Destilerías Unidas S. A.

Destilerias Unidas (DUSA) is the Venezuelan company behind Diplomatico, formed in 2003 when a group of Venezuelan investors led by Jose Ballesteros bought Licorerias Unidas, renamed it and launched Diplomatico onto the world stage. The roots go back to a Caracas wine and spirits business founded by Don Tomas Sarmiento in 1932. It now makes around 24 million litres a year.

Part of the range is: the super-premiums, above all the Reserva Exclusiva, are sweet in style, and the brand is open about this in conversation, just not on the label. The RumX community describes the Reserva Exclusiva first as sweet, then with caramel, vanilla and sugar. The drier side of the range is the white Planas, the Distillery Collection and the Single Vintages, which are not sweetened in the same way. RumX lists the Ambassador Selection as a spirit drink on a rum base: in the EU a spirit may only be called rum if it contains no more than 20 g/L of sweetening, is not flavoured and has at least 37.5 % ABV. We explain the rule in the guide to rum. Since the label does not tell you, it pays to know before you pour.

Start with the Mantuano or the white Planas, the accessible entries, then move to the No. 3 Pot Still or a Single Vintage such as the Single Vintage 2005 for the drier, pot-forward style; the Reserva Exclusiva is the famous sweet one. In its tasting notes the RumX community describes the Mantuano with vanilla, wood, sweetness and caramel, the Planas as sharp with coconut and spice, the No. 3 with wood, cherry, roast and coffee, and the Single Vintage 2005 with sherry, caramel and vanilla. The Ambassador Selection sits apart: the community notes vanilla, sweetness, dark chocolate and coffee, and RumX lists it as a spirit drink on a rum base.

From molasses and cane honey, distilled three ways and then blended: after a stripping run, DUSA makes a heavy-bodied pot-still rum at 80 percent, a medium-bodied batch-kettle rum near 96 percent that keeps surprising aroma, and a light continuous rum at 96 percent. Sitting in cane-rich country, it grows about 1,200 hectares of its own cane and reserves the cane honey, a syrup, for its heavier recipes. The three components are bottled solo as the Distillery Collection: No. 1 from the batch kettle, No. 2 from the barbet column and No. 3 from the pot still, dry bottlings that let you taste the building blocks behind the blends.

The still house is one of the most original in South America, second perhaps only to DDL in Guyana. Its two copper pot stills have double retorts and, unusually, their vapour arm on the side rather than the top. The batch kettles, inherited from Seagram's Canadian whisky heritage, look like they were lifted from a steam locomotive, and a unique 40,000-litre copper cylinder resembles a giant boiler yet yields spirit above 90 percent. Few distilleries anywhere blend such variety.

DUSA then ages an enormous stock, somewhere between 300,000 and 400,000 casks across more than 20 warehouses, mostly ex-bourbon plus sherry and experimental wine casks. Light rum enters the cask at 65 percent, heavy at 55.