I recently ordered a pound of this tobacco and it's formulation has changed. About 1/2 way down the bowl there is now the unmistakable taste of cheap drug store blend burley. It also gets bitey at that point. I've smoked a number of bowls in various pipes with the same results. I sent the blender a polite email about this and never received any response. While it is common to have some slight variation between batches of a blend, it is inexcusable to have such a marked decline in quality, particularly considering Wilke blends are fairly pricey. I'm sad to say that I can no longer recommend this or any other Wilke blend since ordering from them is such a crap-shoot.

*************** Update - 8/14/2007

I am downgrading this tobacco as it doesn't age very well. After a while the flavor fades, leaving it just too mild for my taste. When fresh, it's a 4 star tobacco, if older than 6-9 months, 2 stars, so an average rating of 3 stars.

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Here is a really terrific Va/Burly aromatic. It reminds me a bit of Sail ivory, but far more refined and with less nicotine. I can never exactly identify the wonderful, old-time aroma, but a good component of it is of natural tobacco. I enjoy this even more than Stokkeybe aromatics because it smokes with nary a sizzle. It burns to a dry white ash and is one of the least biting tobaccos I've ever smoked. There is a slightly flavored (with what I can never determine) taste at the start of the bowl, but as it progresses I get more and more of a Kentucky burley flavor. If you like mild aromatics, this is one of the finest.

So it is with #196. First the relatively easy: it is a cavendish cut mixture of perhaps three types of leaf, Virginias and cavendished burley. There is a nostalgic aroma from the pouch that I haven?t smelled since the early ?70s, sweeter than raisins but not vanilla. Cookies? Soft and pliable, it packs readily. Upon lighting, that aromatic component (that remains nameless, dang it) is brought forth. I want to call it floral, but it?s not. Soapy? Horrors, no! It is fragrant in an acceptable way. It has been decades since I smoked Carter Hall, but that may be the nostalgic connection and comparison. Don?t let the ?s? word put you off. I hate soap but this didn?t put me off.

The other flavors are much easier to describe: cavendish, burley, Virginia, sweetish but dully so, like a teething biscuit, like the smell of sawing perforated board, graham-crackerish. It doesn?t change much through the bowl and DGT alters things only slightly. It is biteless.

Overall? I?d smoke it only occasionally. I?m not one to criticize, rationalize, apologize for, condescend or defend smoking aromatics. It?s just that sooner or later I?ll identify the scent and along with it will accompany surreal memories of the Nixon years. Get a small sample from Carole, like I did (www.vtpipes.com). It?s worth at least a few bowls.