For my first pipe tobacco review on Steemit I thought I would start with a classic Virginia Flake from McClelland.
Virginia tobaccos tend to have a high natural sugar content. This gives them a sweetness directly from the soil, so they don't have to be flavored or "cased" with liqueurs or chemicals. I love smoking straight Virginia blends for this reason. They can vary from one vintage to the next, and from one farm to the next, just as wines can.
This is McClelland's No. 2010 Classic Virginia. It's a mix of flue-cured tobaccos from yellow to light red, which are then pressed under extreme pressure to marry the flavors, and then cut into the "flakes" you see in the picture. You'll also notice a slight powdery whiteness to the flakes. This is from the natural sugar content of the leaf.
A flake tobacco like this requires a bit of extra work when it comes time to pack your pipe, as you need to rub out the tobacco to your desired consistency. The advantage of a flake is this gives you a little more control over how the tobacco will smoke. If I'm smoking indoors, I'll crumble it down as fine as I can for an easy draw and even burn. For windier conditions, I'll leave it coarser, sometimes even folding a flake or two in half and cramming it into the bowl as-is. This makes for a denser pack with less surface area. It can be hard to keep this lit, but on a windy day I want it to smoke slow and cool. I don't want to burn through the wall of the pipe, and there's no point in losing more smoke to the wind than I need to!
In general, flake tobaccos will burn slower and cooler than your regular ribbon-cuts. This is another advantage with Virginia blends, because the higher sugar content tends to make them smoke hotter, leading to the sharp "tongue bite" you experience if you puff too aggressively.
In my opinion, no one handles Virginias quite as well as McClelland. They have a few standard offerings such as this one, where they'll blend and mix different leaf to keep the flavor as consistent as possible from year to year. They also offer special limited run vintage tins every Christmas, selecting what they feel is the best leaf from that year without regard to matching the flavor to what they've offered before. These tins are highly prized among collectors, some of whom "cellar" them for ten or twenty years, or even longer. A long aging process can mellow and sweeten the leaf. I'm not entirely convinced the benefit to the flavor is worth the wait, but it's fun to experiment.
So what did I make of this blend? In the pouch it has a slightly fruity aroma, with just a hint of sweetness. It starts off rich and tangy, with notes of citrus over earthy undertones. The earthiness starts to predominate in the second half of the bowl, where the natural sugar content begins to suggest dark chocolate or sweet tea. It's mellow and smooth throughout the bowl.
I smoked this in the small pipe pictured above (a Savinelli Chiara bulldog) and later in a larger pipe (a straight-grained Apple from LJ Peretti) and found that the larger pipe brought out a lot more complexity of flavor. It didn't require re-lighting, and in the larger bowl it remained lit for nearly an hour with only occasional tamping.
I'd rate this one four out of five stars. It's a good all-day smoker - not too strong, and without any overwhelming nicotine hit. And at $4 or less an oz. through most online retailers, it's an affordable blend for Virginia fans.
I have no professional connection to any of the retailers or products I've mentioned or linked to in this post; I'm sharing my experiences in the hope that other folks might try pipe smoking and share in my passion.
Our own @lyndsaybowes has had great success growing some Virginia tobacco of her own - up in Canada! I can't wait to see how she cures and processes it!
My previous posts on pipe smoking are listed below:
Happiness is a Full Tobacco Jar - Introducing Pipe Smoking to Steemit
Pipe Smoking 101: Here's What You Need
Pipe Smoking 101: Your First Bowl Of Tobacco