Blind Tasting: Red Virginia

[Mr_houston]

Sample 6

This sample came too dry for me. I placed into a bowl with a damp paper towel over it for 1.5 hours and it was perfect.

The tin note is lightly sweet bread. No vinegar note, so not McClellands or Sutliff.

I smoked it in my small lovat. Very spicy as I start the smoke - I think it has perique. Lightly sweet. Not much of the traditional red VA flavors like fruit and VA spice. It was very consistent throughout the bowl, but did get ashy in the 2nd half.

It reminds me of GL Pease Stratford and that is my guess. It’s a good example of what I’ve thought about the reds in the past few years - they just aren’t as good as they used to be, with a few exceptions here and there.

I’ll post some final thought on the 6 blends tomorrow.

 

[Non-Mentholated Black Man]

Even without knowing what constitutes a proper tobacco review, I can assure you that the following will not qualify as such.


2) Upon opening, my first thought was that this tobacco had a strikingly similar aroma/appearance to the previous sample. Then, after nearly thirty (30) years of pococurantism towards anything related to my pipe smoking, my wife declared that she wanted to "have a sniff of the *noodle packet." While she did agree that it has some similarities to the secret-ingredient barbeque sauce I noted last night, her insight of an additional "appassimento" component was spot-on.
Having come to an agreement on the aroma of the tobacco, I loaded and have now lit the clay Lepeltier pipe that was chosen for this endeavor. Though I expected this to be inline with my memory of the previous sample, a slight peppery (similar to rye) note at the beginning of the bowl has me wondering:

Is this Blind Tasting nothing more than trickery being perpetrated against me/others by the possibly nefarious Mrs. Pickles?


*After a slight bit of confusion about the origin of these samples, I played a joke on my wife by pretending to open the package and find nothing but flavor packages taken from a few Ramen Noodles.

 

[Jbrewer2002]

Sample 6

This sample came too dry for me. I placed into a bowl with a damp paper towel over it for 1.5 hours and it was perfect.

The tin note is lightly sweet bread. No vinegar note, so not McClellands or Sutliff.

I smoked it in my small lovat. Very spicy as I start the smoke - I think it has perique. Lightly sweet. Not much of the traditional red VA flavors like fruit and VA spice. It was very consistent throughout the bowl, but did get ashy in the 2nd half.

It reminds me of GL Pease Stratford and that is my guess. It’s a good example of what I’ve thought about the reds in the past few years - they just aren’t as good as they used to be, with a few exceptions here and there.

I’ll post some final thought on the 6 blends tomorrow.

If number 6 is Stratford then I’ll be opening the only tin I have bought and buying more for the cellar

 

[Mrs. Pickles]

Congratulations to @Mr_houston on evaluating all six samples and bravely offering a guess for each one!