Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) Greve Hamilton Blandning

This tobacco is a holy thing here in sweden. Everyone you speak to about pipesmoking (in sweden) young or old is gonna tell you to buy and try this pipetobacco - Greve Gilbert Hamiltons blandning. And why is that you might ask? The answer is...tradition! Yes, tradition. Your grandads dad smoked this when it came out 1924 and his son after him and the sonson and now you have bought your first 300kr pipe and a pouch of "the Count". You pack your pipe real bad the first time and put a match to it and inhale and...it forgives you for how bad you´ve packed the pipe. It burns quite well and doesn´t need to be relit most of the times. Thats why it is good starter for any "pipenoob". I did this trial and it took me...8 years to admit to myself that this is what a genuine pipetobacco should be.

After this i jumped on the Aromatics line and for a while i liked them better than the regular blends. But now i´m back where it all begun. Enough about me...

I like this tobacco in all ways, except the taste. I find it to be little cigarett-feeling about it. Maybe it is just me or the fine cut the tobacco is cut in. I love the roomnote, that is the best about it. Second comes the smell of the baccy itself and the looks of it. If only the taste would be more like "round" and not so sharp i could have smoked this more often. I can bite you if you´re not careful (i seem to puff to heavy).

I think this tobacco has been "sold out" a bit too much. It deserves a higher place than a simple supermarket tobacco. This is a classic and i will puff it between my other blends that i have just to remind myself how a "cheap*-gasstation-sold-in- wending-machines-tobacco" can taste so much of tradition.



*= Tobacco in Sweden isn´t cheap at all.

The Virginia offers tart citrus, a lot of grass and hay, a touch of earth, wood, floralness and a couple pinches of spice as the lead component. The lightly sugary black cavendish is unsweetened, and has a little creaminess as a condiment. The burleys are nutty sweet, toasty, earthy and woody as a secondary player. One of them appears to be mild dark-fired Kentucky, resulting in some woody, earthy, herbal, floral, vegetative spiciness that is partially in the room note, too. I think there's a touch of floral, spicy, herbal, vegetative, woody, earthy, sour Oriental in here, too, which is more obvious in a wider chambered pipe. They claim there's no topping, but I detect one that seems to be mildly fruity with a drop of caramel, though the latter may possibly come from the black cavendish. The mild fruit could come from a little stoved Virginia. In some ways, it reminds me of a slightly less complex Sail Yellow with a little lighter spice content. The strength is a couple of steps past the center of mild to medium. The taste is medium. The nic-hit is just a shade stronger than the strength level. The tobaccos are thinly cut, so it burns rather quickly, and needs to be sipped to avoid potential harshness and cigarette notes, and possible tongue bite. Has a clean, very consistent taste, and barely leaves any moisture in the bowl. Requires few relights. I found it does better in a medium size bowl, though a small bowl will do. The lightly lingering after taste is pleasant, while the room note is a little woody, and may be too strong for the ladies, but it's not pungently bothersome. Two and a half stars.

-JimInks

Update: I have been jumping back and forth with this one, trying to place why I like it. It tastes OTC, hardly a premium blend, but that actually works in it's favour. I think I will use this as a measure of standard, a pallette cleanser - it resets my senses and allows me to enjoy what makes a premium tobacco just that. It does remind me a bit (just a bit, mind you) of cigarettes. I used to smoke cigarettes years ago so to me it brings forth nostalgia as well. So, although it might seem strange I have simultaneously found what I like about it and why others might not. I am hereby demoting this to two stars, even though my personal opinion of it has not changed.

I expected this to be bad, on par with Borkum Riff, but it really isn't. A swedish classic, (alleged) favourite of legendary swedish singer Peps Persson among others, this one is actually quite good. Sure, it bites if one is not careful - but treated with respect it burns nicely and offers up a lot of flavour. Try it if you can, if nothing else just for the sake of sampling history.

Taste: What is this flavour I get from it? It is sweet and somehow artificial. I would say that there is a splash of alcohol added (cognac?), but I can not really say for sure. The individual components are balanced to the point where I can't tell them apart, but there sure seems to be more burley than virginia at play here. The casing reminds me of War horse by Standard Tobacco Company of Pennsylvania, actually they are quite similar and I really enjoy that. War horse is deeper though, and more flavourful. This one also reminds me of Half & Half or just OTC in general, but with some serious pepper to it. . It's not bad, just not what I want all the time. It's a matter of pairing I guess, this one goes great with coffee.

Mechanics: Ribbon cut, needs some drying but not much. Easily turns hot and at that point it will bite. Medium to strong nicotine.

This is the tobacco for the connoisseur pipesmokers that doesn't enjoy flavoured, vanilla-, fig- and molasses-tasting and spiced tobacco at all.

The main ingredients in Greve Hamiltons Blandning are Virginia tobacco mixed with some Burley tobacco but also a little bit of Oriental tobacco are included. Most of the tobaccos are air-cured but even dark-fired and flue-cured tobaccos are ingredients in this mixture.

The taste is outstanding and smooth and very pleasant, from the tobaccos natural sweetnesses, but can burn your tonguge, like most Virginia tobaccos, if smoked too hasty. Preferably Greve Hamiltons Blandning should be smoked in a clean, small bowl pipe as it used to, when this tobacco was introduced on the market in 1924. It then burns quite slowly, when you sip your pipe gently, and your pipe will not become too hot. Greve Hamiltons Blandning will then certainly give the smoker a great feeling of satisfaction. Even the smoker's non smoking wife or hubby will enjoy the very pleasant smell that appears when it's smoked with care.

When finished, the remains are just grey ashes and your pipe will be easily cleaned afterwards, because there are no sugar added at all.

I love it! Highly recommended!

I had very high hopes for Hamilton's, knowing that it is the most popular brand of pipe tobacco in Sweden (and has been for decades); but boy, were those hopes dashed! And I mean like sledgehammer-dashed. Seriously? This? If this is indeed the No. 1 brand in Sweden it can only be for reasons of nostalgia and tradition and nothing else. "My father and grandfather did their business in a wooden outhouse, so I too will do my business in a wooden outhouse!"

First of all, it's not even easy to write a review of Hamilton's because in order to do so one would need to smoke some of it first and this.crap.just.does.not.want.to.burn. Eight relights per bowl is nothing unusual, and there seems to be a fine line between puffing like a loco and the pipe going out completely. The taste and consistency is... As if, at the end of the day at the tobacconist's, after all the cheapest and nastiest brands have been cut and packed, the floor was swept and the dregs packed in pouches of Hamilton. It's also by far the dirtiest tobacco I have ever had, the pipe keeps popping and gurgling as you smoke it, takes about twice the time to clean because of all the nasty black goo and soot left behind, and two cleaners used is pretty much the minimum as the first one will be soaking wet and covered in the aforementioned black goo after being pulled through the stem.

Never again anywhere near my pipes. If I'm somewhere in the middle of nowhere sometime and find a small kiosk there and the only brand they have available is Greve Hamilton Blandning, I will seriously consider trying to do without my pipe for a few days.

I got a packet sent from a friend in Sweden. I regret this is not sold abroad. Solid tobacco that with hints of fruit and a savory touch that tastes like pepper or clove. I loved the stuff, never tried anything else like it, it could be classed as a semi aromatic or a non aromatic, quality all day packet blend, not too sweet, not too cased. Top stuff.

I was fortunate enough to have a forum friend in Sweden send me a pouch of this with the explicit instructions to reach into my memory banks of tobaccos I have tried to pick something that is similar. I was not alone in this experiment as I was joined by some others, a few of which had much broader tasting experience than myself.

I was unsuccessful at matching it to anything that I have tasted and the most likely reason is that it really wasn't much to my liking. I found the first half of the smoke to be very cigarette like and a little on the sour side. At the halfway point there seemed to develop a bit of an earthy burley taste in the background and I started to enjoy it more.

Even as it grew on me a bit, I never really could say that I liked it. Nor did I ever fully enjoy it. I did find it to be tastier in wider bowled pipes and my favorite smoke came in an old Mastercraft pot. II also enjoyed it in a pipestone rockcob.

I will say that it is different and this can be good for a change up, but it is not one that I would reach for again.

The pouch note is fruit, and there are narrow long(ish) ribbons of yellows and browns. The description says black cavendish, but the darkest of the ribbons do not seem to be black cavendish.

I tried smoking this in a few pipes - group 2 prince, a medium billiard, and a large pot. The best flavors were in the pot, so I dedicated that pipe to Greve Hamilton for the rest of the pouch.

Smoked I get a VaBur on the Va end of the spectrum. There is a bright virginia zest and some grass. I taste some spicy oriental and some Kentucky provides a mild pepper and bumps the strength to the medium end of the mild-> medium range. There is a slight sweet that tastes like red Virginia and I think that is what the darkest of the ribbons really are (and not black cavendish). The smoking experience reminds me a little of Chestnut, although Chestnut has latakia, so a different taste profile.

This is a great smoke and not available in the US, so I am unlikely to smoke more of it. I am glad to have had the experience. I can understand that it is popular in Sweden.

Don't try this hoping for a lot of "wow." It is a solid smoke though.

This is the most common pipe tobacco in Sweden, sold in all supermarkets and convenience stores. I started smoking pipes with this blend, but I soon gave it up for more pleasant brands. I did buy a bag just the other day out of curiosity and this is what I found:

The taste is very harsh with little actual tobacco flavour. Fair amount of nicotine but nowhere near Dunhill Nightcap. It will cause tonguebite unless smoked very carefully or with a filtered pipe. I dont consider myself a lightweight and I enjoy full strength tobaccoes, sometimes I even smoke pure latakia, but this is just awful in every way.

To sum it up in an elegant and artisctic manner; smoking Hamilton is like inhaling exhaust fumes with a slight aroma of old boots and potato peels.

Probably my favourite tobacco of all time. It has a simplicity that makes it almost impossible to get tired of. It's clean, strong and full bodied. Amazing. I started my life as a pipe smoker with this 15 years ago and wish I wouldn't have been lead astray and smoked roll ups for the following 14 years. It's a shame it's so hard to find outside Sweden. If I still lived back home I would smoke this everyday for sure now when I'm a pipe smoker again. The best substitute I have found so far is Peterson - Irish Oak, but if anyone have found something more similar please let me know.