Since my audience here is primarily whiskey drinkers, as am I, I'm writing from that perspective. Here we go! While many of us have a "home spirit" of sorts, be it bourbon, rye, scotch, etc., we will eventually find ourselves growing weary of our preferred spirit and start taking a closer look at those aisles at the liquor store we frequently breeze past. I've found myself engaging in that trope these past four or five months, burned out on pandemic whiskey consumption. I find myself drawn more and more to the rum and tequila aisles, where $60-$100 to play gets you some of the most complex and nuanced spirits of that category, whereas that would barely be scratching the surface in the single malt world. Foursquare rum (not featured in this review) is sometimes called a "Bourbon drinker's rum" or "the Pappy of rum". If that's true, then rhum agricole vieux (literally "aged agricole rhum") is (if I may venture a bold claim...) a scotch drinker's rum. Bottled at 43%, it pours a nice copper/brass color into the glass. It could almost be mistaken for bourbon at this point. The nose is something entirely different. The barrel notes show up, as in a bourbon, but theres a peculiar aroma, somewhere between fresh cut grass and a freshly minted penny (I grew up in Denver and there were frequent school trips to the US Mint...). The palate begins much like a bourbon barrel-aged Speyside or Highland single malt. Smooth on entry with some barrel character up front (Compass Box Spice Tree comes to mind), but it quickly translates into something quite different, with the grassy notes returning from the nose mingled with whisps of pineapple, light tobacco, and pecan. Baking spices of ginger and allspice round out the palate, leaving a light tingling sensation that covers the tongue with reminders of the grassy, brassy agricole sensation. This expression is the middle child of the Rhum J.M. core sipping line, which takes their labeling from French brandy producers. I suspect the V.O. offering scales back the barrel and amps up the grassy agricole notes, while the X.O. offering does the opposite. I look forward to trying both. I bought this unsure if I would like it and didn't want to shell out $75 for the X.O. in case I disliked it, which fortunately isn't the case! If you're getting into rum/rhum, definitely don't pass up aged agricole rhum if you're a single malt fan or a fan of wheated bourbons. Cheers!