Background: inveterate pipe smoker (I'm 70+): many; many, many pipes & many , many tobaccos.
Comparison benchmark (from ye olde days): Balkan Sobranie Mixture #759 or Dunhill My Mixture #965
Review: Extremely disappointed. Yes, I know how to rub-out pressed cakes & yes, I tried this in both older (Castello) & newer (Tsuge) pipes.
I've wanted to try this for years, but it was a major let down from light-up to dottle. Smelled like horse-dung (& that's a compliment!), but the smoke was, at best 2-dimensional.
Yeah, latakia was there...English, .kind-of, but I unfortunately was not carried back to Victorian London, much less contemporary London. I could not fathom any complexity or depth to this smoke....I did try. By comparison, Seattle Pipe Club's Plum Pudding was four-dimensional -- I was back in old London & I could taste all the complex layers a great tobacco should possess -- maybe it was the perique that did it. Sorry, Gary, but I feel like I was "gaslighted" by all the + reviews I've read. Not saying others didn't find it delightful, but
I gotta say, I just didn't get the hype on this blend. This didn't come within miles of my benchmark tobaccos.
