{"type":"root","children":[{"type":"paragraph","children":[{"type":"text","value":"Demerara Distillers Limited produces the El Dorado range from Diamond Distillery on the East Bank of the Demerara River in Guyana. Plantation Diamond has been a sugar estate since the seventeenth century. The distillery formally consolidated under DDL in 1983, when Diamond Liquors and Guyana Distillers were merged into a single national entity. Diamond is now the last remaining sugar-estate distillery in Guyana, but it inherited equipment from many of the more than three hundred plantation distilleries that closed before it. The result is one site running eight different stills, including the Port Mourant double wooden pot still (operational since 1732) and the Enmore wooden Coffey still (built 1880, the only greenheart-wood Coffey still in the world)."}]},{"type":"paragraph","children":[{"type":"text","value":"The modern El Dorado brand was built under the chairmanship of Dr Yesu Persaud, who led DDL for forty-eight years from 1975 until his retirement in 2013. The 1992 launch of El Dorado 15 is widely seen as the moment Caribbean rum entered the premium category. Persaud, who passed away in 2022 at age 93, was awarded both the Golden Arrow of Achievement and the Cacique Crown of Honour for his contribution to Guyana's industry. Komal Samaroo succeeded him as chairman in 2013. The current Master Distiller is Shaun Caleb, a chemical engineer by training, who joined DDL in 2003. DDL is the largest supplier of bulk Caribbean rum to Europe and North America; El Dorado is the brand it bottles when it wants to show what the source is capable of."}]}]}
On the shelf
