Motzek Highland Balls

(3.00)
The "Oriental-Praline". Roughly ripped Oriental leafs, a fine Virginia and nutty,ripe burley, partly wrapped into tobacco leafs. Delicate spice with smooth peppery overtones. Notes of malt, thyme, cocoa. Sensitive, elegant, complex and delicate. A top notch tobacco in aroma and look. A specialty from our house - piece for true tobacco enthusiasts.
Notes: This is ribbon cut and ready rubbed Virginia/burley mix wrapped around with a Oriental leaf. Several pieces per 100 grams bag. Besides those "Pralines", there are also some coarse ripped loose Oriental leafs, as well as finer cut ribbons and ready rubbed, which are the exact same ingredients as the "Pralines", so you can make them yourself!

Details

Brand Motzek
Blended By Tom Darasz
Manufactured By Motzek / TAK
Blend Type Oriental
Contents Burley, Oriental/Turkish, Virginia
Flavoring
Cut Mixture
Packaging 100 grams pouch
Country Germany
Production Currently available

Profile

Strength
Medium
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild -> Overwhelming
Flavoring
None Detected
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
None Detected -> Extra Strong
Room Note
Pleasant to Tolerable
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Unnoticeable -> Overwhelming
Taste
Full
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild (Flat) -> Overwhelming

Average Rating

3.00 / 4
1

2

1

0

Reviews

Please login to post a review.
Displaying 1 - 4 of 4 Reviews
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 21, 2018 Medium None Detected Full Tolerable
The very floral Oriental leafs provide a bit of dryness, and a slight buttery sweet note, along with a lot of wood, light spice, earth, and is a tad malty. They are the main component. The nutty earthy, woody burley offers little sweetness outside of a small touch of spice and cocoa in a support role. They also slightly remind me of semois. The grassy, lightly citrusy Virginia is a condiment, and seems a little muted by the other tobaccos. The strength is medium, while the taste level is fairly full. The nic-hit is a hair shy of medium. Won’t bite and has a slight harsh note here and there along with a rough edge or two. Burns fairly cool, and very clean at a moderate pace with a slight inconsistency in its deep, nuanced, fairly dry flavor that extends to the lightly lingering after taste. Leaves hardly any dampness in the bowl, and requires an average number of relights. Not an all day smoke. Three and a half stars.

-JimInks
10 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Nov 07, 2017 Medium None Detected Full Pleasant to Tolerable
HOLY MOTHER OF THE TOBACCO-GOD! First: Excuse the lenght of this review, but it deserves to be reviewed in depth, so much to see, to taste and love! I have a english language review... or more so rave on this on a forum with a lot of photos of the tobacco, this here is the "shorter" version. You can find it here: https://www.badgerandblade.com/forum/threads/motzeks-highland-balls-and-a-raving-deniz-pic-heavy.531003/

This is the best tobacco I ever had... not only in presentation, but also in taste! Lots of Burley, lots of Orientals, some Virginia...this is my most favorite tobacco, I'm stocking on this like beserk! The cut is a joy for itself, but the taste is outstandingly good! ​I knew I was ordering sth. special when placing the order... but what came today overwhelmed me and topped the high expectations I had even more!

Inside the bag, there are three kinds of tobaccos, all seperate and "stacked" ontop of eachother. I'll start with the top, getting to the bottom, as it came in the 100g bag. At first I was perplex, didn't know how to handle this beautiful melange of various cuts... but once opening a "Praline", I got the idea... You got:

Whole "Tobacco Pralines":​ They are the complete mixture. The rough leaf as wrapper, inside the loose-cut and ready-rubbed tobaccos. 1 Praline is enough for 1 giant, or 2 medium-sized bowls. It contains the whole blend as stated above. As every praline has a different wrapper, each one is unique, not only in appearance but also in taste profile! ​7 of them were in my bag, on top of the roughly torn leafs and underneath those, there was the loose-cut tobacco. It's a joy to handle it... the pralines are too big for putting into a bowl, just rip them open, and kinda rub the wrapper leaf out to your prefered size

Then there's the loose parts, so I call them Seperated ingridients of the "Pralines":​ a) Rough cut whole leafs of Oriental tobacco: Some of them fill half of my hand... it's all Oriental leafs in different shades! b) The fine-cut tobacco with ready-rubbed parts (Burley and Virginia; ready rubbed and ribbon-cut parts)

So once you smoked all the pralines, you can smoke the sepearted parts. Or keep the pralines as rare treats and use the seperated ingridients for daily-smoking! Take some rougly torn Oriental leaf, some ribbons- and ready-rubbed... there you go! You can choose which of the rough torn Oriental-varietals to use then. You can choose how fine or rough you want the Oriental leafs and what ratio they should be with the fine(r) cut tobacco (ribbons and ready-rubbed). But I attend to get the same ratio as the pralines, as they are GENIUS in taste...really.. the best thing I ever smoked, not only due to the lovely appearance!

The taste The taste is outstanding... just as the bag-note. In the bag-note you get some slight fruitiness, lots of exotic spices and spiciness, ethereal-oils, nuts, herbs (thyme is one I could name)... very savory, with a decently sweet note to it.

In the taste you find lots of Burley goodness in form of sweet- and tart-nuts, dark cocoa notes. The Orientals are sublime... exotic and peppery spices and spiciness, different herbs, ethereal oiliness, very excotic and intense flavours. Virginias add slight sweetness to keep everything in balance, but this blend has a very tangy (spicy), herbal and rather dark aroma in general. Some malty notes, some earth.. very, very complex and lots of flavours to explore and savor.

Medium in strenght, but very full-bodied in flavours! Burley and Oriental dominate the taste, whilst the Oriental is a tad more prominent. This is not only for Oriental lovers, but also for the Burley-Aficionado, and everyone, who likes a very spicy, herbal, ethereal and full-bodied smoke with insane depth and most refined aroma. ​ Gentleman... I'M IN LOVE!!!! I feel like coming home with this tobacco...I was a huge Motzek fan before.. but Tom Darasz (the head and head-blender of the company...basically he is the whole company, he has only 1 co-worker for production) really hit the nail on the head for my personal taste with this blend. It fits 100%ly my taste...not 98, not 99...100%! I could easily smoke nothing else but this for the rest of my life, this is my "lonley island tobacco", it has it all! Nutty, chocolaty and cocoa, exotic spices, ethereal... wow..., just wow!

The taste paired with the lovely, lovely appearance of the tobacco makes for an uncomparable smoke. For me, as a plug, twist, crumble cake and flake FANATIC, this is the icing on the cake cut-wise.

**Update:** After having this blend stored for several months in a mason jar the flavor(s)/flavor profile has dramatically changed, if not to say: The flavors are lost! (This one has this odd fructouse-ish sweetness, that drowns all the other flavors) I've noticed the same phenomenon (that quite baffles me..) with several other Motzek/TAK blends. A pity, as I have 200-400g of several TAK-Blends jarred up.. half of which I had to dump in the trash, as they taste totally different.. some of them are fructous-ish sweet, nothing else.. some have lost their flavors and are "flat"... some turned sour... sorry, but I'll have to downrate and recommend: If you smoke this within a short period of time (1-4 months) this is just fine and a wonderful Burley Cake that lacks competition in Germany imho.... but sadly this 'flaw', the loss/dramatically change of aroma/flavors foreces me to downrate..

|| Personal rating: 2-stars (4-stars, when fresh) | Attempt of an 'obective rating' : 2-stars (4-stars when fresh) ||

10 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
May 10, 2019 Mild to Medium None Detected Extra Full Tolerable to Strong
Is there a nicer way to present a tobacco? Or to transport? Or to give away as a gift? I'd say no.

The look in pouch is very wild; rough cut and ripped leafs from light to darker brown with some ready rolled balls inside which look like cute walnuts. Cold smell is sweet spicy and of tobacco but nice and decent.

Took some of the loose leafs with a big share of orients out, ripped it a bit apart and packed it (just fine) in a medium size chamber. Tobacco take flames easily and burns excellent. Very cool and steady without relighting until there's only a tiny bit of ashes left at the bottom of the pipe.

With the first few tokes there was an instant smile on my face. Super sweet and natural tobacco flavor with a whole spectrum of spicy top notes. Very very well balanced. I can truly differ all the single components - not in one toke but almost every single puff is different. Sweet citric Virginias play hide and seek with a nutty warm bodied chocolate Burley all rounded up with oriental spices reminds me a bit of sweet pepper and cardamom. I also "cracked" one of the "nuts" as they wouldn't fit in one of my pipes with same results. An exciting smoky ride but sweet all over.

My holy grail of natural tobaccos. Full rich blend of perfectly balanced flavors -an A to Z smoke. Never boring and worth all the money. Thanks TAK!
Pipe Used: Various briars
PurchasedFrom: https://dein-tabak.de
Age When Smoked: Few weeks in jar
4 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Sep 30, 2020 Medium None Detected Medium Pleasant
If toys for the pipesmoker existed, this tobacco would be one of them.

The balls themselves are wrapped as whole oriental leaves. It is quite emotional to unwrap and handle them, a passionate pipe smoker would definitely love the experience.

the filling is virginia and burley, to add body and sweetness to the oriental that would otherwise be very aromatic, incense and even sour with no body at all.

The game is simply: make your own vaburor blend. You take the virginia an burley, you destroy an oriental leaf and mix it as you wish and learn on how to understand the oriental component in a blend.

It is a lot of fun and, my god, when you find the balance that work for you you have this buttery like kind of smoke. Oily and buttery, really incredible.

So, if you like orientals or if you still don't understand how orientals taste like (or if you really think you do), this is the tobacco you have to try.
3 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.

target="_blank"