Sutliff Tobacco Company Spinnaker

This is the first cherry blend I have smoked, so I am comparing it to aromatics I am familiar with and not other cherry blends. I smoked it as packaged and did not dry it or give it some air. I did not have issues with gurgle or goop.

The tin note was a little overpowering. It is the cough drop smell, and this was in the flavor for the first few puffs. The flavor settled down as I smoked though, and the description - "sweet and tart" is on the money. This was not identifiable to my palate as cherry at this point.

I would characterize this as a full aromatic and suspect those who tend to like this genre should give this a try if the "sweet and tart" sounds appealing.

The strong smell and taste reminds me of Ludens Cough Drops, and it's very intense if you try to smoke it wet. You'll also be faced with goop at the bottom. However, if you dry it out, the cherry taste is still present, but in a lesser form, and you'll have no goop, too. You'll also notice a few burley notes, and some fruit taste I can't identify, and when dry, those flavors become more obvious as you smoke it. Mostly, the tobaccos have little to say in this blend. Wet or dry, it won't bite your tongue, though it may burn hot if you smoke it wet. Has little nicotine and needs relights.

-JimInks

Mix of Cavendish and burley? Bag note: cherry? Smokes easily. I taste burley. I don't pick up any Virginia. Fruit, cherry I think. But it is mild. Some vanilla. Halfway through the bowl, the fruit pulls back and the vanilla comes out more. Then it dies back again. As I let the pipe go out, I think I get a faint hint of pineapple. After relight, it is hot and a little dry. As it settles back down, a little cherry comes back. Not much in the retrohale. A hint of the fruit. I get a very mild amount of numbness in my mouth. A little sweetness picks back up. The flavors are very timid. Overall, this is a mild smoke. The flavors are subtle. A good easy going smoke with flavors that are not overbearing.

Offers up a sweet and sour (tart) flavor, as advertised. Artificial black cherry flavor comes on strong, then fades back a bit as you get into the bowl. The cherry background becomes drier and more tart, as the Burley moves forward. 2 stars.

Unsmokeable. Smells terrible in tin and has the weird experience of tasting like nothing and sickly sweet at the same time. Tried blending it with a few things but the aroma permeates everything. Threw in trash

I saw Spinnaker as a second chance to smoke a cherry flavored blend in the Sutliff Private Stock series. The first was St. George's Blend; reputed to be a black cherry infused mixture, it didn't contain one surviving molecule of the flavor. Spinnaker was only a slightly different experience. Opening revealed a normal looking brown to blackish mixture. That was it. Nothing normal happened after that. I stuck my nose down close to the tin without any hesitation and paid the price. I breathed in and was shocked by a fetid and dense odor of spoiled citrus. Strong and overpowering to the point of being repelling, I walked into another room to breath in fresh air. I pulled a big wad of Spinnaker out and spread it over a sheet of paper. At twenty minutes the alcohol component had evaporated and the aroma had lost most of it's fetid odor. At forty five minutes it was just a dense citrus odor. An hour later it had the promise of being a pipe tobacco with a citrus flavor. The next morning it was definitely a pipe blend with a solid citrus odor that, just might, border on sour cherry? After lunch nothing had changed so I loaded up and lit up. Now for the surprise. I thought it smoked with a possible sour cherry odor. It was in there, after all! Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot else in the smoke and I agree totally with reviewer BryGuySC 2017-05-02 that Spinnaker has a very timid flavor and is an overall mild smoke. I didn't get much out of the blend until we went into the bottom half. Here the Burley finally decided to speak up, but, with a very subdued voice for a Burley. Blending with Spinnaker was a neutral experience and the citrus flavor was frequently noticeable. All in all, two stars.

Label: Sailing, as in all sports, has its own jargon, understood only by interested fans. If you have ever admired the beauty of a sailboat gracefully gliding with a brightly colored headsail, then you have seen a spinnaker. Open yourself up to a new and exciting experience by trying this delightful mixture of Sweet Burley and tart Back Cavendish.

Tin Aroma: Very strong cherry, according to my girlfriend it smelled like a cherry cough drop. It's hard to smell anything past the cherry, it's easily one of the strongest smelling tobaccos I've tried.

Taste: Cherry is the foremost flavor, covering up the other flavors. From the tin note, I was worried that it would be very artificial tasting, but it wasn't. I've had one other cherry aromatic (some no-name bulk), and Spinnaker was much less artificial tasting and more pleasant in general. The label description of sweet and tart is right on the money. Towards the end of the bowl, the cherry flavor subsides pretty dramatically letting the burley come through a bit. It was almost like smoking two different tobaccos.

Room Note: Fruity, though the cherry smell lessened towards the end of the bowl.

Thoughts: It didn't seem too wet in the tine, but the bottom of my bowl was soaked after I finished. My pipe gurgled a bit at the end also. It wouldn't have hurt had I let it dry a bit longer.

http://www.sutliff-tobacco.com/spinnaker.html

Used a MM Diplomat to review this. Packed the pipe in the morning and didn't light it until the afternoon. This seems to help with drying but leaves the lower portion of the bowl with moisture. Giving the blend a chance to light easily but give off the flavors that should be present without being harsh.

The tobacco is exactly what it says on the tin. Sweet and tart. The burley was primary for me. The tart flavoring was a nice added kick for people who want something past a standard burley only tobacco. The burn was excellent and kept lit. I did not have any goop or gurgles.

It does ghost a cob for a couple bowls with the tart flavor. After that it is gone.

The tin note for this tobacco is strong but not overpowering. The fruitiness of the casing is right there in the front during the charring light. On the true light the sweetness of the burley starts to mix into the flavor. Still the primary element of the flavor is the tartness of the fruit. The flavor remains consistent until the bottom third of the bowl at which point the sweetness of barley takes over. The tobacco burned well and did not produce any bite.

First things first. Although I rated this blend as Recommended, that would only be for fans of Aromatics who are looking for a nice taste, and a nice room note. It isn't too strong, and it has the usual drawbacks of aromatics (borders on wanted to get a bit hot, and also leaves the LeBrea tarpits in the bottom of the bowl after a decent sized smoking).

Okay, mea culpas out of the way, let me say this about Spinnaker. It is a very nice Cavendish/Burley blend. The room note is extremely pleasant, with a little bit of a buttery-nut smell, and an overall nice feel to it. The smoke tastes great and is quite rich (which is why it is tempting to get a bit hot in puffing it).

The downside? When you first open the tin, it smells like cherry flavored cough syrup. Really, really strong - like an old fashioned Luden's Cough Drop box that has sat in the sun all afternoon, and the cough drops got gooey.

For a lot of successful, and mild, full aromatics it seems to me that it is often 2-out-of-3. Pick Room Note, Tin Note, or Taste - you only get two of them. Still looking for the perfect blend, but in the meantime I will enjoy adding Spinnaker to my rotation.