Pipe Tobacco Review: McClelland Classic Virginia Flake - With An Introduction To Virginia And Flake Tobaccos
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
That's one of the darkest looking Virginia flakes I've seen. I need to buy some tobacco soon and I've been meaning to try some of the American blends so I might have to keep an eye out for that one. Although I'll probably just end up spending all my money on a few tins of Mac Baren's Vintage Syrian before it's gone forever.
I like MacBaren but I haven't tried the Syrian. I'll have to add it to my list!
Cornell & Diehl is another good US tobacco company if you're looking to try something new. I highly recommend their "Briar Fox".
I would definitely recommend trying the Vintage Syrian, out of the 10 or so blends I've tried since I've started pipe smoking it's definitely my favorite.
Cornell & Diehl are definitely on my list to try, along with a few others. I find C&D and McClelland have so many blends I never know where to start, so thanks for the recommendations, I'll definitely keep them in mind.
I only hope I don't get stung by customs after I make an order, haha.
Yeah, I've heard it can be harder to get this stuff over there. But I've also heard that you have a ton of great, classic tobacco shops in the UK, especially around London. I've often dreamed that maybe I could immigrate if I could prove I had unique and critical professional skills as a tobacconist.
I haven't been to the UK in a few years so I've never visited any of their tobacconists unfortunately, and most of the online ones that I've seen don't seem to want to ship outside the UK.
When it comes to Ireland there is very little choice, the only tobacconists I know of are in Dublin. One is James Fox, which has more whiskey than tobacco, another is the Decent Cigar Emporium, which is mainly about cigars (obviously) and has even less of a pipe tobacco selection than James Fox, the last one I know of is Peterson's which I've yet to check out but I imagine they mostly sell Peterson's blends. And the prices here are ridiculous, there almost always a bit more than double the price of the same tobaccos I see on US sites.
So, yeah, if you want to emigrate somewhere as a tobacconist you should come to Ireland, there's a pretty big gap in the market here, haha.
My apologies - I thought you were in Scotland! I hope you can forgive me...
I wouldn't mind opening a little shop in Ireland some day either, though.
What do you think of Peterson's blends? I love their pipes but haven't tried their tobacco. I've watched some videos of their factory; it's quite an impressive operation.
No worries, I saw you mentioned something about me being in Scotland in your dream post and was going to say something but I just put it down to dream logic, haha.
The only Peterson blends I've smoked have been University Flake and De Luxe Mixture. They were the first two tobaccos I tried and really enjoyed both of them. I recently bought another tin of the De Luxe Mixture but it hasn't quite hit the spot like it did the first time, although it's still one of the nicest aromatics I've tried. I'd like to try the University Flake again, because I remember enjoying it, but there are other tobaccos I'd rather spend my money on right now, haha.
I think Peterson's tobaccos are just fine, they don't seem to be anything special, but I've only tried two of them and don't have a huge amount of other tobaccos to compare them to.
Interesting post! My hubby loves to smoke his pipe after dinner and he have a collection of pipes! I have to say that I like the smell of his tobacco (tobacco "forte").
It's so cool to discover that Paolo is a pipe smoker! On behalf of smoking husbands everywhere I thank you for your support.