Overall this tobacco has an excellent aroma in the can and the room. Is is very light on the perique side and burns somewhat fast due to the ribbon cut.It is very moist straight from the can and I let it sit out for 3 days to dry before smoking - any less and it is a wet and hot smoke.

To maintain this as a cool smoke I find it does best in a tall narrow bowled pipe like my old Barling tanshell (1974), packed fairly tight and with slow, regular and deep draws.

To me it paired really well with GlenDronach Revival (15 year old single malt, neat) and not so well with coffee (Columbian or Sumatra) or wine (Merlot or Malbec).

Overall it is an OK smoke for early or mid-day, but I prefer something with a more pronounced perique taste in the evening like Escudo (#1 all time favorite) and Bayou Morning Flake (#2).

After finishing this 2 oz. tin I most likely will not purchase again - only because it is too light for my taste.

Finally, this tobacco is best enjoyed indoors ; outdoors the taste and aroma change to that "grassy" state so common with light virginias.

Golden brown in the tin with the beautiful nose of perique. The cut is one of those hilarious C&D cuts... a quasi-ribbon chop cut that looks like it was a broken flake at one point until someone with a few shots of tequila got to it. Nevertheless, it works.

While Telegraph Hill was all about flavor explosion and complexity, Stratford brings balance to the table. The flavor is ever-so-slightly muted and the spicy perique is balanced beautifully with the sweet lemon VA and the tangy red VA. None of these components jump too far to the fore at any given time. And yet the interplay shifts with regularity. Usually two of the three components duet on the foundation of the third and then one of the soloists drops to the background a bit while the other two dance. While this is milder than Telgraph Hill, it's no "set it and forget it" smoke. Too much flavor and too much going on. Highly recommended. And I'm told this stuff improves with age. My tin is less than a year old. And this stuff gets better???

I'm not really feeling this one. It has some sweetness and is a little peppery at times, but just not so appealing to me. Maybe because I usually don't smoke vapers, i don't know. To me it just doesn't have much flavor. I used to like it. This was the first tin of tobacco i have ever tried and before i discovered English blends, or even other vapers i really liked it. Now it just doesnt do a thing for me. I do like haddos delight on occasion, which has much more perique, but i don't know. It isn't the lack of perique in this blend that makes it bland to me its just the over all flavor. In fact i wouldn't even say there is a lack of perique in this blend, i think there's a perfect amount. I rarely smoke vapers but as of right now i think when i do ill stick with my tin of dunhill navy rolls, then i probably wont buy another vaper for a long while.

Aroma: This stuff smells good in the tin, very hay-like with just the faintest hint of fresh-baked dinner rolls. In fact, it smells exactly like Uncle Frank’s hayloft in Minnesota from my childhood memories. I can barely detect the perique in the tin aroma.

Appearance: Very light with a beautiful golden color. By appearance it seems to have quite a small percentage of perique, since the perique I’ve seen is quite dark in color. This is a ribbon but there are a few big pieces of uncut tobacco, some as big as a square inch. I like that though…it adds interest.

Pipe 1: Stanwell Relief Billiard Pipe 2: Skinny No-name Dublin Pipe 3: Chubby Savinelli 320KS Author

Flavor: First pipeful in the Stanwell (my star Virginia pipe) was very underwhelming. A step down from Fillmore for sure. Ashy and short on flavor, I knew immediately that Stratford needs to be nursed very carefully. The second pipe, the skinny Dublin (a great VA flake pipe) fared a little better, as I was able to extract some richness that was totally lacking in the first pipe. In the Sav: another small step up in flavor, at least to the point where I can get some Virginia richness out of it if I really concentrate. But this stuff is even more finicky than Fillmore. I realize that some tobaccos are very pipe-dependent and I have tasted tobaccos that only shine in one particular pipe. I’m hoping to find the magical combination for Stratford but for now I just can’t rise above two stars.

This blend has that same ashy flavorless character that OGS had the first time I tried it fresh out of the tin. With the OGS I jarred it for a few months, then re- opened it and actually enjoyed it. In the same vein, I have read similar reviews of Stratford: fresh, it’s bland. Aged, it’s sublime. Even FVF is aggressively average when fresh, but totally transforms with a year of age. My tin is only three months old, so I think my best bet is to jar this stuff and try it next year when the plum blossoms emerge.

I think Stratford wants to be a Peter Heinrich’s Curly, which also emphasizes the fresh hay character in the tin and is similarly quite simple and austere, although much more flavorful. Fillmore is also better than Stratford. Escudo is much better. My favorite vapers, SG’s St. James Flake and McC St. James Woods, are in a different league altogether. I have read some very favorable reviews of this blend, but it will not make it to my “buy more” list, although I realize that this tobacco tasting hobby of ours is very subjective. It just doesn’t do it for me, but this is obviously quality weed so please chime in, especially those of you who disagree with me!

I first tried this in a small bowl meerchaum pipe. I admit I smoked it a bit hard and hot as I was in a car with the windows open on the way home from my local B&M (certainly not a perfect environment) but I was in a hurry to give it a try. It lit easily and burned well. In THIS environment the perique came to the fore and it was for me a ‘spicy’ smoke with the Virginias being beaten into submission (to almost non existence) by the heat and giving the perique a fiery boost. I enjoyed it this way but wanted it to be a little sweeter and not as spicy. I must note that even smoked hot I didn’t experience any tongue bite (some might!)

A day later I decided to give Stratford a fair shake and got comfy in my favorite smoking chair, I chose a fresh long stemmed Mastro de Paja (no filter loaded). This time I smoked it slowly with a proper Va cadence and the change was amazing, the Virginia poked through although the perique was still very present (for me a non perique lover.) The change however was very notable and it was almost like smoking another blend altogether. I decided to see if I could push it farther and broke out a sister pipe (another long stemmed Mastro de Paja) and added in a 9mm filter. Smoked VERY gently. The change was even more pronounced and the blend achieved the ‘balance’ I had been looking for (and described on the tin,) the perique had been tamed and was now an accommodating partner to the high quality Virginias! Perfect!

In conclusion, after smoking a full tin in a number of ways and pipes, I think this is a very very interesting blend. You can ‘push or pull’ on the flavors depending on what you smoke it in and how. Of course this is true of a lot of different blends but with Stratford I found I could choose to enjoy a perique (VaPer) blend on my terms, something I have not found in other blends. If you don’t like perique but would like to, I strongly suggest giving this a try and experimenting with it. I don’t think it could satisfy someone looking for a lot of perique (it’s not that strong) but for those of you like me who want to try (and enjoy) this spicy leaf but don’t like to feel like you are sucking hot sauce through your pipe should defiantly give this a try. Play with it and make it your own! Stratford is WELL worth the effort.

if you don't mind a rather muted tasting VaPer, maybe this is for you.

For all that, though, it's nothing extraordinary. I opened this tin after finishing 100g of St James Woods, and Stratford is a step down. St James Woods is way better, more complex, sweeter, after DGT, everything (althoug perhaps SJW does tend to bite a bit more).

It's a perfectly good vaper, but honestly I don't think I would buy it again.

A solid 3-stars, maybe I'll upgrade it after more tins.

Taste & Aroma: Fairly bland and unremarkable, not smooth or creamy, a slight pepper feel perhaps due to the Perique, with a mild VA hay aroma.

Nicotine: Strong, rodenticide strong.

Room Note: Pleasant but a sharp, clinging,oily, fruity note due to the Perique, on my person, but the room was more so a mild VA.

Overall: Nothing stands out, unremarkable, excepting the nicotine sweats after two bowls, back-to-back. Nothing could seem to shine through the Perique pepper blite. 2.4 stars.

Composed primarily of golden virginias, the gentle touch of red virginias add a slight richness. The perique is evident, though very conservatively applied.

Delicately citric and nutty, this is subtly intriguing and is one of GLP's finest blends. Aging is highly recommended as is a narrow to medium gauge chamber.

I have sample two tins, one four months old and one nine months old. Oddly enough, I liked the younger tin a little better. On the other hand, I smoked most of the older tin in Chennai, India. It is next to impossible to get your tobacco to dry out in this climate.

This is one of Pease's better values:the tins are stuffed very full.