Distillation

Nearly all of Guyana's rum today comes from a single distillery house. The specification for Demerara Rum sets out clear rules: light and medium rums are distilled in columns with two to five columns, heavy rums in single or double pot stills. Diamond distillery owns both types of still and has more than one unit of each.

A column still runs without pause. Fermented mash flows in at the bottom, alcohol emerges at the top, and on the plates in between, aroma separates from alcohol. It yields a clean, lighter distillate. A pot still, by contrast, is a kettle still run in batches. Here, many congeners remain in the distillate, making it dense and powerful.

A special feature of the specification: the stills may be made from Greenheart wood, a hardwood from the Amazon region, or from copper or steel. On the grounds of Diamond there are stills of various designs, including wooden ones, that came from distilleries that have since closed. How they got there is told elsewhere in this journey.

The word Marque is key here. Each still produces its own marque, a distillate with a fixed profile that the distiller tracks under an abbreviation. The rum that eventually ends up in the bottle is usually a blend of these marques, matured separately beforehand. Blending is the real craft, comparable to the cuvée in Champagne.

A clear line applies here: Demerara Rum may not be blended with rum from outside the region. Everything in the bottle must come from the area between the Boeraserie and the Abary. According to the house, El Dorado 12 blends column still and pot still rum, while El Dorado 15 also includes distillates from wooden stills.