The Virginias offer dark fruit, light citrus, a lot of earth and wood, a little grass with a mild floral quality. The woody, earthy, smoky, lightly nutty dark fired play an important role as expected. The black cherry topping has a little richness, though it only mildly tone downs the tobaccos. The strength is just past the center of medium to strong, while the taste nearly reaches the full threshold. The nic-hit is just past medium. Won’t bite or get harsh, but you may experience a rough edge and a possible cigar note. Burns cool, clean and a little slow with a fairly smooth, very consistent sweet and lightly rugged flavor. Leaves little moisture in the bowl, and requires some relights. Has a pleasantly lingering after taste and room note. Not an all day smoke.
Well, I bought this out of interest and ended up tossing it in with other tobaccos in a tiny percentage of the bowl. I like a strong smoke but this is probably chewing tobacco or for the proverbial ancient mariner. Seriously though, it's actually OK. Just.... different. This is a tobacco from a different age. I used to buy Capstan's Full Strength cigarettes when they had 3.6mg nicotine, Player's Medium had something like 2.1, 2.1. Likewise Senior Service and the untipped Camels I liked were around the same (3.1?). I stand to be corrected on all these. I used to inhale old school Gauloises brunes. These are all gone or tamed to lame simulacra nowadays, This is not! Feeling adventurous then give it a shot.
Here we have the standard gauge pigtail, about 1cm. The smell coming from it is quite sweet but not necessarily cherries. Be warned, let this air otherwise you'll never get it lit! Mine takes quite a thorough drying before it's ready to go and when I finally get it going I must say I feel a little disappointed. The first negative to jump out is the amount of time it takes to light. Even though it may seem dry enough it still really requires some serious tenacity with the flame and then, if it's not puffed ferociously it will go out easily. Then we have the heat heat, wow wee it's hot smoke. Next is tongue bite, this really is a snappy little number. Nicotine? Far too much. To be fair it gives off a fairly decent taste of cherries but all the low points are of far too much weight to allow this to be enjoyed. The room note is ok, a good cherry one albeit a bit full.
I can see why this is primarily a chewing tobacco, smoking it in a pipe is quite a nasty experience. I had a few pipes then lobbed it in the bin. One star.
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