steverino
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Cornell and Diehl Manhattan AfternoonPicked up a tin of this the other day. It is one of their "Simply Elegant" series. Makes me feel like Liberace. Not really, but there's something about the artwork on the tins in this series that repels me a bit. Just don't relate to the scenes portrayed, I guess. Here's the tin description:
"Naturally sweet Golden Virginia leaf with a drop of honey sliced into flakes. One of our new "Simply Elegant" Series." I think there should be a comma after the word "honey" to make the meaning correct.
This tobacco is very moist in the tin, much more so than most C&D blends I've sampled. Nevertheless, I broke up a couple of flakes and loaded a pipe. Lighting wasn't too bad, but several relights were necessary due to the moisture.
First impression was that of a typical golden virginia, reasonably decent taste, some sweetness. Really nothing special. I could tell the honey flavor was there and it lasted maybe five minutes before it disappeared and a somewhat lackluster Virginia flavor took over.
On down the pipe, the flavor darkened a bit. At the end of the bowl, I was completely unimpressed. I have a number of tins of Virginia tobaccos that are much better, so I figured I'd give this one away.
Until I dried some out.
I seldom intentionally dry out tobacco as it will usually reach equilibrium with the room moisture in a week or a few after it's been opened. On a whim, I decided to take out three or four flakes and leave them on a paper towel for 24 hours and see what happened. When I came back to it, the tobacco was quite crispy and the flakes were easy to crumble for packing. I loaded the pipe and set the stuff on fire and what happened after that was pure delight.
Dry, this stuff is great. Sweetness gone to bed. Long lasting flavor to the end of the bowl (though it does diminish a bit). You'd almost think this is an aromatic tobacco as sweet as it is.
As I smoked through the bowl, there were a couple of times I could have sworn I tasted a little perique winding its way through there, but according to the description, this is straight golden Virginia. Needless to say, I'm not convinced that tin descriptions are always 100%, shall we say, accurate.
If subsequent bowls of this stuff are as good as the first, I guess I'm going to have to make this one a regular. I think I would recommend it to anyone, but especially to someone who normally smokes sweet aromatics and wants to get into Virginias. That way, he can start getting the Virginia taste but keep the sweetness he's used to until he's ready for the next step.
Oh yeah, almost forgot - some nicotine effect near the end of the bowl and very little, if any, bite from this one. Dry it out and it'll smoke great.
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LokoMac8
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Re: Cornell and Diehl Manhattan Afternoon | steverino wrote: | | Until I dried some out. |
Very interesting, but the moisture content of SOME tobaccos, I have found, can make the difference between night and day. EDGEWORTH is like that -- it's better on the dry side. Other tobaccos are just the opposite and I have had good results from remoistening a couple that apparently gotten a bit too dry (in one case WAY too dry). The difference in the flavor and the way they smoked (slower/cooler) was incredible!
I have read things similar to what you have said about opening a new tin of tobacco -- some are too moist as they come and the reviewer found that drying it out some helped it a lot.
Thanks for another great review Steve. This sound like another one I would like to try. --RJ--
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steverino
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Yeah, I'm the same way RJ, I have rehumidified some tobacco as well. Did this with Solani Aged Burley Flake and it made several worlds of difference. You just don't know until you try it, I guess. I think overall, I do find that drier is usually better. But not too dry.
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