced. It’s as pleasurable on the 10th sip as it was on the first. There are the sweet and fruity rum impressions tempered by years in oak barrels, 12+ in this case giving it plenty of heft.
Here’s how Demerara Distillers describes it:
A blend of specially selected aged rums, the youngest being no less than 12 years old, it is a combination of the Enmore and Diamond Coffey stills and the Port Mourant double wooden pot still, blended to perfection and aged in old bourbon oak casks.
You know a master distiller is serious when he starts talking about which stills he uses.
As when we reviewed the excellent Ron Pampero Aniversario from neighbor Venezuela earlier, you might want to put aside any judgment about the rum just based on where it’s from. If you’ve heard of Guyana at all it’s probably from the Jim Jones cult mass suicide/murder in the history books. This was a British Colony until 1966 though (it’s now a Commonwealth country) and is the only English-speaking nation in South America.
And it produces some mighty fine rum. I paid less than $25 for this 12-year bottle on sale at a local liquor store and they also make a 15, a 21, and a 25-year version. I hope to try more from Demerara Distillers in the future. If I ever make it to Guyana, their visitors’ center will be high on my list of stops.
El Dorado Rum, Take 2
I wasn’t sure if or when I would see this rum again, but as fate would have it, I ran across it a second time last week. It wasn’t in a bar or liquor store though: it was at a trade show. I was attending the Adventure Travel World Summit in Panama as a media guest and there were a few destinations and service companies there chatting up the attending tour company buyers, media people, and others.
The most popular booth at the end of each day belonged to Guyana. It’s not because that country is at the top of everyone’s travel list—though maybe it will be now. It was because at the Guyana booth you could get a shot of rum. It wasn’t just any rum though: we got to sip some El Dorado 12-year aged rum!
Drinking out of a shot glass isn’t the same as drinking out of a snifter, but this El Dorado rum still lived up to my memories and shined through as a serious sipper. I went back twice to make sure I wasn’t mistaken…
Put this Guyana rum on your shelf and you’ll win some bragging rights when you serve it to people who have never heard of it before. (After a few drinks, the next challenge will be to get them to find the country on a map!)
See more info on their website here. This line will give you a clue of what to expect from their rum: “We are patient. Very patient.”
See the official Guyana Tourism Authority site here.
Article by Timothy
Timothy Scott is the founder and editor of Luxury Latin America and has been covering the region as a travel journalist since the mid-2000s. He has visited each country we cover multiple times and is based in a UNESCO World Heritage city in central Mexico, where he owns a home. See contact information here.
