Dead Reckoning- The Black Pit / Guyana

A single origin rum from the Diamond Distillery in Guyana, blended from spirit out of 3 different working museum piece woodenstills (the only wooden stills still existing) – and then given the ‘magic touch’ by the Dead Reckoning dry age treatment here in Adelaide ,South Australia  –  The Dead Reckoning ‘The Black Pit’!

The Black Pit is a blend of spirit from the afore mentioned three stills – run with both open and closed-fermented molasses-based wash. 5 years of tropical aging in Guyana (in an ex-bourbon cask) before heading to SA for a ‘double dose’ of Adelaide dry-aging in both a South Australian Muscat (Woodstock Winery) cask and an ex-Makers Mark bourbon cask for a further two and a half years.

The Black Pit pays homage to three of DDL’s stills that are absolutely amazing in that they are made of wood!

3 of the DDL stills are constructed of wood. They are the world’s only remaining commercially operating wooden stills – and they are all under the one roof in Guyana! Firstly, from (the now closed) Enmore distillery is their wooden Coffey column still. Secondly a wooden single-vat (the term ‘vat is used in place of ‘pot’ as it’s made of wood, not copper) still with retort from the old Versaille Distillery, and finally a still from the former Port Mourant Distillery that is a ‘double wooden vat with retort still’.

But why wood? Well, pretty simple really – refined metal (especially copper!) was just too rare a commodity (and thus extremely expensive) back ‘in the day’ in Guyana. What they did have though, was an abundance of an incredibly hard-wearing and resilient wood called ‘Greenhart’.  Almost as strong as copper or steel, so hard it was unable to be milled or worked with ‘standard’ tools, and impervious to rot – it was used in many of the 300 distilleries that once populated Guyana. Today, only three running examples survive and all are located at Diamond Distillery.