Mac Baren Golden Sweet

I loved this blend. Normally I buy the Golden Extra or the Virginia No. 1 to blend with cavendish, but this I enjoyed smoking as is.

Went straight through this stuff fast. Loved it. A+.

09/15/2005: A tasty Danish Aromatic. Some real tobacco punch. Unfortunately is prone to bite as well. I will probably try a little home-brew blending to reduce the nipping. Not heavily cased and has some real tobacco flavor underneath the sweetness. Not as smooth and rich as Golden Extra however.

11/25/2006: Dropped one star due to tongue-bite issues. For those with tongues of leather.

In priciple I have been waiting years for Mac Baren to do something like this. My chief complaint about all of their burley based ready rubbed blends has been that they are not sufficiently cased, flavorful, sweet and round enough. They sure missed the mark with this product however. It is a nice base of predominantly burly with some VA. in a ready rubbed broken cake. The level of sweetness is good and rounds out the smoke but the top flavor is odd and unpleasant for my taste. And the top flavor smells and lightly tastes like, well it seems like bubble gum. Why could it not have been more straight forward. I'am getting real picky in my ripe old age of 32 and nothing seems to satisfy like before in the early days when pipe smoking was a grand adventure.

Not Recommended!

This is one of those MB blends only available in bulk, not to be confused with Golden Extra (there may yet be another Golden in the line I'm missing). And the funny thing is, the tobacco isn't golden at all, but very dark brown, much darker than Symphony.

I suppose it is mostly cased Virginia, because it is very sweet, yet still the underlying tobacco comes through the casing in a pleasing, almost full way. It does smoke hot, of course. Reccomended as a change of pace aromatic for the experienced (ie, those who know how to sidestep tongue bite with MB products). Unfortunately, my sample did loose its sweetness 2/3 of the way down the bowl, and with it, all of its charm. But I'll try it again.

This is a very sweet smoke as the name implies. However, the sweet honey flavored topping, does not stop the taste of the tobacco from coming through and that is a major plus in my book.

The burley stays way in the background as the virginia dominates which is part of why this blend is so sweet. Matter of fact, this gets sweeter as it's smoked down.

The major negative for me is that between the casing and the natural sugars in the virginia, this has a tendency to nip at the tounge, if not puffed very, very slowly.

All in all, a fun smoke that's a potential change of pace for Burley fanciers.

This is a very nice smoke, my local tobacco shop stocks it making it affordable to me. As the name states it is very sweet. While having a topping, a almost honey flavor, it retains a true tobacco taste. This is as flavored as I generally will go for. While this has some burley in it, the burley is very hard to detect. The virginia is the main flavor which works to make it more sweet. This is a unusual smoke which gets sweeter as you go through the bowl. I find this fun and a change of pace. There is a trace of bite in this which seems odd considering how sweet it is. I think you will either love or hate this blend. This burns well and often requires just one match. I have been real torn between calling it a favorite or a smoke on occasion but decided to go with the three star since it is really sort of a novelity smoke.