Looking to try a Balkan

Dan Tobacco's Bill Baily's Balkan Blend
C&D Super Balkan (on sale at Smoking Pipes)

One that is like no other that I've found is GLP's Ashbury. It is very aromatic in an all natural tobacco sort of way, close to an incense like quality, very spicy, but light on the tongue. It is tasty, tasty, while pleasing everyone in the room as well. It is my absolute favorite Balkan.
Then there is Dan's Midnight Rider. Orientalness is strong with this one, bringing to mind rummaging through a gypsy camp, bohemian spices, open bazaars in the court of some exotic emperor. The latakia is there, but it sets back and allows the exotics to come forward and play.
Of course there are the usual suspects; Balkan Supreme, Sterling, White Knight, Balkan Sobraine, all of which are trying to taste the same, and do to some degree. If you want classic, any of those will do to start with.

H&H White Knight

Peretti Royal

Dunhill Durbar

Pease Caravan

Pease Odyssey

Peretti Tashkent

H&H Black House

psychpipes:
May I recommend Sutliff's Balkan Luxury Blend 957? I recently received a tin of this together with an estate pipe which I purchased, and have found it to be delightful.

GH's Balkan Mixture is most certainly worth trying.

Presbyterian is a classic that I'd define as a Balkan despite the latakia in it. Also, Lane's Crown achievement in a fine Balkan to start with. The other mentioned here are terrific blends; so you can see that there are many choices in this genre. Good luck and have fun.

Check out smokingpipes.com's Tobacco Locator. Just enter the specific components of a Balkan and hit search!

I think cosmicfolklore is right on with the GL Pease Ashbury suggestion. It's very different, and a very underappreciated blend in the GL Pease catalogue. Another is Kensington, which is a little more traditionally Balkan in that there is a bit more latakia flavor, but it's still pretty restrained and also under the radar.
If you want to try a bigger Balkan, I'd recommend Heart & Home White Knight or GL Pease Charing Cross. I think I prefer White Knight, but I've not smoked enough of either to really have a good handle.

This, of course, leads us to the "What is a Balkan?" discussion. "Balkan" is, of course, simply a marketing term that came into use due to the popularity of Balkan Sobranie Original, long ago. There's no fixed definition, which makes things confusing. For me, as a guy who smoked BSO long ago, a "Balkan" has to have a healthy dose of latakia, but oriental tobaccos have to play a strong role, as well. Perique is not a part of a Balkan blend. I don't consider either SG Balkan Flake (no orientals) or Peterson Balkan Delight (has perique) a Balkan blend, despite the name.
Having now defined the term, I would consider H&H White Knight to be at the top of any list of "Balkans". I would also add Balkan Sasieni to the list. They are both excellent blends, and close in spirit to BSO.
Now, if what you are really interested is simply exploring blends with latakia, then we've got another ballgame. I won't go there, though. ::

I, also, came to love the balkan-english blends a few years after a steady diet of aromatic.
My favorites are Charing Cross, Vintage Syrian, Skiff Mixture, Squadron Leader and I recently came to adore Black House. I had some last night, marvelous.

I recommend SG Skiff mixture.
I wonder about the value of codifying balkan blends particularly when blenders seem rather cagey about the constituents. It seems rare for a blender to describe what makes a balkan balkan beyond the addition of "orientals". I believe in many cases a blender must use what a broker has to offer. Mclelland's and a few others seem to have the relationships and resources to be specific. By and large, I think when a blender buys from a turkish lot they get "turkish"rather than Trezibond or Baffra.
Why mention this? Simply because I believe blenders prioritize flavor over classification. Perhaps in this category more than most others.
I remember reading a comment from Greg Pease, (who's value to the community simply can not be overstated), that using Perique to darken a blend was an old blender's trick. I can't find the quote now, so please allow for a bit of memory mangling. His comment was directed toward Gaslight. Certainly, the addition of Perique to an English breaks convention, but I haven't seen any comments decrying such. On the contrary, people seems to simply go nuts for the stuff.
Similarly, in a fabulous article about Perique written by our own Kevin, he asked Mark Ryan for a recommendation. I was shocked, (and I believe this is why this stuck out in my memory), when he suggested HH Acadian Perique. Almost every shred of Pipers Perique comes from a Ryan barrel and he recommended a blend in which despite the title, Perique is merely one element among many rather than a major contributor (as in cool hand fluke for example, 70%).
There are many arrows in a fine blenders quiver. I say we keep the lines fuzzy and allow them to take all the liberties they need in order to keep bringing out new, exciting and excellent blends.

Personally, I prefer using the term 'latakia blend' to cover both English and Balkan designations.
I also think that the idea that a Balkan blend can't have perique is a little strange. Maybe there's no historical basis for it, but something like Gaslight, a big latakia blend with tons of orientals, is something most people would consider Balkan. There is no perique declared on the tin, and I can't honestly say I taste it in the blend, but it's there nevertheless, perhaps adding some nuance to the flavor, and certainly adding to the nicotine presence. The notion that it was a Balkan blend until Greg let slip that it has a dash of perique in it, and now it's no longer a Balkan, just shows the uselessness of both the term Balkan and the weird perique stipulation that some folks have.

Yep. Label's frequently seem to give an incomplete picture. They serve purely as a sales tool and aren't an ingredients list like what you'd find on a cake box. Some modern blenders seem to make a greater effort to adequately describe a blend but I think it's more to build an expectation rather than to give a thorough and perhaps inconsequential accounting of every last leaf.
And you know, I think that's as it should be but I may be in the minority here.
There was a thread here (I believe) in which folks were sharing their experiences with Sixpence blind samples. I found it fascinating that people seemed (from my outsiders perspective) perhaps slightly more interested in deciphering the blend than actually writing about their impressions smoking it. Almost as if one needed to frame one's appreciation through the lens of (past) experience. This is a natural reaction, of course.
On that same note, I've read a large number of tobacco reviews in which the reviewer went to great lengths to describe each tobacco's impact on a blend, but by the reviews end I was left with very little impression of what the blend as a whole tasted like.
Last night I decided to fire up some Eltang Mixture that came from a sample from Smokingpipes a few months ago. When I received it I thought it smelled like cat food. That first bowl remains the only pipeful I've ever totally dumped. I couldn't get it out of my pipe fast enough. It tasted artificial, harsh, and totally out of balance.
Last night however things had changed. A good bit of airtime and time in general really transformed the blend. Now, it would be a simple matter to say the "va's add a touch of grass to the nuttiness of burely" but really, this tobacco, like many burley blends is a simple uncomplicated affair. Overall it tastes like cola.
I've been thinking of putting together a few reviews and methodology has been on my mind so I suppose that may have overflowed in to this thread/post. The point is fine detail and thorough accounting has it's place so long as that place doesn't obscure the big picture imho.

I find this all interesting.
For me a Balkan blend is all about the flavor and aroma rather than the ingredients. If it smalls like peat and earth and a woodstove in the country, then that, to me, is a balkan.
According to tobaccoreviews.com, HH Vintage Syrian is classified as a Balkan, whereas Squadron Leader is marked as just an English blend. I would tend to switch the two classes around, personally, placing SL in the Balkan and HH-VS as an English. But that is just my personal take on it. A
I admit great ignorance when it comes to tobacco blends, and which have orientals and turkish and what the presence of each brings to the blend. I just know what I like to smoke. And when I taste a blend I like, I get on these forums or review sites and see which other ones are similar in scope.

I'm a big fan of H&H Black House. Good stuff...

SPC Plumb Pudding calls itself a Balkan on the tin. It has that peat feel to it. So does H&H 10-Midnight

It's all marketing. Either it has latakia, orientals, perique, or whatever - or it doesn't.
I made my comment because the OP, who doesn't have experience with anything but aros, said he wanted to try a "balkan". Well, what does he mean by that?

peat and earth and a woodstove in the country

Click to expand...

That's the latakia.
As esicoe pointed out, it's really more useful to say "latakia blend" then "Balkan" or "English" or whatever. This makes it easier than when folks who have very limited experience try to use terms that aren't defined very precisely and are often not used in the same way by blenders. There is no standard definition of these terms; it's all marketing. Thus you get people recommending blends that may be very different, based solely on what the blender called them.

That's why I specified what I meant when I used the term "balkan", and why I used it that way, and then recommended a couple of blends that fit my definition.
If the OP had said, "Hi, guys, I'm an aro smoker looking for an intro to the latakia world" (which I think may be what he truly wants), he would have gotten different responses, that may have been more beneficial.
It really behooves us, if we are to grow in understanding of this wonderful hobby, to try to learn, in general terms at least, what is in the blends we enjoy. That can help us find new blends more easily than looking for marketing terms. Thus:

• Balkan Sasieni and White Knight are both Virginia based, with latakia and orientals fairly well balanced. (The old Sobranie Original was like this.) This, for me, is a Balkan. [/*]
  
• Black House and Blue Balkan are both Virginia based, with latakia and orientals, but the latakia is much more pronounced than the orientals. Lots of latakia,too (A la Sobranie 759.) (Edit to Add: It may be more accurate to say these blends are latakia based, with added Virginias and orientals.) [/*]
  
• Skiff, Presbyterian Mixture, and Early Morning Pipe are all Virginia based, with latakia and orientals, but the latakia is a fairly light presence. [/*]
  
• SG Balkan Flake, no matter the name, has no orientals. [/*]
  
• Dunhill MM 965, Apertif, and Peterson Old Dublin are all Virginia based, with latakia and orientals, and added cavendish. [/*]
  
• Dunhill Standard and Peterson Squadron Leader are Virginia based, with latakia and orientals, but the orientals are a fairly light presence.[/*]
  
• Nightcap, Peterson Balkan Delight, Lane Crown Achievement, and the Sutliff Balkan Luxury are Virginia based, with latakia and orientals, but with perique added. [/*]

There's several categories for you, encompassing the traditional categories of Virginia-based latakia blends. You can make the same list for burley based blends, but this rant has been long enough. :D :puffpipe:

Jud:
In the Spring 2003 issue of "Pipes and Tobaccos" magazine William Serad defined a Balkan blend as one which has, "...an extremely large proportion of Latakia, but the focus is on the Oriental component, with an acrid, heavy, rich taste."
I agree with Mr. Serad, and find that the interplay between the Latakia and Orientals is what attracts me to the Balkan class of blends.

In the Spring 2003 issue of "Pipes and Tobaccos" magazine William Serad defined a Balkan blend as one which has, "...an extremely large proportion of Latakia, but the focus is on the Oriental component, with an acrid, heavy, rich taste."

Click to expand...

That's a great definition - better than mine.