Historically, high ester rums were made for blending. Super intense, super fruity concoctions that were mixed with more neutral rums to get the desired result. I’m not sure if anyone ever thought people would enjoy these on their own. It’s not for nothing that Joy Spence, Appleton’s master blender, has said that high ester rum isn’t for drinking, that it’s not sophisticated. Many rum enthusiasts disagree with her. In recent years, high ester rums have gathered quite the following. It’s impossible to keep track of all the estery releases that keep entering the market. Consumed neat and mostly coming from Hampden, Worthy Park and Long Pond in Jamaica. Which makes sense, because this type of rum is typically Jamaican, right?! Well, not really. They can now be found from distilleries in Barbados, Antigua and many others, including Guyana.
When I think about Guyanese rum, I think about their various stills and the fascinating history they carry with them. Some of them moved from distillery to distillery after closures. This has resulted in Diamond Distillery being a museum of stills somewhat. More about that here and here. When it comes to their rums, I’ve had some stellar stuff from them. Out of this world good. Unfortunately also plenty of average rums and of course the sweetened stuff. It’s hard not to mention the sweetening. Something they continue to do and continue to lie about. It’s a long story that’s been told many times, so I will try to keep this short.
Quite a few years ago, a few rum enthusiasts started experimenting with hydrometers. In short, hydrometers can show density changes in rum. However, they don’t tell you what’s the cause of this change. The most common culprit has been proven to be sugar that’s added after distillation. At that point in time, hardly anybody knew that a fair amount of producers were sweetening their rums. So when these test results were published on social media, it caused shock and divide. Lots of brands, brand ambassadors, influencers and loads of enthusiasts started pushing back at this hydrometer method, even ridiculing it and belittling the people who were performing the tests. Brands started doing some damage control. Ambassadors realized they were lied to by their employer. Tons of enthusiasts were like “there is no way that sweetness and smoothness of my all time favourite expensive premium rum comes from added sugar, it most certainly was achieved by ageing it in the sky”.
The nail in the coffin for that debate was when the Finnish and Swedish alcohol monopolies started publishing lab test results on rum. They specifically tested for sugar. This was fact, something that couldn’t be denied, so you would think. A lot of companies have since become more transparent about what they are selling. Sugar content on brand websites, some would even put it on the bottle. Progress! A few keep lying/denying. One of them is Diamond Distillery Ltd (DDL/El Dorado). Whenever they are asked about why they add sugar to their rums, they state they add caramel, not sugar. Now, lots of producers add a tiny bit of caramel for colour consistency, right before bottling the rum. But that’s not what they are talking about. DDL says they put caramel in the barrel and let the rum age with it. Caramel is basically sugar that’s been heated up, however isn’t necessarily sweet. Perhaps it’s a matter of wording? Should we call it sweetener instead of sugar so that we might get an honest answer? Fact is, they are sweetening a lot of their rums. The story on how they do it isn’t nearly as important.
As I wrote in my article on El Dorado 15, it seems DDL has decreased their level of sweetening. This is a good thing imho, as it simply makes for a better rum. However, the lying persists. This is a real stain on an otherwise amazing and fascinating distillery.
I realize this section was not as short as I wanted it to be. My apologies. However, it made me think about another thing that’s somewhat connected to this. I’ll talk about the two rums in question right after, I promise.
Like many producers, DDL successfully uses “influencers” to do some marketing for them. Sometimes that’s specifically about the sweetening subject, surprisingly. We’ve seen Matt Pietrek write negatively about hydrometer tests while fiercely defending the ageing with caramel in the barrel theory from DDL. He wrote an entire article about “sugar lists”, where his point was, and I quote:” The big-picture point is that enthusiasts placing a large emphasis on sugar list data can be misled by obsolete data.” He prefers to mention that enthusiasts hydrometer data might not be 100% correct, which could potentially hurt some brand’s sales, instead of pointing out that a ton of these same producers have been misleading consumers for years. Hydrometer tests and the people who publish them should be championed for how they’ve helped to fuel a movement towards more transparency for consumers. He mentioned both DDL and their “caramel in a barrel” practice, and Angostura. Naturally, for his activities he desperately needs a good relationship with DDL. It’s a very large and important rum producer (as is Angostura). One that also has a lot of weight at WIRSPA. An organization that made Matt their “community envoy”. In a WIRSPA press release about it, Matt’s appointment was welcomed by Chairman of WIRSPA, Komal Samaroo, head of the Guyana rum brand El Dorado, who stated, “We are very pleased that Matt Pietrek, a well-known and trusted voice for true rum, has agreed to carry our message of authenticity and provenance. It also said he will work to raise awareness of WIRSPA’s advocacy for authentic rum origin. Since that appointment, the company he has done most work for is Maison Ferrand (Plantation/Planteray). Which means the words “authenticity”, “provenance” and “authentic rum” can be thrown out the window.
Another influencer example is Bryan Inman, who calls himself the rum champion. He apparently does some promotion work for DDL and recently went on a free group trip to Guyana. Immediately after, he posted an El Dorado video on Instagram where he was making fun of hydrometer tests and belittling “purists”, as he calls some rum enthusiasts. Sounds familiar! It reminds me of bully Rob Burr somewhat. A free trip was all that was needed for this. Easy! Considering he has a price list for his services that has the following in it, this is not surprising.
It reads like:”I have a ton of followers who I miraculously convinced to trust me. Give me some money and I’ll feed them a positive review so that they’ll buy your products!”
You can hardly trust a person’s opinion who gets paid for sharing that opinion. As good as no negative or critical comments can be made in such an arrangement, as that would be the potential end of a revenue stream.
Now, to be very direct, I don’t care one bit about how many free trips someone is getting, how much money, how much free rum. It’s all good, you only live once. None of it is my business. However, it becomes my business as a consumer when that same person starts giving advice about products from a producer they were just paid by. Companies and “influencers” misleading consumers is something I dislike much. When it seems like this is happening, you have to sometimes look into why they are doing it. In a lot of cases it leads to some sort of a financial gain, free stuff or an increased popularity kind of thing. I see it like this, when I’m reading an article about Jamaican beaches, landscapes, cuisine etc being the best in the world, it’s nice to have a line at the bottom of the page that states: “paid for by the tourist board of Jamaica”. As a consumer, I now understand what kind of value to give to the information in the article.
I realize I will be criticized for mentioning all this. Which is fine. To balance things a little, let me also speak about bloggers, enthusiasts and myself.
Is there anybody who has no bias? I don’t think so. That would be someone from outer space, certainly not human. We can be biased on so many things, perhaps even without realizing it. You can be biased towards a certain rum profile because it’s what your palate prefers. I’m a massive Jamaican rum fan, but am not always up for DOK. I love most rums from Savanna and their signature notes, but don’t really like HERR. You can find examples like that with all reviewers. Nothing wrong with that. Some are still able to point out if a rum is a good product, despite them not liking the taste. I find that difficult to do. Fat Rum Pirate is much better at that. You might be biased because you like people behind the brand. I love St Lucian Rum, always have, which you can tell by my reviews. I recently visited the distillery and found out the people are great as well. In that case it was the other way around, first the rum, then the people.
I appreciate Richard Seale and his approach to rum. Luckily, my palate typically likes the very consistent flavour profile of his rums, which makes it easy to push back the personal bias. I’ve scored most Foursquare rums highly, but wasn’t a big fan of Shibboleth and Hereditas for example. Fat Rum Pirate scores almost every Foursquare release with five stars. Is that because he gets free trips to Barbados? I don’t think so. Does he simply love that flavour profile? Very plausible. Does he have weekly Zoom meetings with Richard, where they sing Karaoke together? I’d say that’s unlikely, but do ask him.
Another important thing is to know where reviewers get their rum from. Several options. Buying bottles and trading samples is where people are spending their own money. They could also be gifted bottles and samples. Of course buying it yourself is the best from a review perspective, as there is no possibility of having any pressure to rate something higher than you should because you feel you are in debt with somebody after being gifted a bottle. You only have your bank account and possibly your partner to worry about. I don’t know how most reviewers deal with this. For transparency it’s best to mention if it was gifted in my opinion. It’s what I tend to do. However, I get very few free samples or bottles from producers. There are two reasons for this. First of all, I’m in Canada. It’s very hard to get alcohol sent to me from outside the country. It’s either illegal, or it will be extremely expensive and time consuming. Second reason is that I always give the same warning when a brand wants to send me something. I tell them I will write whatever I want about it. That’s enough reason for most to not send me their product. Which is fine, as I’m uncomfortable with this pay for play thing. It shows you how many brand people see it as a given that there will be a positive review when they gift something.
Another thing that influences rum reviews is the potential ambition of the reviewer to work in the rum industry. In most of these cases they are working in the bar scene and would like to switch that up. Nothing wrong with that of course. The consequence of this is that reviews will likely be soft. Can’t piss off too many brands, as that reduces job opportunities. In my case, I have no desire to work in the rum industry. However, I did once offer to volunteer my time to help out with a rum festival. In response, the suggestion was made I should stop my rum writing, as otherwise there was a possibility some brands wouldn’t show up. This is mad of course, as my influence is less than minuscule. But it is how some people think.
To summarize, as this is getting way too long. If you are looking for reviews that can have a genuine influence on where you should and shouldn’t spend your money, go through the reviewer’s choices and ratings, focus on rums you already know and see if the results match your experience. If a lot of it lines up, there is a good chance your palates are similar. You should be able to save yourself some money by following that person’s recommendations. On the other hand, if you disagree with most of the ratings, you might as well skip to the next person. In addition to this, you likely want to get a feel for the motivation of the reviewer. Is this someone providing their actual opinion, or are they all marketing pieces?
There are a few things you can look at to get some hints.
· First and foremost, check if there is criticism in reviews on a regular basis, preferably across multiple brands. Actual criticism, not fluffy middle of the road stuff. If they are all cheerleading pieces, you might want to start having some doubts.
· Look at their social media. Do you see them in photos with the same brand/people all the time?
· Again, check social media. Do they go on brand sponsored trips?
· Do they use a rating system that makes it seem like a low grade is fairly high?
· Ask people who might have some inside knowledge.
This list can be a lot longer, but I don’t want to make it seem like it’s an FBI investigation, it’s just rum reviews after all. Also, you might not care about any of this. You just want to enjoy your rums, gather some light info here and there and be entertained by yelling influencers who pose for photos with their mouths wide open. In that case, forget all I wrote above, have another sip and enjoy the wonderfully diverse world of rum.
Let’s get to the rum. Finally!!!
First we have the El Dorado High Ester Blend, which is a blend of the LBI and DHE marques. La Bonne Intention is named after a very old estate with the same name. The estate doesn’t exist anymore, like so many others in Guyana. As mentioned before, in some cases, the stills would be moved to a different distillery and eventually end up at DDL. Not in this case however. For LBI they are using the four column French Savalle still to basically mimic the style. They are doing that with several of their historic marques. Diamond High Ester is produced on a John Dore double retort pot still (not Port Mourant). Rumour goes that the fermentation is over a month long. It’s a 12 year old ex bourbon cask rum, bottled at 57%.
El Dorado Skeldon 2000 SWR is part of the Rare Collection. This was bottled in 2018, so a little while ago. The Skeldon marque, SWR, stands for Sir William Ross, who was the founder of Skeldon Estate. It closed in 1960 and the stills were not moved elsewhere. So similarly to LBI, this marque is now replicated on the French Savalle still. An 18 year rum, bottled at 58.3%. When I found this bottle at Zeewijck in Holland, the El Dorado Albion 2004 was for sale at the same time. Tasting them side by side, I ended up buying the Albion. It was a close call that day though. I picked up a Skeldon sample at some point and I’m eager to find out why I liked it almost as much as that excellent Albion.
Nosing
El Dorado High Ester Blend
Very pleasant and intriguing nose. Oak, caramel, coconut, candle wax, pine, custard, raisins, nutty, light banana, hint of sour milk. High hopes with such a great nose.
El Dorado Skeldon 2000
Old soggy wood. Caramel, sawdust, light paint, pine, dark chocolate, spearmint, coconut & caramel dessert, vanilla, light red wine, hint of leather. Another wonderful experience.
Skeldon wins the round, slightly ahead of the High Ester Blend. Both of them very enjoyable.
Tasting
El Dorado High Ester Blend
Oak, lots of sweet caramel, light menthol, very strong on chocolate, light licorice, strong raisins, vanilla. Hint of bitterness on the medium finish. Need to somewhat search for the fruitiness. Slightly hotter than Skeldon. Thick mouthfeel. I’m wondering about additives.
El Dorado Skeldon 2000
Oak, vanilla, sweet caramel, chocolate, light paint, raisins, nice wood spice, menthol, tobacco, light licorice, burnt wood, hint of red wine. Slight bitterness shows up very late on the medium finish, with some more vanilla and caramel and caramel. There is very little to no alcohol burn. It drinks below its actual abv.
Conclusion
When comparing the noses of these two, they simply have a very different character. This makes sense of course when you look at the different profiles the marques represent. The High Ester Blend is a bit fruitier and more playful, the Skeldon is like an old, dense, dark forest.
Tasting the High Ester Blend, I have to admit I was expecting something much more interesting after that excellent nose. There is quite the discrepancy between nose and palate. It’s somewhat of a typical El Dorado caramel rum. It’s a bit hot, somewhat bitter, and the expected fruitiness is hard to find. I wasn’t expecting a Hampden like fruit cocktail, but still. I compared it to standard El Dorado 15, and I’m not sure it would be better than ED15 if that was at equal strength. Is it a decent rum? Yes. Would I buy it again? Unlikely. Perhaps I’m simply done with all that caramel.
Skeldon 2000 is a different beast, as expected. It’s a dark, luscious, soggy, velvet, luxurious and easy drinking rum. It kind of makes you feel like a million dollars. I’d definitely drink this on a regular basis, if I had a bottle. A potentially great rum that’s turned into just a good rum because of all the caramel. It doesn’t beat the Albion 2004, so I’m glad to know I made the right choice on that rainy day in Holland.
Scores
El Dorado High Ester Blend – 72
El Dorado Skeldon 2000 – 81
Click here for info on the scoring method.
Click here for the complete list of reviews.