Rating: 16/23 The nose is spicy with a little bit of some light fruit - perhaps raisin with a dash of some cherry. I smell a little wood and some rancio. The palate is spicy with a lightly flavored oily background. For the spices, I get cinnamon, clove, and possibly ginger. There is a fair bit of floral vanilla and I also get some fruits that tend toward raisin with a dash of cherry and citrus. There's a long mellow woodiness that approaches a tea bag flavor, but skirts it. The flavor isn't as full as I'd expected, nor is it as deeply complex. I do get a bit of some kind of generic rancio in here. It's tasty and well-executed for sure, but it doesn't reach the level of richness or complexity that I expect of an XO, certainly one from a premium brand. It sort of reminds me of how it disappoints me that Jim Beam is always a bit lighter than other bourbons. This does have a nice mellow smoothness to it, though there is a kick from the spice. Overall, I think that this is at least a 15, but it's hard for me to justify giving it above a 17. I can actually imagine going down to a 14 some of the time. I'm contemplating between a 15 and a 16, but I think I need to land on 16.