El Dorado 15. This post is loooong overdue. When I began my rum journey last year, it pretty much kickstarted with my first rum love – El Dorado 12, which was also my first *ever* rum bottle talk. 50+ bottles of rum later, and I’ll admit, El Dorado is still one I really enjoy and consider a staple in my collection. My palate and understanding of rum has definitely grown over the past year, but I still have such a fondness of the El Dorado rums.

El Dorado 15 is a blend of rums from the country of Guyana in South America, aged a minimum of 15 years. Rums from Guyana are sometimes referred to as “Demerara rum,” as Demerara was the previous name of the country. Being an English colony, they employed a different style of rum production compared to their Spanish or French colonized neighbors, utilizing primarily pot stills (more flavor than the column stills often used in Spanish rum production) with fermented molasses (as opposed to fresh sugarcane juice in the French style).

What you have here is a highly flavorful rum that is rich, complex, almost smoky, jammy, chewy, and just full of delicious goodness. It *is* sweetened, but the sweetness is not meant to mask low quality flavors, but really just enhances the incredible complexity in the rum. It’s THE rum I go to whenever I’m in the mood for a sweeter sipper, and I think would make a rum fan out of anyone. Yum!