Review: El Dorado Deluxe Silver 6 Year Aged Rum 87/100
a review by Chip Dykstra (Aka Arctic Wolf)
Posted March 04, 2012

According to the El Dorado Website, the El Dorado Deluxe Silver 6 Year Aged Rum is blended from selected light to medium bodied aged rums which have been produced on Demerara Distillers’ wooden Coffey still (the last of its kind operating in the world today) and the company’s famous French Savalle Still. The result is a fully aged, double-filtered, 6 Year Old White Rum. This rum is meant not just to compete with the new strain of super premium white rums that have entered the market recently, it is meant to compete head to head with the super premium luxury vodkas which have garnered a good chunk of the market share in the distilled spirits category.

Woodman Wine and Spirits provided me a bottle of the El Dorado Deluxe Silver 6 Year Aged Rum for me to review here on my website. This rum is presently available in Ontario, Canada and will hopefully be available in other locales soon.

(Note: For a great introduction into the history of one of the world’s most famous rum brand’s visit The Demerara History.)

In the Bottle 5/5

Pictured to the left is the bottle the El Dorado Deluxe Silver Rum arrives in. The bottle is tall and sleek and exudes suave character and class. I like the design which seems to be directing itself  squarely towards the style of bottle and labeling used by a few of the super premium vodkas I have seen recently (Think Grey Goose and Patriot Excellence). It is rather obvious to me whom El Dorado believes this brand will be competing with. When I placed the bottle in front of my friends at a recent tasting, everyone agreed the look was deserving of a perfect score.

In the Glass 8.5/10

I poured the rum into my glencairn glass and began with a good look at the spirit. As far as I can tell, it is clear without any colour. I gave the glass a tilt and a slow swirl and then examined the clear sheen left on the sides of the glass. Only a few skinny legs formed and ran back down into the rum.

The initial scents rising into the breezes above the glass carried a lightly candied sweetness with very mild minty undertones. I also noticed some more complex aromas which included banana and orange peel as well as some lemon and lime citrus zest which give the rum a freshness that I quite enjoy. As well, a light butterscotch accent builds up slowly over time as the glass sits.

My overall impression is that this is a very clean, light spirit which I think will be quite suitable for fancy cocktails.

In the Mouth 52.5/60

To put this spirit into its proper context I will refer to the following statement from the El Dorado Rums Website with respect to the 6 Year Deluxe White Rum:

“This exceptional luxury aged white rum with a contemporary image is designed to offer the younger more adventurous spirit drinker a more flavourful alternative to vodka, backed by the heritage and provenance of the El Dorado brand.”

This statement makes it clear that the El Dorado Deluxe Silver Rum is positioning itself as an alternative to high-end vodka rather than as an alternative to your regular mixing rum. It is meant for high-end cocktails, not for sipping neat or drinking on the rocks. Having said that, I found the rum to be quite acceptable to my palate when I took a few sips. That candied sweetness I noted in the breezes above the glass takes form in the mouth with a flavour that resembles something like Christmas candies. The rum also carries forward a nice ‘fresh’ spiciness with flavours of orange peel and banana peel swirling around that sweet candy. Vague hints of butterscotch and canned fruit syrup (think canned peaches here) compliment the flavour.

What I really wanted to do with this rum was to mix a few cocktails. In fact, I had a gathering of friends over for my first tasting of the El Dorado Deluxe, and we made a batch of daiquiris and mojitos with some of the white rums which I had recently been given to review. The common quality which everyone remarked upon when I made the cocktails with the El Dorado Rum was how clean these cocktails tasted as compared with the cocktails made with the other rums. The rum really allows the lime and the mint to express themselves alongside the rum without overpowering either flavour. (In case you are wondering the other rums in the tasting were Traveller’s White Rum, Parrot Crystal Lite, Flor de Cana 4 Year Extra Dry, and Havana Club Añejo 3 Años.)

On my own, I made a few Vodka Cocktails to see how the rum stacked up against some of the more high-end vodkas I had on my shelf. I started with a Cosmopolitan, and I also made a few other recipes including the Sloe Comfortable Screw using the El Dorado Deluxe in place of the Vodka in the recipes. The Cosmopolitan in particular tasted really nice. It was still clean and tart the way a Cosmo should be, but it also carried the flavours of the rum into the cocktail in a good way. The El Dorado Deluxe is exactly what it aims to be, an outstanding mixing rum for both vodka style and white rum style drinks.

In the Throat 12.5/15

The lemon-lime zest really shines through in the exit. This finish is spicy and sweet, and it is apparent that the combination of the citrus in the finish and the sweetness in the entry are a strong combination for enjoyment. A light thin burn down the throat keeps the score down a little, and I would punish the score more if this was a sipping rum. However as a mixing rum, this light harshness is quite forgivable.

The Afterburn 8.5/10

The El Dorado Deluxe Silver is a very nice, very clean rum, in fact ‘clean’ is probably the best adjective to use to describe the rum. It is a great rum to use for mixing cocktails when you are trying to satisfy a crowd because that clean taste will appeal to just about everyone.

If you are interested in comparing more scores, here is a link to my other published Rum Reviews.

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Suggested Recipes:

The El Dorado Silver Rumopolitan

2 oz El Dorado Deluxe Silver 6 Year Aged Rum
1 oz Triple Sec
1 oz lime juice
1 oz Cranberry juice
1 tsp of Grenadine
orange peel

Shake all the ingredients over ice
Strain into a cocktail glass
Garnish with Orange Peel

Enjoy this sumptuous variation on the classic Cosmopolitan!

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The Silver Celebration

2 oz El Dorado Deluxe Silver 6 Year Aged Rum
2 oz  Fresh Squeezed and strained Pink Grapefruit Juice
3/4 oz  London Dry Gin (I used Broker’s Gin)
1/4 oz  to 1/2 oz Sugar Syrup

Combine ingredients into a metal shaker with ice.
Shake until the metal shaker chills.
Strain into a chilled cocktail glass.
Garnish with lime slice

This cocktail is extremely refreshing!

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My Final Score is out of 100 and you may (loosely) interpret the score as follows:

0-25     A spirit with a rating this low would actually kill you.
26-49   Depending upon your fortitude you might actually survive this.
50 -59  You are safe to drink this…but you shouldn’t.
60-69   Substandard swill which you may offer to people you do not want to see again.
70-74    Now we have a fair mixing rum or whisky.  Accept this but make sure it is mixed into a cocktail.
75-79    You may begin to serve this to friends, again probably still cocktail territory.
80-84    We begin to enjoy this spirit neat or on the rocks. (I will still primarily mix cocktails)
85-89    Excellent for sipping or for mixing!
90-94    Definitely a primary sipping spirit, in fact you may want to hoard this for yourself.
95-97.5 The Cream of the Crop
98+       I haven’t met this bottle yet…but I want to.

Very loosely we may put my scores into terms that you may be familiar with on a Gold, Silver, and  Bronze medal  scale as follows:

70 – 79.5    Bronze Medal (Recommended only as a mixer)
80 – 89.5     Silver Medal (Recommended for sipping and or a high quality mixer)
90 – 95         Gold Medal (Highly recommended for sipping and for sublime cocktails.)
95.5+            Platinum Award (Highest Recommendation)