El Dorado have been hitting the headlines lately with their Rare Collection.  This Original Dark Rum is available in the Netherlands (where it is bottled) and it is also listed on the official El Dorado website.  However I’d never seen it in the UK until Beers of Europe had a stash of this and a white in a similar style bottle.

I had thought that this was some kind of old extinct bottling which they had a limited stock of but it appears that this rum is actually still being distributed and bottled in the more old school El Dorado bottle.

I paid a pretty measly £17.99 for this 70cl bottle which has an ABV of 37.5%.  I thought at the price point it was certainly worth giving it a whirl.

I’ve tried but failed to get any information on the blend.  As El Dorado usually carry age statements on their rum I assume that this is at most a couple of years old and likely it could be even younger.  It is undoubtedly a blend of rums which has been given a liberal dose of E150 (Caramel) in order to give the appearance of a more aged rum.  It is not as dark as some Demerara blends but its certainly been tinkered with.

A Hydrometer Test reveals that no added sugar can be detected.  I’ve found this with most very cheap blends – I’m taking supermarket own label blends.   Despite their at times cloying sweetness they manage to pass the Hydro tests.  Artificial sweeteners? Possibly.  Sweet young immature alcohol? Perhaps.

If I had been told this rum had been bottled in the 80’s or 90’s I wouldn’t have been surprised the presentation (especially the chunky over sized screw top a la old style Barbancourt) is pretty old hat.  It is no wonder this rum is not included in the sexier El Dorado range the world over.

The fact the rum is bottled in the Netherlands is not a surprise.  The Netherlands has long been a huge player in the rum world.  Independent bottlers and brokers are frequently based in the Netherlands, due in no small part to the countries rich seafaring history and huge gateway port.

So what are we getting for our £17.99? The El Dorado 5 Year old is available for around £25 – I find it to be decent if nothing outstanding, the 8 year old is certainly worth the extra few pounds.  The first thing to note on this rum is the nose.  It will be very familiar to anyone with much experience of cheap Supermarket “West Indies” blends.  For those UK based – Tesco Dark Rum is the best example.  For the rest of us the old style Plantation Dark has a similar nose.  It’s big, cloyingly sickly sweet with huge wafts of sweet young alcohol and caramel.  It smells cheap and nasty.  If you do want to try this rum then I would advise buying M&S Dark Rum (from Guyana) I’m pretty certain its much the same.

Sipped, the rum is much to young and sickly sweet with so many rough edges to make it almost undrinkable.  It burns, its overpoweringly sweet then overtly bitter very quickly and it just tastes like something that will give you a very nasty hangover.

I can usually find some kind of saving grace with just about any rum.  Not with this though.  Even when used as a mixer that horrible sickly caramel flavour dominates and makes the drink truly awful.

For anyone thinking this will have any similarities to the rest of the El Dorado range – please take my advice and stick with the 5 or 8 year old.  It has none of that familiar El Dorado nose or flavour.

This is the worst Demerara I have had so far. Avoid.