I was pleasantly surprised after buying a pouch on a whim. I tried this tobacco a long time ago in my first weeks of pipe smoking and found it extremely bitey, irrespective of how slowly I smoked. I also found it too lacking in sweetness. Today, as a somewhat more experienced piper, the bite has turned into a pleasant, tangy mouthfeel and the lack of sweetness has turned into a positive.

The smell in the pouch is of burley, raisins, oranges, sherry and earth. Despite its name, this is not a rum cased tobacco. Once lit, the taste is of tobacco mixed with a non-sweet, almost spicy or incensy maple. This is a very unique taste.

The room note is old fashioned and manly. The tobacco aroma mixes well with the spicy maple; the tobacco aroma doesn’t disappear as with, for example, Dan’s Blue Note or Peterson’s Sunset Breeze. A lot of non-smokers like it despite the fact that Rum & Maple is not ashamed of being a tobacco.

A little tidbit: Rum & Maple is the trademark tobacco of Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa.

The flavor begins with only hints of sweetness at the very beginning of the bowl, and as time goes on the casing burns off and the flavor becomes a nutty-dry flavor that while pleasant, is not what I'm looking for in a pipe any more. It didn't bite, but it didn't really appeal to me either.

Here's the link to the Dan Pipe website: http://www.danpipe.de

Go to the right and click on "English help." You will be directed to a page where you can download their entire catalog - a whopping 180 pages! Even when the Tinderbox produced their gorgeous full-colored catalogs back in the 80's, they weren't as good as Dan's. For all serious pipers, Dan's catalog is a gift! You won't be disappointed.

Then they changed the recipe (sometime in the early 1990s). I learned this from the next pouch I bought: I threw it away after a few pipefuls refused to be anything but goopy, horribly bitey, burning unevenly and otherwise misbehaving (with the sole exception of the room note, which was still delicious). I brought the pouch back to my tobacconist of the time, and complained that I had gotten a tainted pouch. He told me that I had not been the first to complain; and the pouch was not tainted, no, they had changed the tobacco. In consequence, so did I.

Today I find it burns to hot, the flavors once there seem very subtle now. The tobacco causes more pipe juice than most that I have smoked. Today I would go for something else that is for sure. However I still recommended it to a new pipe smoker as an introduction to aromatics. My Personal note Rating is a 3.1 I try to keep some around because it was my early favorit but I doubt I'll smoke a bowl more than once a month.

I have also done a video review of this tobacco. view it at

http://www.myspace.com/elemental_pipes

http://www.youtube.com

just search Lane Limited's Rum And Maple

However, I was browsing through a tobacconist a few towns over who had several packages on the shelf and I picked up two of them on a whim and tossed them onto the "drugstore pile" for later evaluation. My father happened to be over tonight and noticed one of the packages sitting in my tobacco nook and marvelled at it for a minute...turns out good old Blend #53 was his favorite pipeweed during WWII when he served as a merchant mariner in the pacific. He stopped smoking a pipe shortly after the war was over and re-started again in the late 70's at which time he moved on to "bigger and better" things. Of course, I broke it open, dad hauled out his big Grabow and we lit up.

To be candid, I took a two year long hiatus from pipesmoking from which I am emerging after a change in career/living arrangement etc. It's a wonderful experience to re-experience all of the tastes emerging from the tobaccos that I've had stashed away for all this time, but what is equally as interesting is that the break has enabled me to pinpoint more clearly my likes and dislikes in a way I wasn't able to when "in the jungle" of sampling and smoking many different types and styles of tobacco during a given week.

I've realized that I love the "American burley drugstore blends" even more than I thought I had before, and Rum and Maple turned out to be excellent on my second trip around. Only a slight hint of flavoring, mostly noticed as aroma when opening the pouch, the tobacco gravity filled the small Kaywoodie prince I had chosen (burleys smoke best out of a narrow bowl that is more tall than wide)and tamped with ease.The tobacco was at the perfect humidity and seemed to be mostly a cube type cut with a few stringy pieces thrown in, all golden brown to umber in color. Lighting was easy and positive, and the first couple of puffs contain a wonderfully light, "boozy" perfume that is more smelled than tasted. No hint of maple was apparent to me, but there is a discreet rummy note throughout which complements well the creamy nutty aroma of burley. From there, the tobacco burns well, and when smoked lightly gets neither wet, hot nor "bitey" though it does burn quicker than one might expect. As is characteristic with these types of tobacco, it got a bit "brash" towards the last 1/4 bowl at which point I usually do the dump. Burleys seem to be so low in natural sugar that they don't stove in the bottom of the bowl as do virginias and most of the casing dissipates during the preceeding 3/4 of the bowl making the ending harsh. At $2.50/pouch I feel that this is a worthwhile sacrifice.

I smoked two bowls of this tonight, and the now opened pouch will ride in my pocket tomorrow for further evaluation.If I like these two pouches as much as I did the smoke I had tonight I'll be purchasing a tin of this (also stocked by this same tobacconist) sometime soon. My father stated that after almost 60 years he really couldn't recall how similar it was to what he used to smoke back then (he's a confirmed McClelland man these days), but he liked it well enough and packed himself another big bowl "for the morning" before he left.

Could this be the proverbial "all day smoke"? Possibly, it's light, inexpensive and easy enough with a decent bit of nicotine, but I suspect that this will take a place in my "drugstore" rotation along with Middletons Cherry Blend, Revelation, Prince Albert, Hickory and Granger all of which I find myself leaning towards during this second incarnation as a pipesmoker.

Recommended, if you can find it...

UPDATE 1/15/09: Hickory is all but gone--a sad loss of a peculiarly american flavored burley. Now it's getting harder and harder for me to find this stuff and I fear that it's next on the list. I hadn't smoked it in probably a year so I opened a fresh pouch the other day and loaded a nice deep billiard and went for a drive. Still nice, still that whisping nuance of maple through most of the bowl. It's amazing how once you get onto a real burley kick that you start really noticing the delicacy of the flavors in these blends. Still reccommended.

Previous review: This is a pleasant, inoffensive and comfortable smoke. Like some of the other reviewers I found the flavor milder (from the 14 oz tin) than expected. Couldn't detect any rum and maybe found somethiing "mapley". I find it difficult to describe the flavoring. Some have compared it to Capt Black and while in the same ballpark, I found the R&M flavoring milder and less obtrusive. Burned a little fast but dry. I will smoke a pipeful of this from time to time and will enjoy it in that context, but it's not a tobacco thats likely to produce enthusiasm. If you enjoy mildly flavored burley mixes, its worth a try.

I am really pleased with this tobacco. For a non-aromatic all day smoke I normally smoke Gold Block (a UK burley blend) and fancied trying some other burley blends. This is a good, straight tobacco with a hint of either honey or maple syrup in the pouch. I couldn't really detect any rum in either the aroma or taste. Whilst smoking it is fairly smooth and inoffensive with the faint hint of apples that I associate with burley blends. I reckon it possibly could bite if you puff really hard but it's not an issue for me as I use 9mm filter pipes. You can really switch off whilst smoking it which is why it is so popular I guess. I've been smoking it a lot.

Love the slogan on the pouch - "Men like its flavor. Women love its aroma"

Given it's low price I may be buying more of this.