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After a week straight of smoking Latakia blends, I was up for a nice sweet Virginia pipe tobacco. I also wanted to pop open a tin from my collection that I hadn’t tried before. It’s a cold rainy Saturday morning, the weekend before Christmas. It’s one of those lazy rainy days so I’ve queued up Lord of the Rings in the DVD player and grabbed a tin of Cornell & Diehl’s Manhattan Afternoon. Today’s Agenda: smoke pipes, and watch Lord of the Rings for 9 hours. (You may have guessed that the little woman isn’t home today.)

As soon as I open the tin, put my nose inside and inhale deeply, a smile lights up across my face. The delicious smoky Cyprian Latakia comes out first followed by the sweet Virginias. Then, once I realize there are Oriental tobaccos from reading the tin label, I can detect their special nuance that mingles everything together into a mouth-watering tin aroma. Man, this smells so good, I just keep sticking my nose in the tin and sniffing deeply. Mmmm.

The sensory experience of the lighting and smoking went in a different order than the tin aroma experience. Upon lighting Chelsea Morning, the sweet Virginia tobacco makes its presence known first, followed by the tangy Orientals, and then followed by the Latakia. As a few minutes pass, I realize, as the tin says, that there is "just a pinch of Perique". I can’t really detect the Perique individually, but I am sure it is in there doing it’s job as a "condiment tobacco".

In a word - WOW! I suggest you go out and buy as much as you can of Cornell & Diehl’s Tuskegee Airman right now. This is one of the best English blends I have ever smoked and I am going to try to buy all of it for myself. I just rented a U-Haul truck and I am on my way to Morganton, NC to Cornell & Diehl to fill up the truck with Tuskegee Airman. Ok, not really. I don’t want to be that selfish, but I will be visiting C&D in the near future, and I will be adding more Tuskegee Airman to my baccy stash. You should too.

Do you consider the term "Old Fashioned" to be positive or negative? I can certainly think of many positive connotations for the term Old Fashioned, and W.Ø. Larsen’s Old Fashioned is certainly one of them. This is a good ole fashioned, dead-on Virginia / Burley blend where the high quality tobacco flavor comes through loud and clear. If you like Virginia and Burley blends, (and even if you think you don’t) W.Ø. Larsen’s Old Fashioned is a must have for your smoking rotation.

Latakia, Perique and Virginia tobaccos! Hmmm …. what an interesting combination that sounds like! And there’s Turkish Orientals in there too! I bought a tin of McClelland’s Bombay Extra Personal Reserve on the recommendation of a friend that just loves Latakia. Interestingly, while I find it to be quite an enjoyable smoke, it is not a full on Latakia to me. Even more interesting, in other reviews I’ve read, some people say it has too much Latakia and recommend it for the people that just can’t get enough Latakia. I am thinking just the opposite. I would recommend Bombay Extra for someone that wants to be eased into Latakia blends, and definitely for a refined palate that enjoys picking up little nuances of a complex mixture.

Cornell & Diehl’s Kajun Kake is aptly named. It has Perique Tobacco, hence "Kajun" and it is a crumble cake cut, therefore, "Kake". We have another reason for the word "Kake", as it is a mildly sweet blend with its’ main component being Red Virginia Cavendish. When you open the tin you see a solid, slightly rectangular block that actually looks like a piece of cake or a brownie. It looks delicious, but keep this one out of reach of small children as they make take a bite out of it! It looks that good. The tin aroma smells like cake too - like a mild rum cake. That must be the Cavendish and maybe the subliminal suggestion of the cake look of the tobacco cube. It is quite interesting how this blend melds together Cavendish and Perique to form a unique taste.

Blakeney’s Best Acadian Ribbon is in a word, "Tangy". In two words, it is "Tangy & Sweet" I like it. I’m not sure why it doesn’t say so on the tin, but this tobacco blend is from McClelland. I have heard many people describing different McClelland blends as having a "ketchup" tin aroma, and a few of them even saying that it translated to the smoking taste. I have not experienced that, but if I really try hard to think of ketchup when I take a whiff of the tin, I can somewhat see where this comes from. Ketchup is tangy and sweet. So is Blakeney’s Best Acadian Ribbon. Although I do not really get ketchup from this blend, if you have picked it up in other McClelland blends, you might get it here too. If so, maybe you should try it with a burger and fries!

Captain Black has got to be one of the best mass-market distributed pipe tobaccos out there. If you like Cavendish tobaccos, then you must read on. I recently smoked 3 of the 5 versions and enjoyed them all immensely. I smoked Captain Black Regular (white package), Captain Black Gold (gold package) and Captain Black Royal (dark blue package). The other two versions that I didn’t smoke are Captain Black Light (light blue package) and Captain Black Cherry (red package). You usually find Captain Black at various chain stores that sell pipe tobacco such as CVS Drug Stores, Walmart and other chains. Don’t let the chosen distribution chain for Captain Black fool you. It is just as good, and even better than some specialty tinned pipe tobaccos.

I want to thank the guy that gave me some Maltese Falcon to try at the 2009 Chicago Pipe Show. I don’t remember his name, but Maltese Falcon has become one of my favorite pipe tobacco blends. I have been smoking it for the last three days straight and I am not tired of it yet. I have had it in the morning, afternoon and night. It is tasty and delightful at anytime of day. To describe this tobacco in a word, I would say "Flavorful". It’s like a rich strong dark coffee with a little bit of milk and sugar added to tame any sharp bite you might get.