DDL El Dorado El Dorado Versailles Special Cask Finish 2005/2021 Red Wine Casks

This El Dorado Special Cask Finish comes straight from Demerara Distillers Ltd and showcases the Versailles marque, distilled on a single wooden greenheart pot still that no modern equipment can replicate. Versailles sits between the elegant Enmore wooden Coffey and the oily Port Mourant, giving a robust, bright and tannic spirit of raw sawn wood, liquorice and dark fruit. Distilled in 2005 and bottled in 2021 from molasses, it carries a finishing period in red wine casks and arrives at a full cask strength of 55.4%.

The wine casks deepen the dark fruit, layering prune and plum over the still's natural leather and timber. Aroma is woody and intense with dried fruit and a faint note of furniture polish, while the palate is spicy and warm before a long finish of prunes, caramel and clove. The standard El Dorado age statement blends lean sweet and rounded, but this cask strength single still bottling shows the firmer, drier face of the range, where the wood and spice of the Versailles still take the lead.