Picked up a tin of this at Ted’s Tobacco yesterday, and have been trying it out. Flavor wise, it’s a pretty good Latakia-forward English mixture. It needs half an hour or so out of the tin to dry out before lighting, but burns evenly. It doesn’t seem to need a lot of relights, and doesn’t get wet quickly.
I’m on my second bowl of it. The first one was yesterday in a newly purchased estate pipe that turned out to need some serious cleaning… it had some truly nasty tasting stuff inside and on the stem that I’ve since cleaned out. Today I’ve got it in my Jobey 450 paneled billiard. I have to say, this stuff is plenty strong. The taste is good; plenty of flavor and all, but the nicotine content is enough that I had to lay the pipe down halfway through. I can see this being a good candidate for smaller pipes and quicker smokes. I’m really glad I didn’t load up the Savinelli 320KS with a big pile of this! I’d probably be on the floor by now.
So will I buy it again? It’s too soon to say. I do like it, but at this point I’m thinking the Sutliff Balkan Sobranie match is more my speed. A bit milder and a lot less nicotine. I’ll smoke more of this, obviously, since I’m only maybe 5 grams into the 50g tin. if I can get past the nic buzz, it’s pretty good stuff.