Tobaccos Park-Lane Tobacconist - Mr. Mike's Blend

	Reviewed By	Date	Rating	Strength	Flavoring	Taste	Room Note
	Bishop’s Pipes (15)	2020-09-23		Mild to Medium	Medium	Medium	Pleasant

I met a few of the Park Lane employees at the NY NJ pipe show and purchased a few blends from them, this being one of them. Little would I have known that this would be one of my favorite blends of all time; and it’s a mere coincidence that my name too is Mike.

Few blends have me craving/wanting more and this one hits that note for me. Zero bite and lots of tangy sweet Virginia flavor. The blend components and ratios a are perfect and it’s a shame this isn’t tinned and sold on a larger scale. This is a hand-blended tobacco and is not a repackaged bulk blend. If you can make a trip to Park Lane in Clifton Park NY, do yourself a favor and try this and some of their other blends.

Pipe Used: Lone Star Pipes commissioned billiard

Age When Smoked: Less than a year

Purchased From: Lone Star Tobacconist

1 person found this review helpful.

	Reviewed By	Date	Rating	Strength	Flavoring	Taste	Room Note
	brashboy (84)	2015-11-05		Mild to Medium	None Detected	Medium	Very Pleasant

If you like Virginia, you should like Mr. Mike's Blend, which showcases stoved VA and ripe, red VA, with a little unsweetened Black Cavendish (seems unsweetened to me), for a gentle but heartening smoke with tons of VA flavor. Think of it as a natural aromatic, where the aromatic taste is achieved with just tobacco and perhaps a light casing, giving it sometimes a light vanilla note and other times, not. The room note will make friends, because it is very pleasant without filling the space with cherry, or mango or whatever might be flavoring some other cheap or heavy-handed aromatic blend.

If you have not tried a good Virginia tobacco or think you don't like it, MMB makes a great introduction or reintroduction. The Virginia is there and mildly sweet but never obnoxious. I love a good straight Virginny but this one's VA edges are rounded by the Black Cav. A friend says this is the way Virginia was meant to be smoked.

No perceived tongue bite -- and I am very susceptible to tongue bite from both flavorings and smoking too fast. I'm so sensitive that my tongue perceives heat from some (usually cheap) aromatic blends by just sucking through the pipe before the match is lit. So if it don't bite me, you have an edge going in on this blend. Moisture is about right for me, it packs well and burns down to a soft ash. If you haven't tried Park-Lane blends, they are superlative. Four stars all day long, which is how long you can smoke it.

Similar Blends: Park-Lane Dominion, which has even more types of Virginia leaf.

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