Samaroli 1989 Demerara is a rum from Guyana , from the legendary Diamond distillery. Located on the banks of the Demerara River, it houses a collection of stills from another time, but still in operation. Among them, we include the double pot-still of Port Mourant , the wooden column of Enmore , or the Savalle columns of Uitvlugt …
This 1999 vintage is a molasses rum made from single barrel no. 11. It was bottled in 2018, 29 years after its distillation, and resulted in only 288 bottles.
Nico's tasting notes
On the nose , the ripe exotic fruits have entered fermentation, as if they had fallen from the tree some time ago. They thus develop a full-bodied side, which is sharpened with the help of coppery touches. We think of pineapple, guava, but also less tropical fruits, like pear.
Aeration brings a nice fullness, and the fruits suddenly find themselves swollen, full of sugar. The time is no longer for fermentation, but for maturity. These fruits are candied on themselves, and combine a complex syrup of spices, resinous plants, wood, with a perfectly placed minty freshness.
The taste is surprisingly smoky and coppery, as if you were near a still heated over a wood fire. The oak in the barrel takes advantage of this to give us all its roasting, with the toasted flavors of a very brown caramel. Then the distillate takes over, with a wild, almost animal character, on the fresh leather. The dark tobacco takes over, bringing us back to more familiar flavors of slightly burnt gingerbread.
The finish is sprinkled with nuts coated in a sticky caramel, in true Demerara style.
“This very old rum manages to easily express itself through a woodiness strongly marked by roasting…”
