Tin Description:
“My personal favorite! Bright Virginias, light brown Burleys and a touch of Black Cavendish combined to create perfect harmony in this blend. A naturally sweet tasting blend, the soft, creamy vanilla adds to the elegant room notes. Perfect for a relaxing moment any time of the day.” – Erik Stokkebye
Tin Note:
Beautiful 100g (3.5oz) tin. Classy styling in white and brown, description by Erik Stokkebye on the back, together with the tin date (mine says: October 2012). Inside, white paper wrapper that contains densely packed golden brown tobacco. Smell of honey, slight note of vanilla, apricots, brown chocolate. Very inviting smell. Appearance and smell reminded me of Tinderboxes "Sunset" blend.
Preparation:
Ribbon cut, comes quite moist in the tin. Feels a bit oily to the touch. Found some whole leafs and larger chunks of leaf as well. Also contained leaf stems. Not the high quality presentation that I found in the other two blends I've sampled so far (1855, 1931). Decided to dry it out for an hour, however this stuff just didn't dry well. Put it under a desk lap for another half hour before it was ready. So it seems there is a good amount of glycol mixed in. Packed medium light into a fresh Missouri Meerschaum Pride corncob pipe.
Charring Light:
Even though this was dried out for 90 minutes I had a hard time getting a light to this tobacco. Charring, lighting, tamping - repeated that practice five or six times before it took a good ember across the bowl. With respect to taste, I couldn't note anything special. Mostly warm air with a bit of cigarette taste to it.
First third:
Surprising. Let me start with saying that this blend did not taste like it smelled out of the tin. That's always a little bit disappointing with aromatics - a lot of them don't keep true to the 'promise'. Second, the tin description says "naturally sweet tasting", and I couldn't disagree more. No matter how carefully or slowly I puffed, I didn't get sweetness once. The prevalent taste was "bitter" tobacco. Only when I let the pipe rest for 20-30 seconds between puffs and sip very carefully would I get a taste of the vanilla and honey topping. On my normal slow smoking cadence, has a bit of a chemical (stingy/sour) aftertaste.
Second third:
Same as first third. Chemical aftertaste becomes much less pronounced - probably all the moisturizing components have evaporated by now. Still "bitter". At this point I've decided that I don't particularly care for this blend, but keep my mind open: who knows what the last third might bring.
Last Third:
Yep, same as before. Towards the heel of the bowl an ashy flavor mixes in with the 'bitter,nutty' tobacco flavor. Left a bit of dottle at the bottom that I couldn't get to re-ignite.
After-smoke contemplation:
Didn't burn down all the way. Left a dark grey, coarse ash and dottle. The wonderful topping that you smell when opening the tin was sadly missing throughout the smoke. Positive notes: never gurgled, never burned my tongue.
Conclusions:
Hot air with a bitter, nutty, tobacco taste. Promises unkept. To be honest, I'm more than a bit disappointed with this blend. I expected a wonderful Danish vanilla aromatic based on golden Virginias and a bit of Burley. The Burley you can taste as the nutty component but the Vanilla topping just comes through as bitter, never sweet. I'll keep the remaining 95g jarred up for a year to see if it smooths out with a bit of age, but won't fill another bowl in the near future. Left a cigarette like aftertaste in my mouth and nose that I didn't care for at all.
Not recommended for the English/Natural Tobacco lover. Might appeal to an aromatic fan who likes Burley.
