Player's Navy Cut Flake

(3.35)
One of John Players classic blends, a beautiful flake comprised of Virginia and burley. Cold pressed with a smidgen of rum into an eye catching flake of brown with golden highlights. A very fragrant smoke with a wonderful citrus and grassy aroma. Not overly strong but very smooth and cool to smoke.
Notes: Trivia: Reputed to be one of author J.R.R.Tolkien's favorites.

Details

Brand Player's
Blended By John Player & Sons
Manufactured By Orlik
Blend Type Virginia/Burley
Contents Burley, Virginia
Flavoring Rum
Cut Flake
Packaging 50 grams pouch
Country United Kingdom
Production No longer in production

Profile

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

Average Rating

3.35 / 4
12

12

1

1

Reviews

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Displaying 1 - 10 of 26 Reviews
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Mar 14, 2014 Medium Extremely Mild Medium Pleasant
Aaahh. It's been so long since I've had a tobacco experience similar to the flake types of the late eighties and early nineties. Since Orlik took over most of the English brands, the flake-market has been somehow "Daneificated".

Fear not my fellow pipesters! Imperial Tobacco made this little beauty and it is VERY similar to Simmon's Sixty-Three-Flake.

Top shelf VA, slightly topped (not soapy), and just enough nicotine to satisfy me. It develops into a buttery, caramel-like bisquity creamy experience. Soothing and lovely. I may bite just a wee bit if you puff too hard, so sip it like you would sip Dark Twist, and it will reward you with a good hour of virginia goodness.

British flake tobacco like twenty years ago. Hooray maties!

***** Jakob Kiilerich, Denmark *****
Pipe Used: Gesandt Bulldog
PurchasedFrom: mysmokingshop.co.uk
Age When Smoked: New
11 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Feb 25, 2016 Mild to Medium Extremely Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
The lighter Virginia offers some tart and tangy citrus, bread, grass, and light sugar with a mild vegetative tone as the lead component. The burley is a little nutty, woody, and earthy with some molasses as a supporting player. In an secondary role, the darker Virginia is lightly earthy, woody, mildly tangy dark fruit sweet with a minor spice and slight bread note. The mildly applied rum is a little sweet with a slight spice hit. It doesn’t detract from the tobacco flavor at all, and weakens just a mite after the half way point. The strength and nic-hit are a step short of the center of mild to medium. The taste level is that center. Has a few small rough notes. Won't bite or get harsh. The flakes are easily broken apart at a reasonable moisture level, so it needs no dry time. Burns at a moderate pace with a very consistent cool, clean, light creamy smoothness from top to bottom. The bowl is barely damp at the finish, and the tobacco easily burns to ash. Requires an average number of relights. Has a short lived, pleasant after taste and room note. Can be an all day smoke.

-JimInks
10 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Sep 10, 2014 Mild to Medium Extremely Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
Players - Navy Cut Flake.

This is a blend that I have heard a lot of talk about in "days gone by", so it excites me to try it. Starting with the unlit tobacco, the flakes are perfect to look at: a medium Brown mostly, with some lighter specks in there sporadically. The moisture amount is excellent: not dry, not damp but just right. The aroma that comes from the flakes is a fairly basic Virginia one with a very slight rum tang in the background, not strong at all but a gentle one.

This one takes to the flame great, for my flake blends I always use my jet ilghter but to be fair if this is prepared and rubbed correctly then a standard match flame would more than suffice. Once lit I can appreciate why this blend gets a lot of talk after many years. The smoke is deliciously cool with a great flavour. The tobacco flavour is very much split equally between the Virginia and Burley and if you retro-hale the smoke then a slight detection of the rum sweetness becomes more available. Nicotine now: very tame so if Lady N is more of a nemesis to you this will make an awesome addition to your tobacco stock. The last point to mention, to end on a high is the room-note: very full Virginia/Burley with a hint of sweetness to it. Mind you, I would say it's only a good point for smokers as it is a little full and non-smokers could find it too much!

Four stars.
Pipe Used: Butz Choquin
PurchasedFrom: G.Q Tobaccos
Age When Smoked: New
7 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 12, 2020 Medium Very Mild Medium Pleasant
50g Pouch Precision uniform rectangle flakes. I have bought this a few times in the past and smoked it in various system pipes,notably Ronsons. It always came across as a very plain natural flake ,neither very sweet or savoury either. Certainly real and no nonsense, proper british style. It is one that i have to say got over shadowed by other purchases.

It has a very mild grassy and hay pouch note and no real aromatic strength. It is such a perfect melded blend of virginia and burley that it tastes like a third variety of leaf entirely. Almost akin to thick crunchy dark cereal bran flakes.

It has a rustic woodyness,like a saw mill or timber shop air ,or chewing the end of a pencil taste, a dry hayness, a certain digestive Hovis biscuit taste, also in the beginning raw dried uncooked pasta. When new there is a degree of some citrus from the virginia but this has faded away or evolved into a darker mature virginia by now. My jar is from july 2015.

Aromatically its very mild, some say it contains rum and i dont really get any liquor or alcohol taste from this at all, but i do get a certain mild black sugar treacle molasses/ brown muscovado baking sugar that is ever so slightly like that woody natural licorice root. Spicy in a mild way,and a noticed oak cask barrel woodyness which combined produce a certain dark navy rum character minus the spirit of alcohol.

Also i get from the burley a certain earthy chalkyness that is quite reminiscent of Ceylon variety tea. It is very smooth,almost clay at times. The earthy dusty sweet chalkyness gives this a certain unique white dusty taste of which i mainly remember this for. The current pandemic lockdown has forced me to explore the forgotten stocks and ghosts of my tobacco collection.

The pipe i am using at the moment is a strait through narrow draught early USA made Falcon pipe with narrow slot bit which is really amplifying the taste in such a way that I have never tasted Players Navy Cut Flake before as well. It has more definition and complexity than I thought it had and I now lament I never bought more of this and less of other things seeing that this was a relatively easy to get OTC in some places. I didn't know this had been discontinued either, so when I use up my jar it really will be gone and history unfortunately.

Its only closest contemporary I can think off is Walnut Flake,,Navy Flake is the earthier of these two. This has aged and rounded out I do notice. No bite, tastes consistant down the bowl, no gunk,no chemicals,stays lit, burns to a fine dry fluffy ash. 4stars ****
Pipe Used: Falcon,Ronson
Age When Smoked: 4 years 9 months
6 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 15, 2014 Mild None Detected Mild Pleasant
This has been my regular day smoke for quite a number of years now. As far as a medium Virginia with no detectable additives or toppings I rate this as one of the best available. I do recommend getting into an airtight jar soon after opening,as it can quite easily break down to useless crumbs.
Pipe Used: Turks head Meershaum.
PurchasedFrom: Aston of Manchester.
Age When Smoked: 5yrs
5 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Dec 01, 2012 Medium to Strong Mild to Medium Medium to Full Pleasant to Tolerable
I'm a newcomer to Pipe smoking and this was only the fourth tobacco i tried. Being a Tolkien fan since only 10 i'd read this was his favorite brand and though it's no longer available in newsagents in the UK as it was in his time it's still easy to buy online.

Anyhow, it's the first flake I tried and I do enjoy the control you get over the rub. The smoke is pronounced Virginia but has a taste all of it's own, the room smoke isn't unpleasant and doesn't overly bother others which is great as my girlfriend and most friends are non smoking. Though one of my non smoking friends liked the smell so much he insisted on having a pipe, though he went all Gandalf and insisted we inspected his prowess in smoke ring blowing, obviously a heavy ex smoker!

I'm ordering several more packs of this soon and will be one of my staples i think.
5 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Mar 19, 2017 Medium Extremely Mild Medium Pleasant
I heard with shock and disbelief that this iconic blend has gone out of production. My impression was that it was perennially popular among English pipe smokers, and I can’t imagine what commercial considerations can have led to its discontinuance. A light, grassy, cool, slow burning sweet Virginia flake it was an archetypal traditional blend. It was a favourite of people like J.R.R. Tolkien and C.S. Lewis. My headmaster was smoking it more than fifty years ago! The nearest thing to a substitute that I have been able to find is Gawith & Hoggarth’s Brown Flake. Ogden's Walnut Flake (now called Original Flake) is comparable also. But as, in the UK, we move ever closer to prohibition, the withdrawal of Player's Navy Cut will, I fear, prove to be a significant milestone.
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Nov 23, 2014 Mild to Medium Very Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant to Tolerable
I have recently returned to the pipe after smoking cigarettes for the past few years, and this was the second smoke I chose to consume upon my return to the brotherhood of the briar. This tobacco had been sitting sealed in my drawer for 5 and a half years before being opened. The note straight of the packet is a fairly typical Virginia scent, with slightly more fruitiness than some others, but not overly so. Sweet, with a medium scented body, not too heavy. The flakes were difficult to separate, I was expecting them to be looser, but perhaps as they had sat together sealed for so long in the packet, they had melded together somewhat. I could see when lifting the whole clump of flakes out that they had been cut straight from the same plug as the beautiful mottling of the tobaccos ran the whole length of the entire mass. Rubbed out fairly easy to a mixture of between a fine ribbon & medium ribbon cut, with a few crumbs. Packed easily & took the light well. The smoke was very pleasant, quite what would be expected from this simple tobacco. A medium body with decent slight sweet/hay alternations in taste, and a subtle undertone from the rum. Burned easily, needed about 3/4 relights down the bowl (but I am out of practice on the pipe - so is probably down to me). The entire smoke is a bit 'one-note', but as that note is not unpleasant, that is not necessarily a bad thing. It doesn't have a particularly powerful room-note & is light enough to be considered an all-day smoke. In the overall analysis, a fine tobacco - nothing too exiting, but one that it will always be a good idea to have around, and will not disappoint if something is required just to relax with and not have to think about or concentrate on too much.
Pipe Used: Mr. Brog No. 12 churchwarden
PurchasedFrom: Burkitts, Hove
Age When Smoked: 5.5 years
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Jul 01, 2014 Mild to Medium Mild to Medium Medium Pleasant
This is a pleasant tobacco, light and golden in appearance and fresh smelling from the pack. It rubs out easily, lights up well and carries with it a good volume of smoke. Flavour is clean, grassy and very tasty indeed. I first came across this whilst watching a pipe tobacco review on YouTube, so thought I would give it a go. It isn't available over the counter here so I got it online. Medium strength in my opinion and has a very nice room note that is hay-like. I would certainly recommend this tobacco. It has a decent strength and taste that satisfies. It isn't, I think, a complicated tobacco, but then not all of us want that anyway. For an everyday smoke, or just a lighter one every now and then, this would fill the gap. For storage, it is in a small jar. I haven't bought a large amount of this, just one pack, but I can see myself buying more in the future. It probably will not be a regular favourite, but it certainly has a place on my list.
Pipe Used: Falcon, Peterson
PurchasedFrom: Online, Green's of Leeds
Age When Smoked: New
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
May 18, 2015 Medium Medium Medium Tolerable
Leaf: As the packaging describes, a flake of mainly brown with gold highlights. Well constructed flakes that were only slightly moist and easy to manipulate without them busting apart. Ready to smoke without any drying time.

Tin Aroma: A tangy and slightly citrus note, the Virginia is noticeable with it's hay scent, but the main scent here is a raisin and dried fruit one, and the smell of the rum casing is easy to pick, possibly a spiced rum.

Taste: A no fuss smoke, I folded and stuffed the flakes with a little rubbed out on top as kindling. In this form I always got consistently good smokes. Not a complex blend, you pretty much get what you smell in the pouch, a nice tangy Virginia, a bit of rum, and a bit of fruitiness. The dried fruit and rum provides a slight spiciness but it's nothing to write home about. This is a good, consistent, very approachable entry level flake blend.

Smokeability:The flakes were easy to fold and stuff, easy to rub out, easy to roll, it all works well with this. It was fine to smoke straight out of the pouch, no moisture in the pipe throughout the smoke, it lit easily and stayed lit with barely any tamping. Being a flavoured VaBur it can burn a little hot, but that's easy to fix by controlling your cadence. I got bit a little once, but I was smoking outside in a breeze so what can you expect. Simple and effective, low maintenance, no fuss smoking.

Summary: I enjoyed this smoke enough to keep reaching for it, more so because of it's good behaviour and simple smoking, it was easier than working through a big bowl of something super complex. It makes a decent all day smoke but there are better options out there at the same price point, especially in the U.S. Still, if I saw it OTC here in Australia I wouldn't hesitate to grab some, it isn't disappointing by a long shot. It doesn't do anything fantastic, but it doesn't do anything wrong. I guess it is still just a good old fashioned blend.

3 people found this review helpful.
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