Old Gowrie has some pretty fair reviews below - this is an unpretentious, quality tobacco, easy-smoking, mild but with a pleasant virginia dominant flavour, slightly ashy in the second half of the bowl, and a pronounced sweet and lingering aftertaste.

Smokers that are looking for a "statement" of flavorings will probably find Old Gowrie wanting - there is little apparent topping which suggests it is a plain sugar and vinegar treatment, in good balance, or a light hand indeed in what flavorings have been added. Very little perique, if any, certainly less than some of the best-known Vapers.

This is a bit of purist smoke for the plain, milder virginia smoker looking for nuance rather than bold statement. There is subtlety and pleasure in smoking it dry and slow. I'll cellar a fair amount - it would be an excellent blender with topped blends that are found to overbearing, or could take a pinch or two of latakia or perique in stride. Solid stuff.

A nice sweet taste of virginia but that was about it. In the UK we have to pay a little bit more for Rattray and it certainly wasnt worth that extra quid.

Very nice smoke but nothing special

Update :I sincerely expected more but the tobacco taste remains the same after a few weeks even when transferred to a jar. 2.5 stars in conclusion. There are better tobaccos with Perique on the market, Three Nuns (the square tin) being one of them.

All said and done, OG still produces a reasonable smoke as a blended virginia, but for the die-hard purests, there are better straight virginia alternatives.

Easy cool all day smoke. Lighter than HOTW which I find is a touch more peppery than OG.

When I need an extra dimension or fuller flavour I plump for FVF. But OG is a welcome edition to my prefered VA tastes.

I am not a pure Virginia smoker, so consider the context of my three stars.

I just can't wait for my piggy bank to fill or to finish a new pipe. Then I go out and try a Rattray I haven't tried before.

This is my Englishish Rattray blend but i hate to label them that way.

Each blend can be tagged based on an old blend but the truth of the matter is they only use broad strokes. They must be looking for the best 21st century blend and not hoping to recreate last centuries fave.

OG is grassy, and less sweet than I was expecting from the tin smell. It's well- behaved for a virginia, which is to say it'll still bite easily enough if I get distracted. It has an oat-y note from time to time as well, and a nice, faint clover flourish that shows up once in a while near the end of the bowl.

Maybe I'd "get" OG better if I could afford to dedicate a pipe to it (I do keep my straight virginia pipe pretty clean), but for right now, I'm going to give it three stars. It's good for what it is, and maybe that's all one can ask of any blend, but there are so many other great straight virginias out there--Full Virginia Flake, Best Brown Flake, the McClelland 20's, etc.--that I really don't see what all the fuss is about.

I have added this tobacco to my list of definitely must have again, but for now I am still exploring although apart from Connoisseurs Choice I feel that this tobacco has shown me which area to explore in the future and that will in the direction of good Virginias. Am looking forward to trying Marlin Flake, Petersons University Flake and SGs Best Brown Flake. these should make for interesting comparisons.

Of the others I tried I definitely wont be getting another tin of Old Dublin again (see other review)which was not my cup of tea. Which I guess was due to the smokey quality of the Latakia. which gave me hiccups no matter how slow I smoked. I will also give sunset breeze a miss too especially as Connoisseurs Choice is much more pleasant to my taste.

Despite the ‘rubbed out’ description on the tin OG seems to me more like a broken flake. In my experience (though I see that not everyone agrees with me on this) it isn’t necessary to rub it out any further, though it’s a good idea to let it dry a little. Smoke it slowly to avoid bite and get the best out of the subtle flavours. It'll bite if you rush it, but it's a very gentle smoke if you treat it with care.

There really isn’t much more that one can say about this tobacco. It’s superb without being in any way fancy or exotic. It reminds me a little bit, I think, of two old favourites, long gone: W.D. and H.O. Wills's Cut Golden Bar, and Player's No Name. But this is going back a very long way, and maybe my memory is faulty. Anyway, it's a first-rate tobacco.

(A bit expensive, unfortunately: perhaps more of a ‘special occasion’ smoke than an everyday one. Well worth the money, though, if you like the kind of thing it is.)

old gowrie is a black flake with perique and some other leaf maybe kentucky. it is sweet, balanced and complex. i like that it doesn't have any flavoring just great tobacco blended well.

rattray's virginia blends are all fantastic. give any rattray virginia a try. they're the best.

the only down side to og is that it doesn't come in full flake form. i'd love to rub out this amazing stuff myself or smoke in larger pieces!