Wessex Sovereign Curly Cut

Curly Cut is a much sought after blend by those who appreciate aged tobacco. I sell a lot of it on my website with age and upon query, have been told it is one of those blends that really ages well. So, naturally I had to try a tin - I selected one with five years of age - and boy, was it good! The Virginia had great depth of flavor and the Perique component, while discreet, made its presence known with every puff. And even more fun was the fact that the farther down the bowl I progressed, the deeper the richness of the Virginia leaf. I want another tin!

Pipestud

This is sort of like the baby brother of the VaPer Three Nuns in that it's uninformed by comparison. It's sweeter, and conversely tartly sour at times. Some of the sweetness comes as much from the very tart apple cider topping as it does the Virginias, which are the lead component. They provide a fair amount of tart and tangy citrus, grass, bread, some sugar, sour lemon, vegetation, floralness, mild earth, wood, tangy darker tangy fruit, and light acidity. The description for this blend said there's no topping, which is untrue as the label mentions the apple cider, and I taste it. It detracts from the tobaccos a bit. The dull spice, plum and raisins from the earthy, woody perique play a secondary support role. The strength and nic-hit are a step past the center of mild to medium. The taste is a notch past that center. May nip the tongue or get harsh for a fast puffer, and has few rough edges. Burns cool at a slightly slow pace with a very consistent sweet and sour, fruity, spicy flavor that extends to short lived after taste. Requires a couple more than an average number of relights. Leaves little moisture in the bowl. Has a pleasant to tolerable room note. Not quite an all day smoke. Two and a half stars.

UPDATE 7-6-2022: The blend has been changed. The sweet and sour, tart apple cider topping was replaced by forest honey, which mildly tones down the tobaccos, meaning a step less than before. There’s a little more bright Va. than before, which makes it more floral, citrusy and sour from the higher lemon content. The acidic level is a tad lower. The darker fruit note is no longer evident. Much of the perique was replaced by tangy, earthy, woody, vegetative, spicy, mildly floral, herbal, barbecue-like dark fired Kentucky. The perique is a little more than a condiment now. The strength and nic-hit are currently on equal footing with the taste level, which is almost medium now. It is a cleaner smoke, moderately more floral, spicy, mildly sweeter, fruitier, and a tad more sour with the aforementioned DFK being the dominant component over the Virginias by a few slots. The room note is a bit stronger, too. All of the other previous notations remain the same. It can be an all day smoke, and is a three star blend. My current rating at TR reflects the new version.

-JimInks

There is some red Virginia here, but the dominant flavour is of something very like a supple semi-sweet English tea biscuit. To that is added the Périque which bubbles up on top, peppery and buzzy like Champagne or, if you wish, sparkling hard cider. I love it. I normally prefer some further oomph down below, which the old Three Nuns certainly had and this one certainly does not. All in all though, this is a completely delightful offering. Perfect for Summer smoking.

I am a fan of Wessex Classic Virginia and Campaign flake, so I thought Sovereign would be worth a try. As another reviewer mentioned, it appears in the tin a lot like the current version of Three Nuns. However, I enjoy Three Nuns more. I have not yet smoked MB Roll Cake so I can’t make a comparison although both of those blends have some Burley, this blend doesn’t have any. The small coins pack easily enough. The brighter Virginias seem to rule the day, and I guess there is some Perique here too. I say I guess, because it is added so lightly that I found myself searching for it. There is some manually added sweetness to Sovereign too although the description claims none. It will burn a little hot if pushed so puffers beware. I like VaPers with deeper flavors like Escudo, St. James, and Deluxe Navy Rolls etc. so this wasn’t in my wheelhouse. If you are a fan of lighter VaPers that are light on the Perique, than this is your blend. It isn’t an awful tobacco and I am hoping that my remaining two tins will offer a pleasant surprise after three or four years in the cellar.

UPDATE: After smoking some this with some additional age, I have to bump this up to 3 stars (aged only for me)

Wessex - Sovereign Curly Cut (Brigade).

As this blend has a lot of diversity with the reviews, especially regarding the added flavour and strength of Perique, it just goes to prove just how subjective our tastes are!

Curly Cut and Roll Cake are often very uncertain descriptions, sometimes the blend's presented as neat coins yet on other occasions it's almost ribbons. This is quite neat: mostly small coins with very few ribbons. For immediate smoking my tin couldn't have been any better, but in all honesty I wouldn't trust it in the cellar for long; it looked a LITTLE too dry. I give the small coins a further rubbing, and they become coarse ribbons with only a delicate touch.

There seems to be a slight amount of acrimony regarding added flavour: it runs from None, to Medium to Strong, so this intrigued me. I can only identify a sort of sweetness, at first, but this transpires into a kind of dough/pastry-esc flavour. The other area that attracts rancour is the strength of Perique; I can clearly taste it, to my palate it's the stronger of the two leaves: dark fruit, lots of spice, and slightly sharp. The burn from Sovereign is good, but the smoke has a predilection to become too warm.

Again, I have to disagree with the common view on nicotine: I find it medium to strong, but I'll roll with the crowd on the room-note: pleasant.

This is a nice smoke, but falls just short of being highly recommended:

Three stars.

This is a pretty good VaPer. Sweet hay and a hint of tang from the Virginias. Dark fruit and a fair amount of spice from the Perique. That seems to contradict some of the other reviews here and I'm thinking if you can't find the Perique in this, maybe you should try it in a cob or a different briar. I have no trouble at all, in fact, I'd say the two components have near equal influence. There is some added sweetness in a topping. Perhaps it's technically correct to say there is no casing. Casing? Topping? Meh, just semantics. I won't give this 4 stars as there are at least a half-dozen VaPers that I prefer, but I will give it a rock solid 3.

Mild to medium in body and taste. Added sweetness is mild. Burns very well.

I smoked this after reviewing Peter Heinrich Special Curly, as they are very similar. I prefer to rub out the disks to a ribbon cut. The Virginias in Wessex Brigade Sovereign Curly Cut are a little darker and provide a deeper taste profile. This has a touch more perique and is a little fuller with less sweetness. This burns slightly cooler. Both are excellent, but I prefer the Heinrich Special Curly because it is mellower, milder and easy on the throat. This is closer to The Three Nuns of years past. Not the same, but an acceptable replacement for those who miss the original.

I have read a number of the reviews for Sovereign and I wonder if quite a few of them are being reviewed using relatively fresh tobacco. I have no way to compare using fresh tobac, as I only have aged specimens. That said, I find the tobac(aged) to be of excellent flavor and the perique to be of sufficent quantity to be quite satisfying! The only tobacco I can recall that has more pungency is Elizabethan. I Find both the flavor and pungency to be uniform from first light to the bottom of the bowl. Igive this one 4 stars! I have changed the room note after asking my wife(no like).

UPDATE 5/24/13

As I had purchased two tins of this, I popped the second to see if a few more months of age had changed this. Nope. I actually gave two bowls worth each to 4 other smokers, 3 of which guessed it to be a Mac Baren's blend (the 4th guessed a Stokkebye). Their tasting comments pretty much mirrored my own... overly sugary virginia and cavendish blend with no perique and a pretty fair masking of the tobacco taste. My original 1 star rating stands, not because this is a bad blend - it isn't - but because I'd recommend that if someone wanted this type of blend, they should save money and buy Mac Baren's. And also because this is advertised as a VaPer and the perique is completely MIA.

ORIGINAL REVIEW 12/17/12

Cute little spun discs of light brown to golden color. Tin aroma was of zero perique, a bit of virginia and a whole lotta topping. Smelled like a Mac Baren roll cake. Unfortunately, it tasted like one as well.

I agree with Rintrah's review. As a Vaper, this fails miserably. It's probably the worst representation of that genre that I've ever smoked. The perique was missing in action and the virginias were much sweeter than they should have been, due to the Mac Baren-esque syrupy, pastry-like topping, a flavor I find nauseating. This saccharine taste covers up most of the tobacco flavor. I could only smoke a few bowls of this and nothing I did to this one elevated it to smokable for me. I smoked it moist and dry and it never changed. This is to Three Nuns what a powdered donut is to corn chips. No casing on this one? Yeah... sure....

The problem I see with this one is that I can't recommend it to any serious VaPer aficionado because it doesn't fit that style. The style it does fit is done to perfection by Mac Barens, and at a much reduced price. Consequently, I can't find anything that this brings to the marketplace that isn't done better or cheaper by someone else, and as such I cannot recommend it to anyone.

Extremely disappointing. Absolutely not a VaPer to my sense of taste. This tastes just like a MacBaren roll cake, and I don't say that just because it is a spun cut. I say that because as soon as I light this up I'm overwhelmed with sugar-syrupy sweetness.

I almost wonder if I have a different blend than other reviewers as this is obviously not VA sweetness. My tin says "Piquant 1840's RoyalNavy formula" - well, no clue what that means but this isn't what I've experienced with other "navy" blends.

Perique content is minuscule. I can usually still taste it small amounts - in this I taste none, only the sugar topping used.

If you like sweet VAs with a topping, there's nothing wrong with that. This might be right up your alley, but not what I want in a VaPer. I'm rating as 1 star even though it is not terrible tobacco per se, and I know some people will really like it. But definitely 1 star (zero maybe) to my tastes coming to this looking for a VaPer. Value is bad here, too.

If you're looking for an actual VaPer that tastes like VA and Per tobacco, seek out Escudo/Dunhill Navy Rolls, McClelland's St James Woods/Beacon Extra, or Gawith's St James Flake.