Imperial Tobacco Group, PLC Amphora Cesare Borgia

I remember how excited I was when Cesare Borgia came out in, was it the eighties...? I rushed to a tobacco shop here in Holland and enjoyed the first tin very much. It did contain Latakia, I am sure I remember this well. And it cost a pretty penny then, in fact 10 Dutch guilders for a 50 gram tin. But I was a little disappointed by the second tin, I think it contained quite a few stems. So I wrote Douwe Egberts a letter about this and they replied that they would send me a "a suitable compensation" for this. But weeks passed by and nothing happened, so I wrote to them again. Then, some time later the doorbell rang and the postman delivered me a package that contained...10 tins of Cesare Borgia! A day later, he rang again with another small package that contained a further two tins! Later at a pipesmoker's fair, I told this story to a rep from DE and he said that the two tins would indeed be my compensation, but that the ten tins must have been a mix-up of some kind. So, an anecdote rather than a review as this blend is sadly no longer produced.

The fragrant Orientals provide a lot of earth, wood, herbs, floralness, some spice, vegetation, buttery sweetness, mild sourness, and smoke as the lead components. The very nutty burleys offer some earth, wood and bread as a supporting player. The double fermented Virginias produce some tangy dark fruit, earth, wood, bread, sugar, tart and tangy citrus, vegetative grass, mild floralness, and a few pinch of spice. They form the base of the blend, and play a secondary support role. The sugary fruit toppings are a tad hard to completely define, but I certainly notice light sour mango among them as well as a spice note. They moderately tone down the tobaccos. The strength is a step below the medium mark. The taste is medium. The nic-hit is a shade less potent than the overall strength level. It’s does have a little Danish tingle, but it won’t bite or get harsh. Has a few minute rough edges. Burns cool and clean at a reasonable pace with a very consistent fruity, sugary, floral, spicy, punchy, deeply rich, fairly smooth flavor that extends to the pleasantly lingering after taste. The room note is a notch stronger. Leaves little dampness in the bowl, and requires a couple more than an average number of relights. Not quite an all day smoke, but it is repeatable. Three and a half stars.

-JimInks

Being the first amphora blend I've ever tasted I was quite impressed it's a very smooth smoke no bite at all. The taste is very subtle but Ut leaves a good room note. I smoke it early in the morning and found it quite enjoyable for the first smoke of the day.

I remember this blend! It did have an attractive tin, thats why I bought it too. It wasn't a bad smoke, nor was it an exceptional one either. I'd rather smoke Amphora Red anyday compared to this.

In France, tobacco has been a state monopoly since the time of the Sun King. The bureaucrats import whatever monsieur le ministre decides, and if he don't decide to import NIGHTCAP or ESCUDO, you are out of luck. When I lived there, I could not find ANY of my favourite English blends. As for French-made popular pipe blends of the Caporal and Saferlati sort, beloved by the poilus in the trenches of World War I, I have little doubt that many of France's 5,000,000 casualties in that "war to end all war" were caused by smoking such foul excrement.

[In all fairness, Jeanne Calment, 1875-1997, the oldest woman in the world at the time of her passing, smoked Caporal shag until age 120, in 1995, and her doctor said her abstinence was due to pride rather than health?she was too blind to light up herself, and hated asking others to do it for her.]

In desperation, I tried many things, including this blend. The étui-type tin, in a star-studded metallic calipso-blue finish, with Raphael's famous portrait of Pope Alexander IV's bastard, Cesare Borgia, on the cover (His Holiness' other love child was Cesare's deadly-beautiful sister Lucrezia Borgia, the famous poisoner) is very handsome. The tobacco, pungent in that Amphora way, was quite pleasant too: mild, but building to unexpected intensity. I am surprised to find that it had no latakia in it at all.

The fact that it is no longer in production is not, I'll say, any great loss. But it wasn't unpleasant, and I am delighted to have the sumptuous tin.

I really liked my tin and smoked it quickly. It was more of a "drugstore" type of blend with no rich flavor but plenty of Nicotine wallop and a little Oriental made it remind me of the old American Walnut. I think the age on the tin (mine was at least 15 years old, made the presentation even nicer.

This was my first Non-Lane blend I ever smoked and I fell in love with it! I remember going to my tobacconist and acting like a small child when he told me he had eight tins for me! I shared my good luck with an older fella that I worked with and gave him two tins for his 50th birthday. Little did I know that would be the last time I would ever buy this blend. This blend was to me divine pleasure, the aroma was so very pleasant and never lingered around making everything smell like an ashtray. This tobacco never bit my tongue and the few relights I remember needing never left me with that terrible burnt taste. I can't really compare it to any other blend nor do I want to because this was a very special tobacco to me.

No longer in production (as far as I know), this was one D&E last attempts to revamp the Amphora brand, and became part of an Italian-Renaissance series, with blends named after famous Italian artists or, as it happens, characters.

This is the only Amphora I know of that came in a square tin, very eye- catching (similar, in fact, to many Larens' tobaccos). Nice and smooth, it was a middle of the road English, similar to Davidoff's Royalty or Sullivan & Powell's Gentleman's Mixture. The Turkish and Latakia in CB were used sparingly: enough to give it an English character, but never to the extent of any Dunhill Oriental (not even Early Morning). The predominant flavors were Amphora's typical use of Burleys and Virginias.

what can I say? I'm a sucker for a nice tin!!! This tin has got to be the nicest I have ever seen. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the tobacco. I got this recently off of e-bay, and have no idea how old it is. I do know it has been out of production for some time. The contents are basically an oriental aromatic sans any Latakia. The flavor is predominantly fig pudding too me. That said the casing is unique and I've never tasted anything quite like it. It burns very cool as well. Alas, it just doesn't do it for me. But the tin will look very nice in my collection indeed!

Typical ribbon cut of light and dark browns with a tin aroma (beautiful tin!) of basic tobacco with a bit of some sort of topping. I couldn't place the flavoring, either in the tin nose or the taste but it was definitely there. There was also the faintest hint of a minor floral character. I found a tin on Ebay very cheap and I had also smoked a tin of this in the 1990's but couldn't recall what I thought about it... which usually means I wasn't impressed.

That lack of impression carried through to this tin. This was very basic burley and Virginia with a breath of Oriental but no latakia. Some blenders can make those ingredients sing. Here it only talks, and mostly in a monotone. The flavoring was mild but noticeable in each puff. The Oriental came and went and even when it was present, it simply added a slight punctuation of a floral taste, not too far removed from the lightest of Lakeland blends. The Virginia was non-descript in flavor, exhibiting neither the usual hay and grass, nor any citrus or breadiness. The burley was slightly sweet and slightly bitter by turns. This struck me as a Euro-aromatic and it was a success in the sense that the flavoring didn't overpower the tobacco, and a failure in that it utilized mostly characterless base tobaccos. It wasn't a bad smoke; it just wasn't anything to justify a second tin. Something to smoke but relatively boring - too much else out there that is readily available to worry about this one, whose passing is anything but a surprise.