Trinity East's #326 Pipe Tobacco Reviews

This is a commercial-grade aromatic blend of that all-American, Captain-Black style. A stringy, medium-cut reddish Virginia cavendish is mixed with perhaps 25% black cavendish and heavily cased with a vanilla (and perhaps a bit of chocolate and/or liquorice and/or who-knows-what) casing to produce a (permanently?) moist tobacco that feels soft and silky, almost oily, on the fingers.

It produces a smooth, very mild, and fluffy smoke that you could smoke non-stop if you didn't tire of the caramelized vanilla flavour and aroma first. Although it is a moist, cased tobacco, it smokes fairly dry.

Its flavour is predominantly that of the sweet casing. At first the vanilla is more prominent, but the caramelized taste takes over while smoking. Still, the vanilla essence remains in the back of the mouth as an aftertaste, both at the end of the smoke, or between puffs when smoke is emptied from the mouth. Best of all, this blend doesn't get wet and bizarre-tasting after your pipe is half-smoked like some heavily cased blends.

All that occurs is that the caramelized flavour intensifies, without any obnoxious bitterness, and a little bit of actual tobacco flavour even comes through at the very end of the smoke when all the casing is burnt off. This mixture burns quite well and leaves a blackish, dry dottle mixed with white ash in the bottom of the pipe.

The room aroma is as sweet and fragrant as you would expect, almost incense-like. Aficionados of creamy, sweet aromatics would love this one. Similar to Captain Black Royal in style and flavour, this one seems to have better smoking qualities, without the compromise of character that I perceived in Finck's Generic Captain Black clone mixture.