This is true. As a retailer, it definitely doesn't do any good to give a negative review of a product that we sell. Aside from that, the reasons you never hear me review anything negatively are the same reasons I don't score the products that I "review."
This whole thing is so subjective and I find negative reviews to be unhelpful/relatively pointless (the same goes for giving things one might enjoy a high score vs. an even higher score). It's far more helpful to discuss what one is tasting, how the blend behaves during the smoke, and similarities to other blends. It's all about giving someone who hasn't tried a thing the context that might make the recommendation a useful one.
Very few pipe tobaccos on the market are objectively "low quality," but there are plenty that are not to my personal taste. I've smoked so few tragically bad pipe tobaccos in my life that I could easily count them on one hand, and I've smoked hundreds. If I'm not excited about a product, what could I really say that's helpful? It seems silly to declare that I didn't enjoy something when many others might, and I think that unless we're talking Pirate Kake and you tell me that you can't stand Latakia, my best recommendation is for each of us is to try as many blends as we can and to form our own opinions.
In the context of "reviewing" blends for Smokingpipes.com's blog, all I'm trying to do is to share information, give my opinion about things that excite me (I just don't have time to cover things I'm not interested in), and to let folks know that if they enjoy X blend, they should give Y blend a shot. That's why we call these videos "Tasting Notes" and not "Shane's Reviews" and why you hear me making the same points about a wide variety of closely-related products (speaking in general terms and using the well-known tobacco review vernacular/buzzwords, because most of us know what someone means when they say "earthy" or "tangy").
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