2 Star Tobacco Blends

These are average tobaccos - good enough, but I was just never able to get interested in them. Usually it's a flavor that doesn't grab me, but some tobaccos here may have other flaws, like excellent flavor and hideous burning characteristics.

Balkan Sobranie White - Another gift from a grand fellow, this gave me a little trepidation when I sniffed the contents, since it smelled sweeter than I'm prone to like. In smoking, though, it proved to be a nice tobacco. The mix is too heavy of Virginias for my tastes, and it gives me that tongue-snipping bite on occasion, but overall it's a pleasant experience. I haven't really been bowled over by the flavor, though. I find it generic to the point of pointlessness - sort of the Ford Taurus of tobaccos. Yes, it's competent, and tons of people seem to like it, but it's not something I want to immerse myself in every day. I'll enjoy it while it lasts, but it's not going to send me out on horseback with sword and lance questing for more, unlike its cousin 759.
(Guest Review Comments by Jesse Williamson. I've finally managed to my hands on some of this stuff! Tobacco Supermarket recently discovered thirteen pouches, and definitely to their credit sold it as an extremely reasonable price when they could have moved it perhaps at twice the cost. So far, I've been really pleased doing business with them, and saving money while I'm at it. Ok, there's my plug. On to the tobacco! For reference, I smoked some more Balkan Sasieni and tried to recall my (favorable) experience with a short-lived tin of Bill Bailey's Balkan Blend, though it's been a while. BBBB remains the darkest of the three, and Sasieni I've come to like very well since it has some really interesting "bright" notes and is a good "all-day" English, I think. My first bowl of Sobraine was dissapointing. Perhaps I had expected too much. I had images of a massively full-tasting blend and instead found a suprisingly light tobacco, lighter in my estimation than either Sasieni or BBBB. It does have some nice perfume-like bright notes, but these just don't seem to be as rich as Sasieni or as full as BBBB. However this tobacco (perhaps on merit of it's age?) does excell both in the category of smoothness-- it's absolutely silk-smooth. In the end, though, I can't say it blows me away. There's nothing bad about it, other than that it seems to be somewhat dull. Perhaps I'll change my mind as I smoke more of it.) Not currently available in the US.

Balkan Sasieni - This is supposedly the original version of the above blend, repackaged and re-distributed by the family that created it. "Repackaged" is certainly the word, as the packaging of the two is almost identical. However, the tobacco inside is quite nice, and I found I preferred it to the Sobranie. The flavors are very similar, to my indelicate palate at least, but I found this one to offer that indefinable "more". The flavor was a bit fuller, the taste had a tiny bit more zest. I wouldn't go so far as to say that this is the Taurus SHO to the above comparison, but it at least has a more enticing exhaust burble. It burned smoothly to a fine ash, and while it was equally prone to bite me with that irritating Virginia snap, it offered up enough flavor to make it more worthwhile. I doubt I'll be adding this to my regular rotation any time soon, but it does at least get a better nod than the Sobranie.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

Cornell & Diehl Strathspey - Here's an interesting, zesty blend that works well as a change-of-pace tobacco for me. It reminds me of another C&D blend called Scot Heather, but I don't find it quite as good. While the flavor is very unique, it comes off a bit crude and direct and it's not the sort of thing I'd spend a whole evening smoking.
May be purchased from:
Cornell and Diehl Tobaccos

Esoterica Pembroke - This is probably the one that will have Esoterica fans at the door with pitchforks and torches, but I simply don't like the burn of this blend. Its flavor is very nice, but it wants to burn hot and wet for me, and despite various different levels of humidification and the smoothest smoking techniques I can muddle forth, it remains a tongue-blistering experience. It's on the sweet side, presumably from the rum(?) flavoring added, and perhaps this is the cause of my smoking problems. I smoke it every so often for a change of pace, but don't plan on replacing it once my current supply runs out.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

Gordon Pym - One of the tobaccos available from Dan Tobacco. I can find many words for this one - smooth, peaceful, mellow, bland, uninteresting, and vanilla are among them. It isn't a bad tobacco. It's simply a tobacco that I failed to find anything really gripping in. I tried it in a wide variety of pipes, because I liked its smoking characteristics quite well and I was sure that somewhere in my collection there had to be a pipe that would bring out some zing in this blend. Alas, I had no luck - there may be a pipe out there that will make it sing, but I don't have one. It stubbornly insisted on being a quiet, friendly, and utterly nondescript tobacco regardless of puffing style or pipe. This isn't a bad thing entirely, as it would make a nice friendly all-day smoke.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

Lane's 1Q - (Guest Review by Jesse Williamson)It's ok. Strictly ok. There's very little that I can say about this fairly lightly-cased chocolately blend other than that. It needs a little "more" of "something" that it just doesn't have, but there's not really anything bad about it. I don't think I'll be buying any more anytime soon.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

Gawith Commonwealth Mixture - (Guest Review by Jesse Williamson)While the quality of the leaf is (as with every example from Samuel Gawith that I've seen) superb, and while I enjoyed it when I had it, something keeps me from wanting more of this one. To begin with, it took some getting used to: The latakia is more of a main course than a flavoring agent. This can be sucessful, for example in Bengal Slices. However here the 50/50 blend seemed to lack a needed synergy. This wasn't bad tobacco by any means at all, but just not something I'll be after again.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

McClelland's Black Shag - This is a pleasant black mix of ribbon tobaccos that's not so powerfully overwhelmed by that ominous ketchup smell in the tin. Still, the threat of tongue-frying lurks always at the edges of the experience... like finding Joe Pesci under your kitchen cabinets, you never know when it's going to punch you somewhere painful. It has a lot more flavor than most of the other McClelland's blends I've tried, and you can actually taste real tobacco over the heat. When smoked VERY slowly and VERY carefully, it's a decent experience and a nicely flavorful smoke though not particularly outstanding.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

Butera's Kingfisher - Here's a nice dictionary entry for "krumble kake tobacco". It's good, it smokes evenly and burns well, and it has virtually no interesting characteristics to me. This is a shame because it's named after a very entertaining bird and the tin art for both this and Pelican make the tobacco interesting for appearance alone. This is not a tobacco that would be gracefully skimming the ocean waves, though - it would more likely be plunked home in front of the TV watching sitcoms. It's not a bad tobacco at all, just not a very good or notable one.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

McClelland's Grey Havens - In their words, "A lightly flavored Burley and Matured Virginia blend". It has a bit of Perique in it and also has the least attack of McClelland ketchup soaking of any McC blend I've tried. It actually smells delcious in the can and I enjoyed the flavor a lot too. It's very distinctive and refined, and the aroma smells much like a box of fine sweets. The downside of my experience is that this is another blend which suffers from the McClelland Moisture Mystery - I'm sitting here sniffing a tin which has been open for easily 3 months, and it's still moist and almost sticky to the touch where other open tins would have been Rice Krispies by this time. I can't say if this is related to the other nasty McC side-effect or not, but I get the same delayed-effect bite from this as from their other blends... it's that next-morning, "Oh god, did I eat a live hedgehog last night?" tongue shock. If the delicious flavor could be spliced off by itself it would be a solid 4 star tobacco, but the acidic bite chops it right down.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA

McClelland's Dark Star - After the brief trip to the Grey Havens, we're now re-entering the land of tomato sauce. Opening the tin gives me that immediate eyebrow-raising blast of "Tongue-bite in a Can" and I was tempted not to even try the stuff out of fear, but the rave reviews of others got the best of me. After many smokes and forcing myself through half a tin, my reactions are mixed - like Grey Havens, it has a rich and complex flavor that's great by itself but ruined by the smoking experience. Just getting through a bowl of this tobacco required 110% of my concentration to avoid too-fast puffing, and it wanted to bite like a deranged badger. Weirdly, even on the nights when I'd go through a bowl smoothly and feel fine, the next morning my tongue felt like I'd been licking a wire brush all night. I've often wondered if it's simply some component of McClelland tobaccos to which I and many others are allergic, since this seems to be a polarizing common experience - either folks love and revere the blend or they can't smoke it at all. Sadly I fall into the latter camp despite enjoying the flavor.
May be purchased from:
Pipe and Pint, (336) 218-8610 Greensboro, North Carolina, USA