The vanilla can be a bit difficult to enjoy for me. I have trouble dealing with the sweetness of it fresh. I recommend drying it or even airing it out to some extent.

You can smell it through 2 bags if your nose is tuned so the smell can become an issue. The taste is better dried than fresh. I've had my most recent 12 ounce bag aging for a few months and it seems to help. To be honest I bought almost every smoker's pride blend to try it for myself and this has got to be the most troubled blend I have dealt with.

I recommend it for the very patient smoker in a brand new pipe. You may want to designate this blend to a certain pipe as the smell alone can sort of invade any other tobacco you smoke out of the same pipe as you smoked "Smoker's Pride Vanilla Cavendish" out of. The smell from the smoke actually tends to be similar to an incense so you don't want too much but a little is fine and can actually be quite pleasant. It's the taste from the smell that I don't much care for.

The flavor is mild, you can still taste tobacco, the vanilla casing is strong but it comes out more as aroma and room note. While there is a faint chemical undertone (to be expected from a blend like this one) it is not as PG laden as Captain Black or any of the other Lane blends. In fact, this stuff is less than half the price of Captain Black and more than twice as good.

The only slight issue is the cut; very rough cut that makes it sometimes hard to evenly pack a bowl. At this price though I can't complain.

I will highly recommend this if you like aromatics

This was an early Christmas gift from a well-meaning but utterly clueless non-smoking friend. Much to my chagrin, it's the 12 oz bag. In actual fact, this tasted mostly like a sour batch of warm air with a mild trace of vanilla in the air and a fair amount of juiciness in the pipe. I haven't smoked Captain Black in many years but I don't recall that being this much of a waste of time. Yet both are blended by Lane's and I suspect this is CBW using a much lower quality leaf and a much higher percentage of propylene glycol for shelf-life. Not recommended at any price, including free.

As per my custom, I did blend this with some C&D Kelly's Coin and got something smokable. However, in order to make it so, I had to use a very high ratio of KC to this - so much that it makes much more sense to chuck this mess and smoke KC straight. On the other hand, smokers of CBW should give this a shot. They may like it as much and save money to boot.

Smoked slowly and carefully in a good, clean pipe, you are guaranteed to have a tasty cavendish treat with a sweet room note that will attract the ladies.

This tobacco is very much like Captain Black (white label) only about 3x less expensive. Great buy!