White Spot is a full bodied smoky tobacco. The latakia content overpowered me a bit. The tobacco is all nearly black in color and arrives on the moist side. The paper and the Dunhill card were stained yellow and brown. It packs and burns particularly well once dried a bit. The smoke is cool and heavy. This tastes like a stronger, aged version of nightcap. The finest quality of white spot is the technical smoking experience. This is a two match affair that burns dry, leaving the tiniest bit of ash. The smoke is very thick and cool. The flavor is not equally great. This was a strong, one dimensional tobacco. The flavor was dry and smoky without a trace of sweetness.

I liked white spot in the same setting as nightcap, nighttime, perhaps in cooler weather. I cannot imagine smoking this on a warm sunny day.

Few drink combinations worked with this tobacco outside of the usual black teas. I found coffee as well as most cocktails an unpleasant accompaniment. If you are going to take scotch, drink the cheapest, blandest malt, because you will not taste it anyway. The best pairing is lapsang souchong, it has the same smokiness, but adds sweet and woody flavors to make the smoking experience more interesting.

With this kind of strength, white spot is only an occasional smoke for me. Considering the lack of availability and the very high price ? I pay $6 or less for regular Dunhill tins ? it is a novelty item that you should try the next time you have access to Dunhill London. I doubt however, that many will be looking to pay such a price more than once.

Upon opening the tin I was greeted by a rather woodsy, slightly spicey scent. The tobacco itself is atypical Dunhill cut.

The blend packed easily and needed just one re-light after the false-light, (I do gently tamp the run of a bowl).

While the taste really did not vary the length of the bowl, I would have prefered personally that the latakia be lowered and the red virginia raised. I find that with the percentage of latakia as high as it is in this blend, the others get drowned out and/or back-seated.

I did find it clean, woodsy, slightly spicey and a very nice smoke overall. It burned to nice grey/white ash and without heel mositure.

I have smoked many traditional English blends during my 30 plus years in the briar brotherhood. Never have I smoked one that was as harsh and bitter as this. It even burns hot!

I know why Dunhill does not stock White Spot in our country's pipe shops. They know they need us as an ally, and White Spot is certainly not an ambassador of good will. Save your money folks, look elsewhere for a heady latakia blend. And trust me, this blend is overflowing with latakia. The above description indicates the blend is 35% latakia! That's quite a bit, and in fact the folks at the London Dunhill store (I purchased this tin mail order) indicate it holds the heaviest proportion of latakia of any of their commercially sold blends. It always pays to get the facts!

Finally, as further proof that individual taste is a relative thing, the next reviewer considers White Spot to be delicious and unique. Well, unique it is. But delicious? Not to this cowboy. I'd rather smoke the grass my cows eat!

Syrian Latakia tobacco is fire-cured by exposing it to the smoke of certain aromatic barks and herbs: this not only gives to this tobacco its distictive "smoked" taste, but also makes it smell, when you burn it, a bit like the elements with which it was fumigated originally. This might account for the incense-like smell that it sometimes evokes, particularly when interacting with sweet-smelling "Turkish" tobaccos. (Frankincense is the cured bark of the olibanum tree, Boswellia carteri, whose gum resin, when burnt, usually at Church services, gives off a particularly wonderful, pungent aroma, NOT AT ALL like the obnoxious, cheap "incense-sticks" that the déclassé used to burn in my youth, whilst chugging jug-wine during "free-love" episodes. Those are more like the synthetic poisons used in drugstore tobacco.)

The elements that go into fumigating Syrian Latakia make it expensive and rare. Nowadays, most blenders use pseudo-Latakia made in Cyprus, a pleasant, lighter, smoky-tasting tobacco not really like the true original, named after a port-city of Syria.

WHITE SPOT actually has less Latakia than NIGHTCAP or 965. A delicious unique blend for the connoisseur.