I love virginia tobaccos but cannot smoke them regularly because they rough up my tongue. This one has great virginia and just enough other tobaccos to smooth it out.

779 is my number one blend at the moment although the quest for a holly grail of pipe tobaccos is not over yet.

01/25/206- Opened a tin that I had celled since January 2004. Well I was right . 2 Yrs. age on it and it tasted great.

The smell in the tin is deep, dark and musty (in fact, the odor was much darker and compelling than the visual of the blend itself which was rather light.) The moisture content was perfect and the leaf needed just a very short whirl in my one speed food processor to be perfect for packing.

The latakia won't hit you like a sledgehammer but it won't feather slap your palate either. This is just a nice, bitter sweet and musty Latakia blend that stays lit well and burns evenly down to nothing but a fine gray ash. Highly recommended!

The tin aroma is heavy with Orientals and Latakia. The moisture was great and the cut, well the cut was one of those that makes you pause and realize the inferiority of the cut in so many other blends you?ve been smoking. It packed nicely and burned great all the way down with nary a relight. Given the high proportion of Virginias in the blend, I braced myself for some biting. But the bites never came. 779 turned out to be a very smooth and rich smoke. That richness, or complexity, was also a surprise. From its tin appearance I expected this to be pretty standard Virginia-with-a-little-latakia-thrown-in-for-body blends like Peterson?s Old Dublin, Pease's Piccadilly, or Dunhill Early Morning Pipe. As I smoked 779, however, I realized its superiority to any of those mixtures, owing largely to the great Orientals in this blend and the use of Syrian as opposed to Cyprian Latakia.

I can't comment on the whole Balkan Sobranie comparison issue, since I never had the pleasure of the old favorite, but I can say that I find this balkan/oriental blend much superior to the current Balkan Sasieni. If this is, indeed, similar to the old BS, then I can see how that venerable blend gained such a following.

779 is a bit pricey, though, which means that before I would purchase another tin of it, I would more likely spend the same amount of money (or less) and pick up a tin of GLP Renaissance or my beloved Robert Lewis Tree Mix.

This is an OK medium-light English blend, plesant but not memorable. I have never bought I tin but I was offered a bowl in several occasion: it never struck me as flavorful or complex enough to make me wish for a whole 50g...

Also, these three blends have several characteristics in common: very different tin aroma than any other blends, a great amount of taste, smoothness, and quality through and through (after that first light).

I have read that some think this is a sleeper blend -- great, more for me! I'll stock a dozen or so tins now and let time do the rest. This is definitely not a blend for the first bowl of the day, at least for me, but can be enjoyed two or three bowl in the afternoon or evening without getting boring or overbearing. I really like having this blend around as a change of pace from some of the othe powerhouse English blends.

Like many 759 loyalists I haven't actually smoked any of the stuff for many years and tend to romanticize its qualities just as I romanticize many of the experiences and events of my youth. Nevertheless this blend met all of my expectations. The tobacco evokes rememberances of bowls past and does so quickly. Unlike many of the stronger blends that require a certain forbearance through the first one third of the smoke 779's complexity kicks in early and quite pleasantly. Blender R.L. Will hit it right with this blend and I recommend it highly.