Cadenhead‘s Uitvlugt PM 1964

Cadenhead, the long established Scottish house, bottled this 1964 from the Port Mourant double wooden greenheart pot still, the heaviest and most revered marque in Guyana and the backbone of old Navy rum. At 36 years and a colossal 70 percent, this is old Demerara at its most extreme, a bottling that has become a benchmark for continental Port Mourant.

The molasses spirit shows plums, tobacco and leather over roasted oak, then an intense palate of dark dried fruit, leathery spice and fine bitterness, closing endlessly on dried figs, leather and licorice. Remarkably, the 70 percent strength brings depth and layered dark fruit without scorching, the alcohol so well knitted in that the power barely registers as heat. This is a pour for the most seasoned drinkers, an immense, balanced old PM to be approached slowly with water, the kind of bottle that reads like a history of the style.