Corman Collins & The Auld Alliance Versailles Demerara Rum V VSG 1988

This is a single cask of Versailles from 1988, bottled jointly by Corman Collins and The Auld Alliance and given thirty-four years to settle. Versailles runs off a single wooden greenheart pot still, the bracing middle ground between elegant Enmore and oily Port Mourant, and its signature is bright, tannic, raw timber character rather than sweetness.

Molasses based and matured in ex-bourbon oak, it takes a little time and a fuller pour to open. The nose offers green apple, orange, vanilla crescents and baking spice, while the palate turns dry and astringent with marzipan, almond, herbs and tobacco over sawn wood. This is a fine spirit rather than a loud one, the kind of restrained, delicate old Versailles that rewards patience, kept at an easy sipping strength of 48.8 percent.