Highly recommended.

Quite frankly, this tobacco is much better than I remembered. The tobacco came super-dry in the pouch and required almost a month of rehydration. If it's true that this means a tobacco never is as good as when fresh, this tobacco must be magical, as it is as good or better than any balkan I've ever smoked. This starts out with a nice, sharp flavor of latakia and orientals and is perfectly balanced. The aroma is heavenly, and I repeatedly left the room and re-entered so I could enjoy the room bouquet. It's one of those tobaccos that you can't help smoking an immediate second bowl of, and I caught myself doing just that numerous times.

This is something everyone should try and find. Comparisons to Balkan Sasieni are obvious due to the tin art but Sobranie is miles ahead in flavor and depth. For virginia smokers (such as myself) that think balkan mixtures cannot contain the depth of a good VA flake, this one makes a strong argument for the defense. I don't mind the premium prices this blend commands; it's worth it.

Packing and lighting are straightforward. The taste is silky, rich, complex. The quality of the tobacco is excellent. The sweetness is there, the smoothness is there, the complexity is impressive, the Latakia is not overwhelming.

In my book this blend scores 5 points out of 5, which equates to 4 well deserved stars. Very HIGHLY recommended.

To my suprise I received some 5g sample pouoches, some old stuff of no significant meaning, 2 tins of Dunhill 965 murray's and a 50g pouch of Balkan Sobranie. AAHhhhhhhh. My lucky day.

I've been at it for about 3 weeks to revive the Balkan as it was dryer then the Gobi desert, but I had good faith as the smell of the tobacco was really good and strong.

My efforts were rewarded today with my first bowl ever of Balkan Sobranie.

A very smooth first part with lots of latakia flavor and well balanced taste. The middle part was a bit heavier but still a good medium taste with a full room note and ample white smoke.

The third part was on the strong side. Wonderfull nutty flavors with a boost in nicotine levels. I LOVE IT! I already asked to seek further into the depths of his store, but with no result. This was the only pack left. But still a good 20 bowls worth of premium history.

I open one of my remaining stock every 10 years and will savor each bowl over the next few months.

...a pipe and Balkan Sobranie is to be savored.

UPDATE: This mixture just has a taste of its own. Aging has mellowed the virginia tobaccos while the orientals and latakia have become more pungent. Truly a delicious smoke to be sure.

My first experience with this mixture dates to 1962 when I was given a tin by a friend who had been in London on vacation. It was so unique, especially since I was smoking drug store brands of pipe tobacco. To be able to enter the world of English/Balkan mixtures this way, spoiled me. Throughout the 60's I smoked this regularly.

My taste changed to a matured virgina, by 1966, especially in plug form and today is still my first choice. However, I have never been able to get too far away from a good Balkan flake/mixture. There are some very good Balkan/heavy english mixtures available,but none can ever replace Balkan Sobranie.

I smoke this in a group 5 straight billiard and it is quite nice with hot tea, coffee, or in the evening with a fine single malt scotch.

as always...a pipe is to be savored.

A couple of random memories. At a benefit concert at Town Hall in NYC in the 1960's, I watched Thelonius Monk shambling onto stage with a pipe in his mouth and a can of Sobranie in his hand, which can he proceeded to place on the piano before starting to play.

Once I opened a can and discovered that one of the stems (it had its share of stems) was in fact a rusty nail.

First, a bit of history learned from Joe Zieve, the founder of Smokers' Haven in Columbus, Ohio, where I went to Ohio State and, with a friend from Kent State, studied more with Joe than at school. Balkan Sobranie literally was Our Best Blend at that time. During the Second World War Joe was stationed in England, where he visited Balkan Sobranie and made a deal with them to sell Balkan canned by them in London and labelled as Best, exclusively. This was an open secret at the store by the '60s, and many's the two, four or eight ounce can of Our Best Blend we opened and found inside the Balkan Sobranie rice paper or card stock insert. Joe made a similar agreement with GBD, and became the largest distributor of that pipe in the world. I don't know if he wholesaled GBD to other dealers in the U.S., but certainly he bought his stock directly, and at all times had just about every grade of every shape they made on hand and available in the periodic brochures he sent to those on his huge mailing list. Joe worked closely with GBD on developing new shapes, e.g., #263 extra long Canadian, the ?glass-blasted? Militaire, and his masterpiece, the original, Collector-sized Cognac (#9621), made exclusively of Greek briar (as were Charatans). He considered the Cognac the perfect shape, growing thicker as the smoke proceeded, keeping the pipe cool. It's a great mouth pipe, hand pipe, and sitter. Joe had some sort of preferred agreement with Charatan, I believe, and also sold lots of Dunhills. Those were the three pipes he believed in, BBB, Petersen, Comoy, Sasieni and even Barling having already begun to slide. At that time one never saw a fill in a GBD. . . until their sale in the '70s. Then it was no fills in Virgins, and then it was fills in them, too. (By the way, the letters die-stamped on GBDs indicated which subcontracted carver had done the pipe after initial curing. Joe maintained that the curing after carving was determined by grade, Virgins, and later Pedigrees and Uniques, getting, of course, the longest cure.)

British pipes were it, and though Joe had other makes on hand, I don't remember any Danish or Italian goods. British tobacco was it, too. Better, he used to say, to let the expert blenders blend and then find what you like rather than try and have a store, or you yourself, do the mixing. While he had Baby's Bottom, Three Nuns, various Dunhill blends and many others, along with a logically progressing series of tinned, Lane-blended American tobaccos exclusive to the store, the main event was a complete line of English tobaccos based on Balkan/Best. Ones ?below? Best were proportionately milder, and the only one stronger than Best was Exotique, which was merely Balkan with some prime cigar leaf added. Balkan made them all, including Krumble Kake, which was Balkan pressed and sliced, considered by ?flake? smokers to be superior. I don't remember seeing 759 until Balkan was sold. It was, at that later time, a more piquant, far more acrid blend with other orientals added. I don't think it was ever labelled by Smokers' Haven.

Before the (retroactive) taste test, here's some more history. The Redstones were a Jewish family who left (fled?) Russia and settled for some time in the Balkans. They perfected Sobranie (which simply means ?parliament? in Slavic languages) either there or in London, their eventual home, along with their delightful, white Turkish cigarettes, and their renowned Russian Black and Gold (- tipped) cigarettes. They, too, were masterpieces. The sad history of Balkan Sobranie after its initial sale, years later, is available in other reviews on this site.

The original Balkan purportedly contained latakia (I don't know if it was Syrian, Cyprian or both), Virginia (I don't know the varieties, but none of these ingredients were toasted except, of course, the latakia), high grade English Cavendish, and Yenidje from Macedonia, as advertised on the can. To my knowledge, the only other ingredient, that which imparted some of the creaminess and the hint of vanilla, was deer tongue, the leaf of a weed(!) apparently admissible under the non- adulteration laws at the time, which prohibited all topping but did permit Cavendish. I've tried dried deer tongue leaf broken or crumbled in blends and gotten nothing out of it. Perhaps, despite the common wisdom, Balkan used it fresh. I've heard that its inclusion is why Balkan was labelled a ?smoking mixture? rather than ?tobacco.? I don't know any of the ingredient ratios, but I was told that the ratios changed every year to compensate for seasonal changes in the individual ingredients' strength and taste.

I've tried Balkan Sasieni, the current Balkan Sobranie, the current Best Blend from the current Smokers' Haven, and Balkan Sobranie throughout the '70s, '80s, 90's and '00s, as well as Margate (probably the currrent Best, as Germain now blends for Smokers' Haven, I've heard), Caravan, Penzance, McClelland's Yenidje Highlander and Yenidje Supreme (which lacks latakia), and countless other English/Balkan/Oriental blends from the late-lamented Dunhills to those corner tobacconist bulk-bought or hand blended attempts to clone Balkan. None have answered, though many are excellent. Yenidje Highlander, though rather light and not very sweet or creamy, at least gives one a real taste of the Yenidje-latakia interplay.

The high quality of the tobacco in Balkan might have been just as important as the types of tobacco in it. Samuel Gawaith's Balkan Flake, supposedly 30% latakia and 70% Virginia (despite the Balkan name) is a good, honest, high quality tobacco to which one could maybe add high quality Cavendish, Yenidje and deer tongue and get somewhere close to Balkan (despite Balkan Flake's caked form). Most related blends already contain Virginia and latakia, so the ratios are problematical. Gawaith's Commonwealth is supposed to be 50%-50% Virginia-latakia and is not caked. Who knows? I've had no luck trying to blend existing blends to emulate the original Balkan.

When taking the little built-in triangular ?knife? in the lid of the old Balkan Sobranie, retracting it from the lip and reclosing the can, thus piercing the inner tin lid, the escaping hiss was divine. As one spun the lid, cutting out the inner lid, one caught the full old-leather, old-whisky, old-wood aroma that promised the same consistent taste as always. Yes, the contents were a bit moist and could do with a couple of days' drying, and were springy thanks to the ribbon cut. But who could resist, especially after retrieval of an eight ounce can from a ten can rotation, grabbing an immediate smoke?

As the tobacco rose on the initial light and one tamped it with the index finger and relit, all the wonderful, contradictory adjectives began to pertain. The smoke was so creamy and rich, yet light and subtle, so sweet yet so interesting, it was magical. We used words like ?ephemeral? and ?protean? to try and capture it, but one couldn't. The smoke, always changing yet always characteristic and steady, could never be ignored, no matter what you were doing: each draw was a conscious pleasure, the whole, like true art, more than the sum of its parts.

Now, it wasn't perfect. Balkan could smoke wet if you didn't dry it out just right, and hot and bitey if too dry. The ribbon cut was tricky to load, and if clumped up could cause voids. There was lots of relighting. While the ash was white, the pipe's heel usually got wet, which certainly demanded a pipe's traditional day's rest for every time smoked. The room note was pretty awful (until you were hooked), almost as gross as that of a yesterday's cigar. Balkan was definitely true to the old bromide that the worse the room smelled, the better the tobacco (don't the girls just love the smell of Cherry Blend).

But such pleasure, such balance, such lack of bite, such a variety of delicious flavors melded into a rich, creamy whole that was somehow also light and fleeting. . . . To this day I don't see why some blender with a microscope and a Japanese degree of patience couldn't reverse engineer a can of pre-sale Balkan strip by strip, testing the pieces against known samples and smoking from each separate pile to verify its identity as accurately as possible. Sure, a truly faithful representation would cost a lot, but what a ready market in the curious, and in anyone else who wanted to smoke heaven to the extent his budget permitted. Anybody out there game?

I welcome other reminiscences, additions, corrections; but, N.B.: the above description is not an unattainable, sentimental concoction born of distorted, rosy memory: it is as accurate as I could make it. Balkan's near universal appeal in those days to lovers of English/Balkan/Oriental blends as a steady or special smoke attests to that fact.

For "Idontwantapickle", and to anyone else who might be interested. I got my pouch from Bollitopipe.it at the end of 2007, but last I checked that website it wasn't listed any longer, either they stopped stocking it, or perhaps it's been discontinued.

I'm glad I got a pouch for the sake of having tried it, but to be perfectly honest, I believe this tobacco is overrated - or maybe I am just not into balkans enough to fully enjoy it. Doubt I'll go hunting for another pouch in the future.

2,5/4

This tobacco is DEVINE!

Since our culture today is one of over-blown expectations and manufactured exclusivity; I was a tad sceptical. Could many honest and erudite pipe smokers be deceived . . . Surely not! There are reasons for so many accolades and sagacity for such a fine tobacco.

This is my first and regretfully one of few remaining experiences with this wonderful tobacco; angels doing the tango on my tongue. I came to the pipe in the latter part of my smoking career, since I was and still am a cigar enthusiast. I am a Latakia devotee and have combusted a number of Balkans and other Latakia infused blends over the years. This tobacco in my humble opinion should be the standard by which all Balkans are judged by, it is that good. It is not a Latakia blast; however, the Latakia is more in the background keeping the groove solid as a drummer often does in jazz. The Yenidje is really nice and to my palate offers an ever so slight bit of spice. There is also a very faint Virginia sweet note which comes through as well. I would say this tobacco smokes better a bit drier that most others even of the same species.

For a very broad reference I would say it is somewhere between Esotericas Penzance and G.L. Pease Caravan. It is not the Latakia blast that Penzance is, nor is it quite as creamy regarding the mouth feel. It is however, most complex and rich tasting, with a very unique nasal almost heady quality which I really enjoy; different than nicotine. Regardless, it does have a decent nicotine punch, more so then Penzance or Caravan. Moreover, I find the Yenidje and other Orientals to be more pronounced and complex than in Peases Caravan.

This tobacco burns well and packs soundly in all of my pipes. I feel it can be smoked anytime of the day accompanying many pleasurable activities be it reading a novel, fly fishing, walking the dogs et cetera.

All in all, highly recommended and would be an excellent starting place for Aromatic or Virginia pipers (briar brethren of the good leaf), whom wish to experience the genus Balkan or English. Peaceable puffing.

For me, this is a very difficult tobacco to review as I don't really have anything to compare it to. Perhaps its uniqueness is one of the reasons why so many pipers love it.

The Original BS smoked mellow, cool, dry and somewhat sweet. The Latakia was toned way down, yet was a presence. I have been fortunate to smoke many of the older tins, but the leaf lacks the punch it contained when fresh. Old tins these days are just too mellow - although still MARVELOUS!

Two days ago I got my paws on an old tin of BS. I remembered a friend describing to me that the difference between the "old" and "new" is the Latakia in the "new" is more noticable. I picked up exactly that. In all other respects, the tobacco is identical

I do however know that Latakia loses its edge over time and Virginias mellow down a bit. IMHO it is exactly the same blend, the difference is simply that the one has aged and the other is relatively new.

Mo

It is legendary for a reason, and it certainly isn't nostalgia.