Every time my birthday or Christmas comes around I send my wife a selection links to websites to buy bottles of rum and second hand books and ask her to pick whichever ones catch her eye. She messaged me a few days later saying that she needed to spend another £30.00 to get free shipping from Royal Mile Whiskies (it turns out she was in the process of buying me a second bottle of the incredible Thomson Bros JMWP Stout Cask) and did I have any bottles I’d want to buy to make up the deficit. I quickly sent her a link to this bottle which made sure she was well over the free shipping amount.

I have been wanting to try this bottling for a long time. I really like Chairman’s Reserve and St Lucia rum in general. St Lucia is the place where I really fell in love with rum and where it solidified as my spirit of choice. One of these days I will get around to publishing my posts about the absolute bargain that is Chairman’s Reserve legacy and the local’s favourite Bounty rum which I’m sure will include more anecdotes from that trip. I am also a big fan of the UK Rum Club Facebook group which has been a massive tool in helping me expand my knowledge as well as picking up bottles that I otherwise would have missed (both this and the JMWP Stout Cask are great examples). I was also very curious about trying a rum which is 100% from their Vendome still, rather than a blend, there was a lot of built up anticipation!

I won’t go too much into the history of this particular bottling as it has already been covered better than I ever could here. That is also a great place to find more detailed tasting notes as this is not something which I really go in for. The first impression is that the cork is a very snug fit and it takes quite some time to get it out which is also quite a noisy affair. I first opened this bottle at night outside my friends lodge in Center Parcs and we joked that the sound of the cork being removed might attract some of the local geese as a kind of mating call. At least the snug cork should stave off some oxidisation.

In the glass the rum is a nice dark amber colour and is pretty much what you would want to see from a 9 year old rum that has been aged properly with nothing funny added. The nose seems quite savoury to me with roasted almonds, cigar tobacco and hints of citrus fruits being the stand out notes. It also has a kind of antique smell to it, like you had uncovered a “forgotten cask”. Flavour wise there is a lot going on, it certainly has lived up to my hopes. It is simultaneously a very smooth drink but also contains a great breadth of complex flavours. Everything the nose hinted at is there and it also has a kind of medicinal finish which from my memory is not too dissimilar to the UKRC J Gow bottling, although I would say that this is a much more accessible rum. A couple of the people who I initially shared this bottle with aren’t seasoned rum drinkers and they both commented on how it is easy to drink for a 59.5% rum. I definitely agree with this, it is a very drinkable rum. At the time of writing there are still bottles available at RMW but surely they must be down to the last few now, I am certainly glad that I finally made this purchase and would encourage anyone who has had it on their list to do the same.

El Dorado was a gateway rum for me in my early days of trying different the ‘premium’ and spiced options offered in local bars and off licences and helped to play a part in me finding what I really wanted from a rum. As I moved on to other unadulterated rums I have to say that I have kept track of El Dorado reducing/ removing the dosing from their standard offerings and also releasing new limited bottlings but I have kept track of it from a distance. The only rum I have drank from this distillery in the last decade is the Master Of Malt port mourant bottling. I plan to reacquaint myself with their more standard offerings and return to this post with a bit more perspective.

I became aware of El Dorado’s high ester release through a Rumcast bonus episode. I would recommend giving this a listen if it is of interest and I don’t intend on repeating much of what was covered by them. The rum is made up of two marques, one of which is created through a fermentation process covering several months. The inclusion of the words high ester on the label could be seen as a tad controversial as there are people of the belief that this description should only be applied to Jamaican rums. A lot has been written about esters in rum but a short version is that they are chemical compounds which are created during fermentation which add aromas and flavours to rum. Certain methods and durations of fermentation lead to higher levels of esters in the rum.

My main point of intrigue about this rum is who it is marketed to. As someone who has paid good money to buy a bottle then this might seem like a silly question to ask but I am aware that I am very much in the minority of rum drinkers. Dead Man’s Fingers is stocked behind pretty much every UK bar and pub for a reason, it’s a popular drink. Without any inside information on the sales volume of any of these brands El Dorado is also a brand that appears to have remained continually popular. It’s what the DMF drinkers bring out on special occasions. In recent years El Dorado has removed/ reduced the dosing across their rums and is now producing special releases such as this. As a fan of unsweetened rums and distillers trying out new things then this is great news for me, it has lead to me purchasing this bottle. But surely my £100 is a small drop in a very big ocean. I haven’t really spent much time or energy looking for the answer to this question but I’ll have a look and update this post along with the comparison from their standard ranges.

I opened this bottle and poured it to drink straight away. I then left it for 30 minutes as a writer with more discipline would. The nose is one of sweet gummies and candied pears, I feel like there are other notes there but they’re overpowered by these ones. It doesn’t smell synthetic just a little one dimensional. The alcohol comes through (the rum is 57% ABV). I’m not getting much to say that it is high ester. Drinking the rum it has a very thin mouth feel, which was unexpected from my memories of this brand and the age of the rum. It has almost no front and then a hits like a bus in the mid, almost too much to pick out any flavours.

After being left for 30 minutes it has calmed down a lot. The rum still feels fairly thin but is a much more balanced drink flavour wise. I really like this. I feel like there’s quite a lot going on. Very nuanced. It isn’t comparable to Jamaican high esters, again, I’m not sure if it is meant to be. Rather than up front funk it is more of a tangy after taste. Before that taste hits there are more of the kind of flavours that I would expect from Demerara distillers, a more rounded smooth drink with musky notes. I will be interested to see what it is like after a few weeks of the bottle being open.