First Batch

[danimalia]

Excellent. Diving right into the Latakia blends! I'm with @Jacob74 in that I prefer Mississippi River (the regular version) to Plum Pudding, though PP is very good as well. Though it has a bit of Latakia and Oriental leaf, I consider Mississippi River to be a more of a Virginia-based blend than a Latakia or English blend. I should probably revisit PP since it's been a couple years since I had it last.

If you decide you are a Latakia man, I highly suggest checking out some of GL Pease's Latakia blends. Some of them are incredible, and I haven't had one that I didn't enjoy at least a little bit. Maltese Falcon, Spark Plug, Blackpoint, Kensington and Charing Cross are my favorites so far.

 

[gerryp]

Aww poor Morton... I sadly never got to try any of the McClelland stuff. Maybe I'll get lucky and snag a couple tins off someone for the right price some day. One to smoke and the other to cellar for a special or rainy day. But if you say it's better then I wont worry too much about it.

When I returned to pipes a couple years ago, I bought a tin of FMC on a whim. I liked it a lot, then McClelland went out of business. I still think it's excellent, but there are many others out there. I wouldn't pay $80/tin for it, the last price I saw on eBay.
I smoked some McClelland blends 20ish years ago. The only one I remember was St. James Woods. I liked that one a lot, and it had this ketchupy smell that really made an impression.

 

[morior8]

Excellent. Diving right into the Latakia blends! I'm with @Jacob74 in that I prefer Mississippi River (the regular version) to Plum Pudding, though PP is very good as well. Though it has a bit of Latakia and Oriental leaf, I consider Mississippi River to be a more of a Virginia-based blend than a Latakia or English blend. I should probably revisit PP since it's been a couple years since I had it last.

If you decide you are a Latakia man, I highly suggest checking out some of GL Pease's Latakia blends. Some of them are incredible, and I haven't had one that I didn't enjoy at least a little bit. Maltese Falcon, Spark Plug, Blackpoint, Kensington and Charing Cross are my favorites so far.

I will add those to my list. I have some Spark Plug on order so I'll be trying that out next week sometime. People keep telling me to get the Mississippi River stuff but I haven't yet. Wishlist is getting pretty ridiculous haha