The best news is that I bought this tin about 6 months ago along with a tin of the Curly Cut, and this is considerably better than Curly Cut... not that it would take much to better that blend. Taste-wise, I found this a bit too sweet to be simply red virginia, so I'm guessing there is a bit of lemon VA as well, or more likely, a sweet casing. Thankfully, it doesn't intrude. Although I found this blend to be far from the classic that its name purports it to be, it seems to be a perfectly serviceable virginia with some bread and light tea notes and a fair bit of sweetness that comes off just a bit north of natural. This could be an all-day smoke. When I overpuffed to see how this one behaves under duress, it nipped me a bit but still retained its flavor. Not a lot of complexity to this one but a nice straight-forward, honest flavor. I liked this one but won't buy it again. On the other hand, I would bet this one ages quite nicely.

In Omnia Paratus. Another English concept by a German company.

Packing & Burning: Packed straight from the tin, it packs fairly easily, and surprisingly, lights with one match.

Aroma & Taste: Mild and unremarkable. It is vaguely sweet. It reminds me of McClelland's Blending Virgina, BCV being a little milder and softer. After this first bowl, the rest of the tin produced a woodsy, stoved walnut aroma.

Strength: mild

Room Note: mild-medium woodsy cigarette

Overall: Wessex' BCV gives a reasonable idea of what red VA is like. Recommended for that purpose. 3.4 stars.

Not sure what to make of this one. Not the greatest tobacco, but not bad either. Not overwhelmingly flavorful, not intricately layered, not deep and brooding, but not lacking either, in any way.

This weed impresses me as a good solid middle of the road tobacco. Seems to be mostly red virginias, but I detect some lighter and darker bits in the tin. It is rubbed out but not overly so. The tin aroma is straight tobacco, and quite nice as tin aromas go. As a matter of fact, I could sniff this one all day long, as it smells wonderful.

Upon lighting, this is not a highly remarkable smoke. But it is an excellent, hard working tobacco, that just tastes like a good honest virginia smoke. Sure, there are more varied and exotic and fuller tobacco's than this one, but there is something about this that keeps me coming back. Perhaps it is its unpretentious honest and hardworking flavor. No tricks, no holds barred, no high flying shenanigans, just good honest tobacco flavor, that gets better and better as the bowl progresses.

And for all this, a rating of highly recommended, not for what it doesn't do, but for what it does so simply, so easily, and so elegantly!!

Christmas Cheer 2003 (CC) is a red Virginia made from a 1998 Old Belt crop while McCranie?s Red Flake (RF) was made from a 1996 North Carolina crop. CC and RF are both medium-to-full-bodied.

CC fails to deliver the consistently deeper red Virginia flavor that RF offers. While CC has bursts of RF?s consistently dusky red Virginia flavor-a flavor that in comparison is both darker and deeper than a signature brown Virginia, Rattrays Brown Clunee-such bursts are more atypical than constant. This is not to say that CC is not an enjoyable tobacco but simply that in the realm of red Virginia, RF is the winner.

RF?s tin notes state that softness is this tobacco?s chief characteristic. While I don?t disagree with this statement, I would add that RF?s deeper, richer flavor outdoes the competition. One wonders how the considerable tobacco wisdom of McClelland, whose most notable entry in the Virginia arena, its Christmas Cheer series, allowed itself to be content with anything less than a product just shy of perfection. Yet perhaps this has something to due with the time constraints of finding fine leaf in time to process it and still meet Christmas Cheer?s traditional release at the RTDA show.

We then come to Wessex Classic Virginia (CV), medium-to-full bodied, blended by Kohlhase, Kopp und Co. It has more in common with RF than CC and is comprised solely of mature Red Virginia. It has less flavor than RF but I tend to believe this a choice of the blender, not a flaw. It throbs with the rich, basal note of a curing process designed to produce a no-nonsense, straightforward, aged tobacco. Little complexity in comparison to CC, the most complex of these three tobaccos-if any Virginia can be called complex-just a delicious, singular, deep, red Virginia flavor. In comparison to CC, it has little of that tobacco?s grassy, reedy flavor components.

Ranking, in descending order: RF, CV, CC.

For me, it's one of those tobaccos that if it was the only blend I could smoke, I would be happy, but if I never smoked it again, I would be okay too.

I found no spice in this blend, I found it to be plain tobacco, which I liked a lot. If I had to describe this in a word, it would be "tasty!"

If you want pure tobacco flavor without casing or extra sweetness, well, grab a tin of this stuff in a hurry!

The broken ["Scotch"] cake inside the tin is the colour of fig pudding. It smells like it, too. The taste is mild, savoury, spicy, not too sweet. There is none of the bloating of the heavier stoved plugs, no topping, casing, shaving-soap smell or anything else, but the natural, zesty mildness of Queen Virginia.

I smoked Brigade in a new corncob, which brought out the full airborne elegance of this tobacco, proving, yet again, the essential greatness and nobility of corncob pipes. Heartily recommended.

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[*]? I am told that all these Wessex tobaccos are now imported by XYZ Direct.