The bad: There are others much better for the same price. I should have gone with the toasted cavendish. It looks black and like a real Cavendish.

Too much PG. Propolyne Glycol. Greasy to the touch when I pulled some out to dry. Must be dried. That took about one hour in the sun and I still get too much pipe goop.

Too bad they didn't use real vanilla or some good topping for this decent burley tobacco, but then it wouldn't be 1.16 per ounce would it?

But you know what;I'm smoking this. I put a wind cap on my pipe and smoke this very slowly and it's not bad. I'm going to try to find something that this mixes with.

It is ribbon cut. Not bad at all. I have found no stems. There was some powdered tobacco in the bag, but not excessive.

It does not look like it has been Cavendish processed, but I do detect a hint of Cavendish taste occasionally when I smoke it straight. (But I did toast it first. See below.) It is rather sweet, as one would expect. Does not bite.

The internet tells me that propylene glycol has a flash point of 232F. So... I spread it out on a cookie sheet and baked it at 275F for three minutes five times, after each time tossing it until it quit steaming. It is still a tad wet, but good enough. It will light and burn.

My intention was and remains not to smoke it straight, but to use it with other stuff to add just a little vanilla. A mixture of 4 parts Carter Hall, 1 part Blender's Gold Vanilla, 1 small part perique was not bad on first try.

Recommended with reservations.

Oddly I did note a bit of astringency at the top of the bowl, something I've noticed in my own home-cased blends. (Not sure where that comes from but in my own blends it tapers off when cellared for a while.) That bite goes away after the first few puffs however, and then I can settle in to a long enjoyable smoke. The vanilla flavor predominates early in the bowl, gradually fading to the taste of burley alone. After the first few puffs it doesn't bite, but I do taste the burley for a few hours afterward (not necessarily a bad thing). The pipe does need cleaning afterward, but it has not left a ghost.

If you don't like vanilla you won't like this. But then you won't like anything else vanilla either. If you do like vanilla and you also like burleys, then you may find this to your liking as well.

The humectamt is really overwhelming with this one, way too wet right out of the bag, and I ended up having to dry it in a paper towel by mooshing it with my hands before I would ever think of putting it in my pipe. It doesn't really smell like vanilla at all, it smells more like raisins. The vanilla flavoring is decent, though, and once I got past the fact that it burned hot and wet I decided to not throw it away (I hate wasting tobacco).

I have since dried it as much as I could in the open air and cellared it, hopefully the aging will help to round it out, although with the plethora of other things I could be smoking I'm not sure I'll be coming back to this one in this decade or the next. Somewhere, fifty years in the future, I doubt exactly what brand it was (and what it was like when I bought it) will make a difference.

If you want a semi-palatable drugstore tobacco and this is all that's around, go for it. If you have an option to smoke something else, though, I would implore you to. Save your money and your pipe.

Upon opening the bag, I was greeted with a much more natural-smelling weed than I anticipated. It was decidedly spiked with vanilla, but didn't smell especially artificial, and wasn't overwhelming: it still smelled like tobacco, not just a big bag of Easter Grass coated in fake vanilla sauce. It felt good, at about the right moisture level, and I was rather excited. Nothing about it said "expensive," but nothing screamed "fake!" either.

Still a bit skeptical, I loaded it into a cob. I mean, how good can it be for $1.10 an ounce? The char light, then a light tamp and a relight yielded an ember that stayed well. It was at the perfect moisture level to stay lit without puffing like a steam engine, and I found that indeed, this 'baccy is not a biter. The taste is not strongly of tobacco, but it's there, and the vanilla is very mellow, and dare I say it....rich! It isn't particularly artificial, either.

Overall, I'd have to say that people who like Captain Black (white) would probably like this, and I think it's actually a little better (less artificial), and for 1/3 of the price! Furthermore, I think that the humectants used (if any) are not overdone like some. I look forward to trying some of the other Blender's Gold blends. Golden Burley is next, as I very much like Burley.

=====================UPDATE=====================

I still haven't finished the bag. My wife and landlord won't let me smoke in the house, so I haven't have time to burn through this giant bag. I even gave a bunch to someone else who was more broke than I am and liked it a lot!

A few further thoughts: I love the flavor, but something in this can leave a burning sensation in my mouth when smoked in my cob. That pipe smokes very hot. I'll have to see what this does in a "real" pipe when I can find a chance. (I won't carry a nice briar in my pocket because I don't want to destroy it.) This isn't especially goopy, in my cob. A briar might be revealing, though...... But hey, this stuff make AWESOME roll-your-own cigarettes! That's actually what I gave some to someone else for. And those don't burn my mouth, either, which is why I'm inclined to blame that cob for the burn.....it does it with other baccies, too.

I'm no expert, but I think this is a burley-based blend, which is unusual, as most vanilla blends are black cavendish-based. I like that about it. It gives this blend a bit more tobacco character than, say, Captain Black White. Not that I hate the Cap'n, he's just not my style.

I see that any time someone writes a nice review of this stuff, (or any other discount tobacco, for that matter,) someone immediately feels the need to write a "terrible" review. Hey, it's cheap. If you only like designer blends, then don't buy cheap ones! Don't dump on those of us who appreciate a $1 hamburger as well as a $50 steak. No one would claim that this is a designer blend, or anything in the least bit fancy, or even great. It's just simple, cheap, no-nonsense tobacco for those who can appreciate it that way.

==============ANOTHER UPDATE==============

I STILL haven't finished the bag, for many of the same reasons, but I still like it. I have created a blend with this and Milan Tobacconist's "Black Forest" that is really good. Vanilla + Caramel = something very yummy that's too sweet to smoke all the time but very nice on occasion.

I did dry my bag out some by propping it open with a broken plastic spoon for awhile, and that definitely made it a nicer smoke. I look forward to trying out some of the other flavors in the line. "Golden Burley" is next.......