Butera - Royal Vintage Sweet Cavendish pipe tobacco reviews

Review

Please log in to add or edit a review. If you do not have an account yet, you can sign up for one here.

Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
Showing reviews 1 through 15 of 15 reviews of this tobacco
N.D. Burns	04/28/2010	Mild	Medium to Strong	Full	Strong
I love the aroma this one leaves in my living room. This tobacco is very sweet, and cool. A pleasing, non offensive aroma ensures this to be the perfect blend to smoke after coming home from a nice dinner with the wife, or when having over a lady of interest. If you love aromatics, do try!
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
Captain Pete	09/18/2007	Mild	Medium to Strong	Medium	Pleasant to Tolerable
If you are a non-aromatic smoker, and especially if you dislike aromatics, do not bet on this being something tolerable. It is moist, sticky, and sweet. Though certainly of superior quality to the drugstore aromatics, it is an aromatic all the same. It does have a hint of the charactaristic McClelland ketchup, which actually makes for a weird aromatic. I got this as a sample from a local B&M, the gentleman there exclaiming that it really wasn't like a typical aromatic; that even he, who hated aromatics, was enjoying it. I'm not sure if this was all a practical joke, or if he has gone completely off his nut, but this is a very typical aromatic. If you like aromatics, it will provide a little more contrast than you are used to, as it does taste more like tobacco than candy. If you detest aromatics, as I do, then you would do well to steer clear of this stuff.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
hazmat	05/19/2006	Mild	Mild to Medium	Mild to Medium	Very Pleasant
This is a good tobac to have on hand for those times you just need a little sweet in your bowl. This is one of the very few and far between aromatics I'll allow to touch my pipes and I enjoy it for a change of pace from my standard VA, VA/Perique and Balkan blends. If I'm going out for an evening and am intending on enjoying a pipe in a public situation, I'll make sure to take a small pouch of Sweet Cavendish along with my everyday smoke... this comes in very handy when one needs to disarm the most anti of the anti-smoking folks. There's nothing quite like seeing one who ordinarily sneers when someone 50 feet away lights up a cigarette begin to gush and snuffle at the air like a pig locating a truffle when I fire up a bowl of this blend. Recommended... but only if it suits your taste buds.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
donk93953	09/03/2005	Mild to Medium	Medium	Mild	Very Pleasant
Ya know if u r trying to wean yourself away from the heavy flavoring and casings of Captain Black-land, this tobacco is a positive step. Its mild and very nice......I wouldnt smoke it all the time, but when I want something somewhat sweet and aromatic..I'd grab this again
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
DannelB	04/04/2005	Mild	Mild to Medium	Medium	Pleasant to Tolerable
Contrary to some of the reviews here, I have found this tobacco to be very nice. When I'm in the mood for an aromatic I reach for this blend. It's nothing extraordinary, but that's what I like about it. It's a reliable blend, pleasant flavor, easy to smoke. The smell in the can is more than pleasant, everyone loves it. Not to mention that my last name is Butera, so I find it quite nostalgic :)
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
Hemlock	12/11/2004	Medium to Strong	Very Strong	Medium	Very Pleasant
As a relatively novice pipe tobacco enthusiast, I found this aromatic to be quite a pleasure. Maybe I am not a "purist" or a connoiseur yet, but this is my honest opinion. Recognizing that this tobacco has been blended to be a pure cavendish, I judged it based on the purported characteristics of sweetness, room note and novelty. It burns well with a caramel-chocolate nut flavour, a little smokey due to the heavy casing, but with the strong aroma of sweetness that will appeal to co-inhabitants in the room. The smoke is very light and moves quickly in the rooms-not dense or thick, without tongue-bite. Sometimes, the pleasure of a pipe is being able to enjoy gentle draws of the briar bowl with the hearty acceptance of the fairer sex and colleagues in the same room. This tobacco may be crossing the line of excessive sweetness for those purists who insist on a tobacco flavour foundation, but if judged on intent of this blend, I give it a top rating as cavendish.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
2ley	01/21/2004	Mild	Medium to Strong	Mild to Medium	Pleasant
As opposed to many others, I've got to say that this blend is good. If you don't like aromatics, you'll hate this. If you like aromatics, this will be fairly decent. SO, on to the review. Tin - It smelled good on opening, but definitely cased in something that had vanilla and some sort of fruitiness. Looks really attractive. Packing - packed well, but I needed to light twice after the charring light in order to get it tight enough. Once lit it stayed until the last 3rd of the bowl. Room note : chocolate/nutty Taste : First third was fairly unremarkable. The second third a definite sweetness was apparent. The final third developed a harshness, normal to most aromatics, but not as harsh as the local cherry blends. Aftertaste : mild, not as bad as most aromatics. So, enjoy.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
BrittPark	06/10/2003	Mild	Medium	Mild	Pleasant
This is a perfectly pleasant mostly black cavendish aromatic blend, in the same family as Captain Cool, or Lane's BCA. If you likely strongly cased aromatic blends you'll appreciate it. If not, not. When choosing among American style aromatics of this family I'd say price will be your deciding factor.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
zebarracuda	04/20/2003	Mild	Medium to Strong	Medium	Pleasant
Promised a lot in the tin, and when opened the aroma felt great. Still, didnt keep up the high expectation i had, after lighting. Tobacco came a bit too wet for my taste, causing an excessive number of relights, and a lot of sizzling. Smoked a bit too wet and needed a constant and slow draw, or self i would suffer from tongue bite for hours. As for the taste and for the smoke itself, an almost fruity, nice sweet taste from the beggining till the end of the bowl, but nothing more than that all the way. Quite like a monocordic song that you hear and repeats itself from time to time, in your head. Even for a newbie like me, looking for different smokes after a few years on cuban cigars, couldnt help getting a bit disapointed on what promised to be a good trip on the wings of a nice cavendish, but turned out to be a boring trip. Just going to end this tin, and dont plan to buy it again.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
Tantric	03/17/2003	Mild	Medium to Strong	Mild	Pleasant
A tobacco very much along the lines of Captain Black white label and Lane Ltd. 1Q, this is a heavily cased, damp aromatic blend, a bit excessive for my tastes. I was presented with a tin of this by sister in law and as I smoked a bowlful she herself became wobbly from the aroma. It is soft and mild, but if smoked hastily it can lead to tongue bite. A quality product, I don?t think however there is anything special to set it apart from most Viginaia/Black Cavendish blends.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
pmonroeb	07/29/2002	Medium	Strong	Medium	Very Pleasant
This is the kind of tobacco that you smoke around women when you want to create that special atmosphere for love. Other than that this tobacco is is foul. This may be the gooeyest tobacco I ever tried. So wet that even after leaving the tin open for a week it was still so sticky that it was hard to pack because of the syrup (I hate to call it a casing) poured on it. It is so wet that it was difficult to smoke beyond 2/3's down the bowl. Rejected.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
Pipestud	04/21/2002	Extremely Mild	Medium	Extremely Mild (Flat)	Very Pleasant
Since I do not normally smoke aromatic blends, my review here may be a bit tainted. I did not like it because I like my pipe tobacco to taste like, well, pipe tobacco. I will say that if you know an aromatic fan, give him a tin of this and you will have a friend for life! It smokes cool for an aromatic, and the tobacco will last forever because whatever sticky agent was added to the blend keeps it moist--even in a hot oven!
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
mparker	05/21/2001	Strong	Medium	Full	Tolerable
This tobacco seems to be mostly cavendish and dark virginias help it burn through the heavy casing. This blend is remarkably oily (almost soggy) in the tin, and doesn't dry out much. In a briar it tastes excessively sweet and a bit musty. Butera (who's a real meerschaum freak) designed this blend for coloring Meers, and as oily as it is it really does need the absorbency of a meerschaum. I recently bought a Bekler meershaum, and have discovered that in this pipe it is really a nice smoke. It's quite strong, but the sogginess is gone which lets the tobacco tastes come through nicely. I have seen some meerschaum pipes colored with it, and must say the results are impressive. (Edit 2010 - I should mention that within about 6 months of frequent bowls of Sweet Cavendish, this meerschaum - a Bekler egg/claw - had colored to a rich deep chocolatey purple. I haven't smoked it in years now, but the speed with which it colored was amazing, and the depth and richness of the color are something to behold. Too bad I can't post a photo of it here). Highly recommended for meerschaum, not recommended for briars.
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
pokrsmokr	04/03/2001	Mild	Strong	Mild	Tolerable
I am not much of an aromatic smoker, though I can appreciate them. I don't think Sweet Cavendish has much going for it though. It's best feature is the look of the tobacco in the tin. It looks very silky and luxurious. It's all downhill from there. The tin aroma smells like a cross between vanilla, cafe mocha and Pepsi cola. It's not exactly a bad aroma, though not an extremely special one either. It lights like a heavily cased aromatic - slowly and you can hear the tobacco sizzle as the casing and PG burn of. This slight sizzle continues through much of the bowl -though it seems to smoke dryer than you'd expect. The taste is very one dimensional, in fact I could go as far as to describe it as boring. The flavor is hard to describe. One reviewer described it as a caramel-ish flavor. I can buy that -though it seems a bit flat for caramel. The virginias never seem to poke their heads above the surface, they remain dominated by the flavored cavendish. As I smoked it I kind of though of the mystery casing of Frog Morton and wondered if there was not some of this flavor in the Frog. Of coruse the Frog has so much else going for it.... but I wonder, after all this is blended (I believe) by McClelland too. Anyhow, I wouldn't recommend Sweet Cavendish to anyone -not even those who like aromatics. I have smoked many aromatics which burned, tasted and smelled better than this. Why smoke this?????
Reviewed By:	Date:	Strength:	Flavoring:	Taste:	Room Note:	Recommendation:
Sceny	03/26/2001	Very Mild	Very Strong	Very Mild	Tolerable to Strong
First of all, I enjoy many aromatics. A well done, high-quality blend can be tasty when not overwhelmed by the casing. This particular aromatic, however, is not of the type I generally enjoy. It may very well be based on high-quality tobacco; I don’t know. But if you can’t taste it through the casing, why bother using the good stuff as a base? I'm somewhat surprised, on opening the tin, to note that the aroma is not very strong; I'm used to C&D-style aromatics that you can smell through two concrete walls. Though subdued, I can smell a sweet flavor, perhaps vanilla-like(?), certainly not fruity. I don't notice any tobacco aroma. The tobacco itself appeared very damp, almost translucent in the light, and is somewhat sticky, much more so than Frog Morton. It is a roughly equal mix of black and brown leaf in a medium cut. It does light fairly easily, accompanied by more snapping and sizzling than a bowl of rice crispies. I chose a 1/2 bent Edwards billiard that I often use for aromatics, and that usually smokes on the dry side. For the first 1/3 of the bowl, that flavor is sweet and mild, with little actual tobacco apparent. I also found, from the first puff, that I'd have to be careful with this one: there is some bite if I'm not careful. There's a "sharp" feeling on the tongue, not at all like the bite from Virginias, combined with a burnt-caramel flavor and odor. It also smokes fairly hot at first, and seems to require a larger then average number of relights. Into the second third of the bowl, the burnt-caramel sweetness is still going strong. I don't really notice much tobacco flavor, though the hints that I do catch through the casing are very mild. I believe that some of the sweetness is coming from the Virginias in the blend. The smoke tickles the nose when exhaling through it, though it's not an unpleasant sensation. Moving on to the last third, that biting, burnt taste on the tongue is still there, though minimized by careful puffing. The sweet caramel is still going strong, and shows no signs of burning off. There is a little additional complexity at the very bottom. Surprisingly, at the bottom there is very little moisture; I would have expected to find a puddle. The dampness in the tobacco seems to burn off in smoking. This is not a bad smoke, and the room aroma is pleasant. However, the dull, mild sweetness would get boring very quickly, and it's almost not worth the effort to avoid the bite. Overall, too mild and one-dimensional for me to use regularly, even if there was no bite problem. I would not recommend this blend to new smokers, due to the care required to smoke it. It’s OK, I suppose, as a once-in-a-while change of pace.
Showing reviews 1 through 15 of 15 reviews of this tobacco