the world was full of people who had this as their favorite blend.
Not actually, if you go through the archives of this forum, you will find that most people hated it for its ketchup taste or hated it for having no taste. It wasn't till they announced that they were closing down 5100 that everyone all of a sudden piled on the bandwagon and announced their lifelong love of this blend. Then, of course, they were the biggest fans of the slowest selling tobacco company, after McClellands announced their closing. Now that they're gone, they are billed as the best company in the world. Funny how that shit works, ha ha.
I can laugh, because I was one of the few McClelland fanboys that got slapped with the ketchup jokes for years.
Yeh, 5100 is a very subtle Virginia. It has tons of appealing and interesting flavors, but they are all very, very subtle. Some will say that pipe size doen't matter, but I suggest (as was suggested to me) to take a pipe that has a diameter of less than .6" and smoke it as slow as possible, paying attention to very subtle flavors underneath the heat and body of the tobacco flavor. A small pipe makes this easier. And, once you've found those flavors, try it again in a wider pipe, there is more bold tobacco flavor, but you will know more what to look for in what you tasted in the smaller pipe. It helped me anyways. I still will try a new Virginia in a small pipe, to get an idea of how to approach it with a wider pipe. It focuses the flavor down more.
Also, notice how there is a similarity to those flavors found in a Marlboro Red, without the harshness of the cigarette. Someone pointed that out to me, and I even tried a Red cigarette back to back with a bowl of 5100 and found many of the subtle nuances were in both. They are very similar, except the cigarette has more harshness and nicotine.
And, as far as scaring you with the quick degeneration of the leaf... Sorry. I have this friend who I will smoke with occasionally, and he carries this large bag of jars and aged tins. He'll hand me one of these every now and then and ask me if I want to try 'ten year old Dunbar' or something like that, and I run my fingers through this rotten crap, and taste it in my pipe, to get a smokey dirt flavor, while he is setting there going... "MMMMMMmmmm, this is so sublime." I'm like wondering if the worms are all dried up in this worm dirt also.
And, I'll ask him to find out that indeed, the jar was open and being smoked out of for months, because he keeps like 30 tins and jars open, and he only occasionally smokes a pipe. Super nice guy, but he obviously can't even taste the stuff that he spends a ton of money getting.
I think that if your smart with it, you'll figure it out.