Wilke Pipe Tobacco Wilke No. 196

(2.13)
This mixture of natural Virginias and Burleys and Wilke's own slightly aromatic toasted Black Cavendish is sure to please, the discerning pipesmoker.

Details

Brand Wilke Pipe Tobacco
Blended By Carole Burns
Manufactured By  
Blend Type Virginia/Burley
Contents Black Cavendish, Burley, Virginia
Flavoring
Cut Ready Rubbed
Packaging 2 oz. bag, 4 oz. bag, 8 oz. bag 16 oz. bag
Country United States
Production Currently available

Profile

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

Average Rating

2.13 / 4
1

2

2

3

Reviews

Please login to post a review.
Displaying 1 - 8 of 8 Reviews
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Feb 13, 2016 Extremely Mild Extremely Mild Very Mild Pleasant
The mostly flue-cured Virginias are grassy with a very mild citrus sweetness, and a touch of earth. The earthy, woody burleys are toasty, very lightly molasses sweet with a little nuttiness, and minor spice and cocoa notes, and take a small lead over the Virginias. The sugary black cavendish has a little aromatic essence that I can not define. The strength is extremely mild while the taste is very mild. Has little nicotine. Could nip the tongue if puffed fast. Burns clean and a tad fast with a very consistent flavor from top to bottom. Requires few relights. Leaves virtually no moisture in the bowl and will burn to ash. Has a pleasant, short lived after taste and room note. An all day extremely mild smoke that lacks depth and body, though the thin flavor has a slight pick up in the last quarter of the bowl.

-JimInks
4 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Nov 27, 2020 Mild Very Mild Mild Pleasant
No. 196 smells sometimes of dark fruits and raisins, and sometimes of chocolate, nuts, and freshly baked bread, notes found in the Codger blend. The entire contour of the blend is surrounded by fruit, much like a fruit cake in a tobacco blend. Occasionally, when relit or puffed hard, there is an unpleasant aroma that is hard to describe, like the "Bikram yoga-bum smell" that was used to describe the Star of the East Flake scent. Or you could say it's the Wilke spicy BBQ hint I've been smoking. That's about the only drawback, and the entire session is filled with delightful scents throughout.

2020/12/07 - I should add that I smoked for a while and found that the negative aroma disappeared depending on the material of the Stummel. In my case, it worked well with the corncob. Or maybe meerschaum, clay, bog oak, or strawberry tree would work as well. (I don't own a pipe with these materials) I enjoyed it as a sweet fruitcake blend thanks to the corncob. ☆+1

2020/12/21 - After reaming the chamber and cleaning the pipe with alcohol, cotton swabs, and pipe cleaners, I was able to smoke it, and even with the briar pipe, I could no longer detect any negative smell. (Probably it was an unpleasant odor mixed with the deposited cake aroma). Instead, when the Burley leaf burns, it mixes with the spicy Wilke's BBQ scent, so the overall effect is sweet and sometimes spicy. I would recommend this to pipe smokers who love this type of flavored blend. Be sure to clean your pipe before smoking this blend. Will be like my first review...
PurchasedFrom: Wilke Pipe Tobacco
2 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Nov 23, 2017 Mild to Medium Very Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
Like Aadelma below i had been ordering the Wilke blends for over a decade, my first review was in 2007 but was ordering them since 99 or so until Carole ran out or couldn't get the Burley for NBB. When it came back i ordered a pound and it was not the same, i emailed Carole about this and never received a response. Shocked me as this is boutique tobacco not Captain Black, at $60+ a pound one expects the Jaguar or Mercedes dealership treatment. If i wanted a Honda with Honda's pricing, guess what, i'd take the dealers attitude and get my discount. But i digress... I just ordered some blends from the new producer and am enamored that i get swift responses, kind emails and the blends are again dry, tasty and shipped lightning fast. Perhaps when you've operated a business for too long you get ornery, then it's time to pass the baton...

Anywhoo onto 196! A fine Burley blend that i think can pass for an all day smoke. Not much nicotine but it is there with a nice room note since it is a Sail like Dutch semi aromatic. Browns with a hint of black tobacco and the Burley quality has returned. In the late 2000's the Burley had suffered, i'm not sure who she was buying from since Sutliff and C&D have always been consistent but the original top quality ingredient's were missing. I ordered this and some Royal Scot and bother were Goldilocks dry, not too wet, not too dry... perfect, and i agree with the Graham Cracker aroma both in the bag and burning. The blending recipe's and quality were just like i remembered they were from around the millennium so do not fear Wilke has suffered on the contrary, this is just not my favorite Wilke blend. I much prefer 191 or Champlain...

Please do give John a chance since he took the initiative to buy Wilke and if my order is any indication, doing a great job at obtaining (or keeping) customers. Thanks John for keeping a legend alive and not skimping on the ingredients or customer service, keep it up and the Wilke loyal customers will remain such.
Pipe Used: Charatan Billiard special
Age When Smoked: Fresh
2 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Oct 04, 2005 Mild Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
AAdelma and I are in complete agreement on this blend. It is an old-fashioned, mild, Dutch style cavendish, with a very pleasing aroma. It also has plenty of tobacco taste under the flavoring. As with the other aromatics I have tried by P&W, this is savory and spicey, without much sweetness. It is very well behaved in the pipe, but it will leave its essence behind. You might want to use a pipe dedicated to aromatics, a clay, or a meerschaum. It's also fine in a cob. If you enjoy light aromatics, this is a commendable option.
2 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Sep 21, 2005 Mild to Medium Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
Another great effort by Carole at P&W, this continues their traditional tolerable aromatics. Tolerable because they're unobtrusive, not biting at all and the tobacco taste is still strong and detectable. The aroma here isn't their classic and wonderful maple, but it's good, it just reminds me of a medicine I used to take in my childhood, don't remember what.(21/09/05, it came to mind: a camphor pomade I used for bike falldown pain).
2 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Nov 09, 2008 Mild Mild Mild to Medium Very Pleasant
Update - 11/9/2008

I recently ordered a pound of this tobacco and it's formulation has changed. About 1/2 way down the bowl there is now the unmistakable taste of cheap drug store blend burley. It also gets bitey at that point. I've smoked a number of bowls in various pipes with the same results. I sent the blender a polite email about this and never received any response. While it is common to have some slight variation between batches of a blend, it is inexcusable to have such a marked decline in quality, particularly considering Wilke blends are fairly pricey. I'm sad to say that I can no longer recommend this or any other Wilke blend since ordering from them is such a crap-shoot.


Update - 8/14/2007

I am downgrading this tobacco as it doesn't age very well. After a while the flavor fades, leaving it just too mild for my taste. When fresh, it's a 4 star tobacco, if older than 6-9 months, 2 stars, so an average rating of 3 stars.




Here is a really terrific Va/Burly aromatic. It reminds me a bit of Sail ivory, but far more refined and with less nicotine. I can never exactly identify the wonderful, old-time aroma, but a good component of it is of natural tobacco. I enjoy this even more than Stokkeybe aromatics because it smokes with nary a sizzle. It burns to a dry white ash and is one of the least biting tobaccos I've ever smoked. There is a slightly flavored (with what I can never determine) taste at the start of the bowl, but as it progresses I get more and more of a Kentucky burley flavor. If you like mild aromatics, this is one of the finest.
1 person found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Dec 09, 2005 Mild Mild Mild to Medium Tolerable
Only the first few puffs lead me to any pleasure. Soon the experience becomes a bore, and soon again it degrades to downright unpleasantry. The Virginias are unremarkable. This blend has nothing whatever going for it, and I find myself unable to finish even a one ounce sample. Very surprising disappointment, as I find several P&W blends to my satisfaction.
0 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Jan 27, 2005 Mild Mild to Medium Medium Pleasant
Carole at P&W is my favorite blender due to the uniqueness and diversity of the blends that emerge from their kitchen. Instead of having a repertoire based on percentage permutations of latakias, P&W offers blends totally unlike any others. As such, they pose a continuous challenge when reviewing them.

So it is with #196. First the relatively easy: it is a cavendish cut mixture of perhaps three types of leaf, Virginias and cavendished burley. There is a nostalgic aroma from the pouch that I haven?t smelled since the early ?70s, sweeter than raisins but not vanilla. Cookies? Soft and pliable, it packs readily. Upon lighting, that aromatic component (that remains nameless, dang it) is brought forth. I want to call it floral, but it?s not. Soapy? Horrors, no! It is fragrant in an acceptable way. It has been decades since I smoked Carter Hall, but that may be the nostalgic connection and comparison. Don?t let the ?s? word put you off. I hate soap but this didn?t put me off.

The other flavors are much easier to describe: cavendish, burley, Virginia, sweetish but dully so, like a teething biscuit, like the smell of sawing perforated board, graham-crackerish. It doesn?t change much through the bowl and DGT alters things only slightly. It is biteless.

Overall? I?d smoke it only occasionally. I?m not one to criticize, rationalize, apologize for, condescend or defend smoking aromatics. It?s just that sooner or later I?ll identify the scent and along with it will accompany surreal memories of the Nixon years. Get a small sample from Carole, like I did (www.vtpipes.com). It?s worth at least a few bowls.
0 people found this review helpful.
Please login to upvote this review.

target="_blank"