Greenheart is a species of tree indigenous to South America which grows in the Guyana and Suriname regions. This hard and moisture-resistant tree, was used in the 17th century to construct alembics, a special type of equipment used to distill rum.
To this date, there are only three wooden alembics left. They once belonged to the Enmore, Port Mourant and Versailles distilleries where they were used in the production of rum. Now, these artifacts of alcohol production are owned by Demerara Distillers. What
is more, they are all fully functional, and allow true connoisseurs to enjoy the taste of rum such as it was more than 200 years ago.
Only the finest of rums produced in these wooden alembics will be bottled and included in the Greenheart Collection. Our selection is an homage to the traditional methods of rum production in Guyana.
The Port Mourant distillery was founded back in the 19th century. Somewhere between 1813 and 1821, Stephen Mourant began to grow sugar cane on what used to be a cotton plantation. One of the key elements of the production process was the equipment used for distilling molasses, a substance resulting from the refining of sugar. In Port Mourant, this process was accomplished with the use of a double wooden pot still made of the local greenheart wood.
Some sources trace the origins of the distillery back to 1732. According to rum experts, this date was engraved in the metal elements of the alembic used at Port Mourant, which could indicate that the device was older than the distillery itself. This would indicate that the still, or some of its parts, were bought from one of the facilities operating in the Berbice river valley.