You also need to pack your bowl tightly.

By doing so, you will discover a tobacco, yes maybe a bit on the unidimensional side, but still unveiling lot of flavors that are mainly smoky, spicy and earthly. The last third will see a nice sweet note come in.

However, Caporal is mainly made with kentucky tobaccos, not VAs, just like his cousin, Caporal Export.

It deserves a lot more credit.

The more I smoke it, the more I enjoy it! As the cut is very fine, very shag like, you must smoke it slowly. Then a world of flavors will outburst: wood, earth, spices and some subtle sweetness.

This tobacco is actually very enjoyable! But it has to have some moisture into it. If not, you will miss the whole experience!

Highly Recommended

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Update 11/13/2010

I received a sample of the Red Band variety of Scaferlati Caporal. I must upgrade my assessment to recommended. This one was moister and made a world of difference in my appreciation of it.

This is a long shag cut, very easy to fill, light and smoke. There is nothing but pure tobacco taste that is smoky, earthy and woodsy. Not very pronounced, but very enjoyable when smoked at a slow pace.

If you can get some that has the right moisture level, this Caporal will prove surprisingly delightful!

Recommended!

Original review 07/25/2010

A rather harsh tobacco, what the French call "tabac gris" because of its colour.

I think that this tobacco is called Scaferlatti.

Not bad for a nicotine kick now and then, as long as it's smoked slowly to avoid tongue bite.

After one bowl of this I felt a strange urge to stop bathing, worship Jerry Lewis, eat cheese, act superior and surrender to the nearest gendarme.

I rolled some up in a ciggie. Not a good idea.

Actually, it is one of the first types of tobacco I smoked, in my late highschool/early college years. I used to smoke it as gauloises cigarettes, pipe tobacco and even gauloises ryo tobacco (some of which smoked in my pipe). So lighting up some yesterday bore no real surprises, just a new perspective of a finer palatte which has been tasting numerous blends ever since college.

As described by the esteemed Eulenburg of course Caporal is a rough blend. Harsh and bitter and STRONG. Today, I would compare it to st Bruno ready rubbed or Semois, although these are somewhat finer and more aromatic blends. And perhaps not as strong (except perhaps Florina vieux semois). So why would one even think of lighting up that stuff, when there are so many better tasting and more refined blends? - Except for being a Maigret fan anyway ;-)

For one, no matter how harsh it is, even how hot it burns, it goes easy on the tonge. No bite. Maybe...if you'd smoke it realy fast - no: impossible, you'd probably faint before it'd bite you :-). The sidestream smoke actually smels nice, it reminds me of how pipes, smoked by old men, used to smell when I was a kid. Robust, woody, smoky. A smell of the past.. The taste itself is not that strong, in that you could smoke it all day (you'd need to be able to handle the nicotine, of course). And in fact, the old chaps used to smoke this all day. Those were different times - pipe smokers didn't allways have one or two hours to leisurely savour their pipes with imported tobacco in an expensive big freehand. Rather there used to be a need for a quick and preferably cheap (or at least economical) nicotine fix. And Caporal does just that: a half an hour smoke is just as satisfieing as one or two hours of nightcap. Ok , it's not as good, but since it does not contain latakia, it passes the "wife test" without problems. This must be worth something! ;-)

You know what? I really enjoyed this caporal yesterday, and I'm going to return to it tonight, and I even think it is going to stay in my rotation (for some time anyway)

Napoleon thought tobacco was good for soldiers: it kept them awake during guard duty, held them entertained and relaxed during the long waits involved in classic warfare, and, as anyone who has smoked a clay pipe well knows, a lit pipe is a source of warmth and comfort.

After the fall of the old Soviet Union, mass-graves have been investigated belonging to the Grande Armée, the formidable army with which Napoleon invaded the Russian Empire in 1812. Practically every soldier excavated in these archæological searches was found to have an army-issue clay pipe with him.

It was the corporals? duty to distribute their rations of free tobacco to the troops: hence this type of tobacco became known as tabac de caporal (?corporal?s tobacco?), a dark, opaque shag known as petit gris (?little grey?.) Men would go into the service in their teens. They would there learn to smoke. Naturally, after leaving, they would want to keep smoking the same caporal. And this they did, in clays, in the rugged briars of 19th Cent. Saint-Claude, and as cigarettes?shag being suitable ?roll-your-own? material.

For generations, farmers and peasants bought their caporal in rough paper cubes containing 50 grammes of the stuff: it was the plain working man?s tobacco: harsh, acrid, sour, rough; like home-made lightning water. Not for town sissies!

The marquis in his hôtel particulier, the banker in his club, would smoke English tobacco, or expensive cigares de La Havanne. But the peasantry, the working class, inpecunious students, leftists, counterculturists, artists, bohemians, they all would proudly smoke the coarse, harsh scaferlati, leaving the soigné stuff for the hated bourgeoisie. There is an enormous amount of cultural folklore behind this tobacco.

It is emphatically NOT for the faint of heart! Highly nicotinous, vile-smelling, sharp-tasting...wondefully garanteed to make animal-rights types collapse in a bundle! Try it with home-made fire-water?whiskey or brandy. You will feel the hair sprouting on your chest.

PS:

I am told that the old American classic, Plow Boy, was not unlike Caporal.