Dark and Blackstrap Rum

Where it started

Molasses-heavy rum is as old as the Caribbean sugar trade. Demerara Distillers dates distilling in Guyana to 1670, and by 1780 there were over 300 distilleries in British Guiana, each marking its rum with an estate code such as PM for Port Mourant.⁶ Only nine distilleries remained by 1942; Demerara Distillers was formed by merger in 1983 and launched its El Dorado aged range in 1992. Demerara Distillers dates the final merger, and the move of the last stills to the Diamond Distillery on the East Bank of the Demerara, to 1998;⁶ El Dorado's 2019 release says the Port Mourant and Enmore stills reached Diamond in 2000.⁸ The EU published the Demerara Rum geographical indication single document on April 8, 2021.⁷

Where and how it's made

"Dark rum" is, in Difford's phrase, a fairly meaningless term other than as a color, and few regulations apply to it.¹ Black and dark rums are typically molasses-based blends whose deep color comes from added caramel and/or molasses; the best also draw color from heavily charred casks.² They usually include full-flavored pot-still rum and tend not to be aged for long.²

The law sets limits on what can go in. In the U.S., caramel is listed among the coloring, flavoring and blending materials that may be added without changing a spirit's class, provided such non-essential additions stay within 2.5 percent of the finished product by volume.⁴ In the EU, caramel is allowed in rum only to adjust color.⁵

Blackstrap is a grade of molasses before it is a rum style. Britannica describes it as the product of the third and final sugar extraction: heavy, viscous and dark.³ Mount Gay sums up the molasses route in three ingredients: water, yeast and molasses.¹⁰

Guyana's stills explain much of Demerara's weight. Diamond Distillery runs a Port Mourant double wooden pot still, a Versailles single wooden pot still and an Enmore wooden Coffey still, which Difford's calls the last operating wooden stills in the world.⁹ El Dorado says the Port Mourant still was constructed in 1732 and the Enmore column in 1880.⁸

How to taste it

A rocks glass, neat or with one ice cube. Expect molasses, brown sugar, coffee, raisin and sometimes smoke from Demerara stills. Dark rum earns its keep in a dark rum and ginger beer highball or floated on a tiki drink. Pairings: gingerbread, barbecue ribs, sticky toffee pudding.

Styles and what the label means

• Dark / black rum — color from caramel, molasses and charred wood; no legal definition.¹
• Blackstrap rum — a dark rum style named for the final, heaviest grade of molasses.
• Demerara rum — Guyana's GI rum;⁷ Guyana's Diamond Distillery keeps what Difford's calls the last operating wooden stills.⁹
• Navy-style rum — dark, strong blends in the Royal Navy tradition. overproof-and-navy-rum →
• Aged dark rum — color from long cask time rather than caramel. gold-and-aged-rum →