Summary: This stoved twist removes sweetness from the leaf and brings out a meaty flavor with high-octane performance.
Opening the tin revealed a scent like fertilizer, perhaps peat mixed with wintered manure, and a flat rope of a moist oily nature. When cut, cubed and rubbed out, this produced a small quantity of dense black tobacco. After the requisite fifteen minutes of drying, it lit with slight resistance, although several more lights were needed through the course of an average bowl.
Upon taking flame, the tobacco released its fertilizer smell, and gave forth a taste like fatty meat flame-broiled on an outdoor grill, combined with flavor like the scent of that peaty topsoil. During the bowl, small specters of Lakeland flavoring whisk through the taste, causing those of us who are appalled by such things to gag but keep on smoking as this tobacco delivers a fantastic taste. With the sweetness gone, the richness of the Virginia emerges in a full taste that continues that sensation of simmering meat.
On the nicotine front, this tobacco may not be quite as strong as the brown ropes but it comes close enough that the distinction is academic. It flavor does not vary through the bowl other than the aforementioned internal Lakeland ghosts, as if someone sprayed down one layer of leaf with the horrible geranium scent. None of that impinges in any way upon enjoyment of this natural, full-bodied smoke and the peace of mind it brings.
