El Dorado High Ester Blend LBI/DHE

The High Ester Blend made El Dorado 12 and 15 taste watered-down and sweet by comparison — that's The Atomic Grog's verdict, and he loves those rums. Released in 2024 as the first of a promised series of nine, it's Demerara Distillers Limited doing something it had never done: marrying a near-unknown marque with the high-ester rum that Guyanese drinkers knew only from the locally sold Superior High Wine. LBI is the Savalle-still marque and DHE is Diamond High Ester — a long-fermented, pungent, funky spirit — blended, aged in ex-bourbon oak at Plantation Diamond, and bottled at a higher proof than the core range; check your label for ABV. The Atomic Grog found it complex and dry, a mixologist's secret weapon, and compared it to a Hamilton cask-strength Savalle bottling — richer and more intense in that case, but this one sippable and enjoyable for what it is. The Lone Caner places it in DDL's premiumization push toward cask-strength, still-specific bottlings that had been the province of independents. Expect a nose of overripe tropical fruit, glue-like esters, grass, and molasses, opening into a dry, savory, funky palate with wood and pepper, finishing long. Honest note: this is a connoisseur's and bartender's bottle — dry and pungent, not the sweet El Dorado of old. For a Daiquiri, a Mai Tai, a Zombie, or neat for the rum geek, it's DDL's answer to Jamaican funk.

Buy El Dorado High Ester Blend LBI/DHE online with fast shipping right to your door.