What is it? West Indies Rum and Cane Merchants are a brand owned by Crucial Drinks and their single cask rum brand. The website says this about the Asia XO: “A limited release blend of rum produced in Indonesia & Fiji, crafted from molasses and distilled using column stills then aged in ex bourbon casks. A very limited release of 2,000 bottles worldwide.”

I couldn’t put it much better myself, so I haven’t.

I have emailed Crucial Drinks for some information about the rums included in the blend, sugaring and barrel numbers etc but I’ve not heard back from them. There is only 1 distillery on Fiji currently operating (South Pacific Distillery, under the name of Fiji Rum Co.), so we know where the Fijian bit comes from. They use both pot stills and a three column continuous still to produce their rums and as this is a column still blend we know it’s going to be on the lighter side using that 3-column. As for the Indonesia bit, I can’t say.

My bottle is from Batch number 2 and I have bottle number 698.

Not chill filtered, natural colour and bottled at 43%.

Sugar? No information on this at the moment. The bottle states “natural rum” and I’m not finding any evidence of tampering during tasting, so I don’t think there is any added sugar in here.

Nose: A very shy start, it really doesn’t want to give much up – I have to get my nose deep in the glass to start finding smells; it’s young, very raw and naked this rum.  After  some time in the glass we get to finally have some olfactory input, we find wet sacks, soil, a little brine, green olives, faint boot polish, coal smoke, Vaseline and maybe a touch of camphor. There is a little heat from white pepper and maybe even some horseradish – it’s all quite salty and phenolic.

Palate: A reasonably oily mouth, medium I’d say. Definitely phenolic again, less hard work than the nose though. Olive oil, green olives, olive brine, some tar and very light liquorice. The taste of the smell of quick light BBQ briquettes and seawater. The more it sits in the mouth and you get used to the savoury side there is a little hint of some fruit, but it’s the worlds smallest banana and a piece of papaya, with a token strawberry. This is quite the opposite of a fruity rum.

Finish: Short. Well, that was that. Falls apart all over the place, simply too young. Damn shame really as there’s some good stuff in here. You’re left with just the remains of something salty and a little bit of rubber.

Thoughts? Too young, too shy, too raw and too “naked”. The core spirit is really good stuff and fabulously characterful – something that is missing in a lot of generic rums these days – it just lacks the oomph and deeper complexity you get with aging. At 10 years old and upped in abv this would be great but as it stands it’s too much like hard work and certainly wont be everyone’s cup of tea (or glass of grog).