Sutliff Tobacco Company CD Blend

I had about 2 oz of HOW Country Doctor I have been smoking, so I can do a back-to-back comparison with this blend.

The Country Doctor is a combination of cubed burley and medium small "fish" flakes of various colors from yellow to almost black. CD is made up of fairly large torn shreds of tobacco - mostly tan and light brown. Appearance is not even close.

I found the perique and latakia in the Country Doctor to be very mild but more forward than in CD. CD has more burley in the flavor profile. Flavor is vaguely similar - they got the "mild fruit - maybe berry" topping right, but the tobacco base is not the same.

As a match, this is a 2. I prefer HOW Country Doctor.

As a blend on its own, this is a 3. It is a pleasant lightly topped burley forward blend. It was a good smoke but not complex with subtle notes. The cut is unusual and burns well. I have no regrets about having a tin of this to smoke, but it is not a "must try."

The nutty, earthy, woody, lightly molasses sweet burley is the main star. The grassy, citrusy, bready, lightly sugary Virginia plays a back up role. The lightly smoky, woody, earthy, leathery, barely foral Cyprian Latakia, and raisiny, plumy, earthy, woody perique are barely condiments. There are very slight fig and prune notes with a hint of a topping I cannot identify. At times, I get a slightly sour tangy taste mixing in with the sweet that gives this a minor complexity. Because it's a rough coarse cut mixture, I recommend a round bowl rather than a pipe with a narrow chamber so it will burn to the last bit The strength and nic-hit a couple of steps past the mid mark. The taste is a notch past the center of mild to medium. Won't bite or get harsh, but has a few small rough notes. Well balanced, and mildly complex. It burns cool and clean at a moderate pace with a very consistent, nutty, sweet, lightly smoky flavor that extends to a short lived, pleasant after taste. Barely leaves any dampness in the bowl. Requires few relights. The room note is a tad stronger than the after taste. It's an all day smoke, and superior to House of Windsor's Country Doctor blend. The major difference is that this is a little sweeter, and fuller in taste with less roughness. Three and a half stars.

-JimInks

I find myself much more impressed with my sample tin of Sutliff's CD mixture than I thought I would be. It's been laying around here for a couple of years now and I figured it was time.

I'm a big fan of the so-called “American English” genre and tobaccos such as Middleton's Walnut, C&D's Epiphany, Iwan Ries's Dr. Bradley, and Hoffman's Spilman Mixture. What sealed this fandom was the opportunity to sample some of the original old classics like Blue Boar and the Philip Morris version of Revelation. These are all Burley-heavy tobaccos with lightly added condimental tobaccos including Perique and Latakia. And most of them have their flavors bound together and lifted by the application of a light, fruity topping. They aren't everyday smokes for me, but I confess to going on American-English benders that can last a couple weeks or more.

CD Blend fits comfortably into this genre. It seems to be very much dominated by a malty Burley and this is supported by very small quantities of Latakia and Perique. By mid bowl, I find it very easy to forget that there is condimental leaf in here at all. And it takes some pretty serious looking to find any of these darker condimental tobaccos in the tin, where the tobacco is almost uniformly light brown. I'm not really sure what this has been topped with. There is something simultaneously molasses-ish and prune-like going on, so maybe it's not too far off to suggest that it's topped with an old man's breakfast as recommended by an early 20th century Country Doctor. Molasses and prune. CD blend certainly keeps me regular.

The cut on this tobacco is rough—almost ridiculously rough. I've given up trying to load it straight from the tin and instead, I now dump some on my desk and tear it down into more manageable pieces. It burns nicely, like most Burleys and provides mostly a sweet and malty flavor with hints of prune. The strength is moderate. It's not nearly as exciting as some other tobaccos in the genre, but it does have a kind of workmanlike quality to it. It's pretty easy to smoke but I think that it could get boring as the primary tobacco in a small rotation.

Still, and even though it's ultimately a little boring, I'd recommend CD Blend to fans of Walnut or Epiphany. It's a pretty decent change of pace.

Some pipe blends come to you with a "history" and Sutliff CD Blend is one of them. Often compared to House of Windsor Country Doctor, CD Blend is imminently able to stand on it's own two feet. I agree with reviewer fr_tom 2014-04-14 that the cut of CD is noticeably different than the HOW variant and doesn't share Country Doctor's fruity top-note (which I never liked). Reviewer beaupipe 2011-12-07 used another descriptor that ended in "-y" to describe the Burley dominance of this blend: "malty". I agree with him in this and thank him for a new term in my pipe blend vocabulary. I thought that there were two things about this blend that stood out: it's amazingly rough cut and the consistency with which it smoked down the bowl. The cut is about as rough as they come and is somewhat bothersome in rub-out with many pieces needing to be broken individually with the finger tips. Plagued by some extra tamping and relighting, you'd think I was going to pan CD Blend. Wrong, as I thought it was a very descent Burley-dominated smoke with an interesting and, yes, malty flavor that I got right into. That malty Burley profile persisted, to my amazement, all the way down to the heel in every pipe I smoked CD in. I agree with other reviewers that CD Blend is so different from the HOW variant that they cannot be said to be the same and that makes CD Blend a new and separate blend to be judged on it's own. Already willing to call it a three and one-half star blend, I used it as a blending component in micro blending and it worked so well that we are going all the way to four stars. I have several small tins and one eight ounce tin at this writing and some of them are going into my personal stash.

Number 2 of the Sutliff batch. I found this one interesting in that as I was preparing it to smoke and later while smoking it, I wondered if this was supposed to be a "match" to HoW Country Doctor or was just inspired by that blend. The cuts are considerably different, this one being a large square-cut with wide ribbons and a few cubes tossed in, which looked cool and loaded with no problems. It did take a short while to take to the match but once it did, it burned flawlessly. The flavoring seemed different from the HoW version as well. It's been awhile since I smoked it but I recall it having more of a fruity topping, while this one seemed more of a booze topping. Heavier topping here, too - at least it seemed that way to me. In fact, the topping ruled the flavor for the first half-bowl, even when I dried it out.

In the second half of the bowl, the latakia came out a bit and mingled with the burley. I could smell the latakia in the first half but couldn't taste it above the alcohol topping. Here, the burley ruled. Never did taste the perique and couldn't tell it was in there. I actually enjoyed the flavoring reasonably well but preferred it when it tasted like more of a lightly sweetened burley blend with latakia to the rear. If this is intended to be a match blend, it doesn't fare so well, but it works pretty well on it's own. Not one I'll stock up on but it was a decent smoke that I enjoyed. The HOW version was superior but it wasn't any great shakes,either.

My sample was quite dry. The bag note was earthy burley and a lite latakia smell. Packed quite easily as a course cut mixture. Burnes quite quickly ( I used a wide short bowl) and to ash no dottle in the bowl. The Burley keeps the smoke quite cool and very smooth no bite whatsoever. Molasses flavor and just a lite hint of Latakia, the Virginia gives it just a bit of sweetness. This is a great blend for those wanting to try Latakia as it is very lite. Nic hit was medium. Could be an all day smoke. 3.5 stars

This is a more traditional American-English style blend. Main problem with this blend is that it bites like mo-fo!! Even after drying, minimal moisture/humidity, in a large pipe with a filter!

I don't detect any Latakia. The flavor and aroma is subtle, with the Burley taking the lead. I like rekamepip and Jimlnks descriptions of this tobacco - I think their reviews are spot-on, and there's not much more I can add.

CD blend is a stellar attempt at Country Doctor ! It smokes cool , tastes great and the room note is fantastic ! If your wanting to try a blend from the "Golden Age" .... this is it . It's complex , and if you know what yer doing , smokes slow all the way down . One of the best blends I've tried this past year

The tobacco was a bit too moist out of the 'tin' (cardboard), but letting it air for a bit seemed to resolve any wetness issue. I am not very fond of the tin aroma, which may have biased my rating. The taste of this blend starts off fairly well, then deteriorates into a mishmosh of flavors; sometimes harsh, other times rather pleasant. Perhaps the casing/topping is at fault. This is not a blend that I would purchase again.

I received this tobacco from a man from whom I had bought a restored estate pipe. When opening the tin my immediate impression was a sweet date smell. I recommend letting it air for a few minutes before filling your bowl. Takes patience to light, but once you get it started it is an amazing smoke. This was my first experience with perique and latakia, and this blend was my gateway to smoking almost exclusively English. While this is not an English proper it is also not an aromatic. Good way to convert though. Be sure to pack carefully, as this blend has potential to bite.