This has been my first foray back into the world of pure Virginia tobaccos in quite a long time, and I have to say it is a nice surprise. The flake is presented in a square 50 gram tin (probably my favorite tin presentation), and the flakes are all uniformly cut and are a beautiful dark brown with little flecks of lighter brown. Tin smells pretty heavily of raisins, chocolate, and the tin note of rum is pretty potent. I let my tin air out for a good hour before I tried a bowl, and I just kind of ruffle the flakes up with my fingertips and rip it apart until it is a "broken" flake kind of consistency, then load the bowl and go to town. First light gives off a very grassy, little raisiny taste with a wonderful background of lemon zest that tastes very clean and fresh. Second light gives off a little earthy flavor with a pretty bold sweetness and a deepened raisin and fresh cut grass flavor. I have tried this blend in a number of different pipes including two new ones, and in pipes that aren't very well broken in, the rum essence kind of disappears after the first few puffs. In something like a well broken in cob or a dedicated Savinelli that I have been smoking for a while, the rum flavor really comes through a lot more, adding a note that is a little spicy and gives the blend a little sweetness that is almost like burnt sugar, a different sweetness than is naturally found in Virginias. The further down the bowl you go the blend gets a little spicier and gets even sweeter, and even with some diligent puffing this blend was always smooth, cool, and dry. Burns down to a fine white ash and leaves no goop. Honestly, I was really surprised by this stuff considering that it is a pure Virginia (or so they say it is), but even though that is the case it is far from monochromatic and there's a lot going on here. All VA flake smokers and anyone looking for something a little different should definitely give this one a go.
