May you know Christ's love and peace to all the gentlemen and ladies of the leaf.

soli Deo gloria

Try King Charles, it is much better than this one.

This was one of the few blends I tried that the more I smoked it, the less I liked it: what started off as an ok english gradually morphed into something grotesque as those sour apple undertones started to appear. Then, once its presence was known, I couldn't get past it. It was like discovering the milk in your coffee was bad after having already finished half the cup.

It's not that the quality was poor (or even mediocre), but those cider undertones gone bad really put me off. I finally had to give the tin away.

I can easily conceive that some could develop a taste for this blend. Some people like the taste of durian. Good for them. But I can't, in good conscience, recommend this to the average pipe smoker.

Basically, I got a bland and ho-hum impression from this, with a little bit of a disappointment and a little bit of a "I guess I could smoke this if I have to" kind of feeling.

Royal Jersey Original Lakakia Mixture (RJOLM) jumps right out of the tin at you. Sweet heavily fermented fruits can be smelled across the room! There is no question in my mind that this blend is cased. Aromatic fans might find something here, but it's all a bit too much for me...

This blend is similar to OBB and EM in look with long, fine cut strings of dark brown and black tobaccos. In the tin, though, this blend's initial aroma was of plums and fruit with just a hint of the latakia in the background. Is this blend cased or just fermenting? Regardless, I was expecting a bit more of a natural English or Balkan aroma.

I removed this tobacco from its tin, placed it in a glass jar and let it age for a couple of months. It finally lost most of its unnatural aroma and had the heavier aroma I expected. Unlike others, I found this to be on the heavier side, maybe because I let it age as opposed to smoking most of it out of the tin. However, I did notice the somewhat bitter aftertaste others stated.

This is borderline on a two to three rating but I'll give a two because it just does not possess any unique qualities and is just bland.

The tobacco did improve after transferring it to the sealed storage jar. Mind you this tends to be a rule for all pipe tobacco rather than an exception.

It starts off with many high and nasal notes, which I quite like. The Orientals are of very high quality. Mid way the flavours really begin to sing and become deeper, with Latakia becoming more pronounced. Near the end the flavours are quite full and hit the entire palate. This is not a Latakia blast which some may be thinking. The blend lends well to be smoked at any time of the day in my view. The aftertaste/finish just go on and on. I have not combusted a tobacco which evolves as much as this one does nor one with such a long finish.

Clearly some of the tobaccos in this blend have been deeply fermented and likely pressed, then sliced. It has not been cased even though one could easily make such an assumption. Needless to say that all types of tobacco do go through a fermentation process, even cellaring is a very slow ferment.

All in all, wonderful stuff. J. F. Germain & Son along with their offspring, Esoterica are my favourite blending house.

Upon lighting, the intial taste is very light latakia and not much else. As the pipe progresses I taste a light anise or sassafras note, which I suspect comes from the orientals. The most remarkable thing is how 'dry' the flavor is. I don't sense much of the sour apple or cider flavor that other reviewers mention, but I do get a bright sour burning taste on the roof of my mouth which is not all that pleasant. An experience I also have with other blends high in light or lemon virginas. The bite does go away fairly quickly, but why bother, especially for a blend with no disernable virgina sweetness. The surprising thing is how cool and dry it burns for a blend I find a bit nippy. If it were a straight VA that bit like this I'd expect the bowl to be scorching hot, then you'd just have to slow down to keep it in check.

Exhale through your nose, and you're likely to be surprised at just how light and airy this blend is.

Not much nicotine to be found here.

Overall I find that this blend is just too light for me, and would only recommend it to someone looking for the lightest english blend possible.

Our shop got some of the Royal Jersey Original Latakia Mixture in recently and having never seen it before I gave the tin a sniff. Even through the seal it smelled delightful. Intrigued, I went ahead and purchased a tin to smoke. Upon cracking open the tin I was greeted with the full gorgeous aroma of this tobacco. It has that wet grass smell that one associates with a good fresh English blend as well as an undertone of cider or sour apple. Unique to say the least.

Packing this fine-cut tobacco was easy but lighting required about three or four tries before I could get a good burn going. Once lit however, this tobacco smoked right down to the bottom of the bowl with nary a relight required. After this tobacco has dried out a bit the lighting problems vanish and one can usually get it going with just one false light and tamping.

It's worth the little bit of extra work to get it going however as this blend provides a very interesting and unique smoke. It starts off pretty mellow with a wonderful Latakia flavor which is enhanced by a sour apple/cider undertone. I don't believe that this tobacco is cased but rather that the sour apple flavor is created naturally by some step in the curing process. Towards the latter half of the bowl the Latakia flavor becomes much stronger and smokier and the sour apple taste drops away almost entirely to be replaced by the soft, mellow flavors of the Orientals in the blend. This part of the smoke reminded me of how a bowl of London Mixture tastes but with an overall sweeter undertone throughout. Overall, this is a wonderful, complicated blend which requires some attention to apprectiate fully. On the subject of strength, while this blend is nowhere near the velvet hammer that is Nightcap, it can still be heady at times. I would advise excercising some caution while smoking this on an empty stomach.

In my opinion a great blend. Currently I smoke this blend, the Germain's Special Latakia Flake, and Dunhill's Durbar in my English pipes. This stuff is definately worth a try if you enjoy smoking English/Latakia blends.

Three and a half of five stars

The only other tobacco I can think of that reminds me of this compilation is Peterson's Sherlock Holmes (although the leaf color and cut is much different here.)

I was not in the least bit impressed.

This one was very strange. Like Germain's 1820, when I first smelled this one I thought it was cased. This blend has a distinctive apple flavor, both in the tin and in the pipe, however, unlike 1820, the apple character doesn't seem to go away with time. I'm not sure if it's cased or not, but it's certainly bizarre for an oriental/latakia blend.

This blend reminds me of Harrod's English Mixture (green lid). The flavor is sort of burnt apple and black walnut, with some additional spiciness from the orientals, although the Harrod's blend smelled like black walnut in the tin instead of apples. However, this blend definitely had Harrod's oriental throat-coating effect. Towards the bottom of the bowl, the flavor gradually turns more burnt and ashy.

The first part of the bowl was certainly interesting (if different), and would probably appeal more to fans of aromatics than to english fans. A meerschaum might help as well.