Albion AN 1983 Velier 25 Year Old

One of a series of legendary bottlings from the brief but beautiful period (2004-2015) when Velier owned a small stake in Demerara Distillers Ltd (DDL), which afforded Luca Gargano privileged access the warehouses and his pick of casks to bottle. Sadly "The Age of Velier Demerara" has passed but the memory of it lives on, encased in glass. 

Distilled in Guyana at Uitvlugt distillery in 1983, this was bottled in January 2008 from a single cask.

Interestingly the label states the spirit filled in to the cask was distilled in a Wooden Continuous Still. While the Albion distillery did indeed have such a still, when they closed in 1968 it was not transferred to the Uitlvugt distillery, who opted instead for the Four Column Savalle Still to make the 'Albion style' rums. The wooden continuous still associated with Uitvlugt is the one they received from Enmore when it close din 1994, but the vintage here predates this. Herein we have an anomaly then, as Uitvlugt were the distillery that assumed the rights to the production of Albion rum. Either the Uitvlugt had a wooden coffey still in the 1980s that is not well documented, or the information on the box is mistaken. Either way, this is a special and spectacularly rare rum.

Uitvlugt closed in 2000, with all of its stills now operated by Demerara Distillers Ltd (DDL) at Diamond distillery.