Tin aroma is for a lack of better terms- appetizing to best describe it. I detect hints of rum and vanilla smell. Mostly mollases.

I will smoke it some but not everyday. If you like sweet light smokes this would please. Not too heavily flavored either. A very nice effort by Mclelland. I might just keep a tin around for when I want something different. I am into heavier Virginia blends though. I like the navy cavendish more than this and you might want to try it if you like honeydew.

I can see this being good in especially hot weather. A summertime smoke for me I guess.

Update: 4-27-08 This tobacco has really become a favorite of mine. Upon smoking it quite a bit more I found that it does not go so well in a small pipe but is excellent in a mid size.

I noticed the flavor became more apparent after some inital drying and that it smoked very cool and dry. The flavor became more robust like a really good mollases cookie. This is not an aromatic by my standards at all but does give a good subtle sweet dark sugar taste. I agree with a previous reviewer that it leaves me wanting for more, but in a very good way as it goes so good I could smoke it nonstop. This has become a regular with me, just wish it was a bit cheaper and came in a bigger tin.

Not a blend for me.

Honeydew is a tasty broken flake consisting largely of what I assume is Virginia leaf. It's mild, and it doesn't remind me a bit of melons, despite the name. Honeydew has a sugary taste, that may or may not be all natural. That I don't detect a synthetic taste, however, makes this my kind of "aromatic".

McClelland has applied a nice touch with the nostalgia, going out of their way to craft blends that fit the Sherlock Holmes universe. I enjoy reading their tin notes..and request a blend in honor of the Speckled Band. Unfortunately, I'm not one for details, and as far as I know, they may have already done this. When I get around to reading the story, I suppose I'll know for sure.

Moderately sweetened with a seeming brown sugariness, the typical McClelland VA ferment is evident and is slightly dulled by the burley and the cavendish. The taste is mild yet flavorsome with high grade virginia leaf, and the room note is particularly pleasant.

With quality leaf shining easily through the delicate casing, Honeydew is both elegant and accessible.

Chamber Gauge: Narrow to Medium

Aroma: There is a noticeable but not overpowering top note, on top of some nice sweet Virginia aroma. The characteristic McC vinegar was missing, thankfully.

Packing: It packed nicely as-is into medium to large bowls, needed to be rubbed out for small bowls.

Lighting: About average in ease of lighting.

Initial flavor: Just as it smells, this is a mild/medium Va, with a subtle added top note. I can?t identify the addition, but it tastes right for the blend. No noticeable heat when smoked at normal rates.

Mid-bowl: Very pleasant flavor of VA., very light aromatic. No complexity or layering, making it a good all-day smoke, but not a nightcap. Cool and well behaved at all times.

Finish: No surprises, burned down to ashes in a dry pipe.

Summary: For me, a good warm weather morning and afternoon smoke. Don?t let the slight aromatic quality keep you away from this one. For me, the hit of the 221b series. BTW, many people will enjoy the aroma, always a plus for a sometimes Latakia smoker like me.

Roomnote: It is not an extreme aromatic. No one will stay in the area of the smoke to get a whiff. But it is tolerated by most, who will tolerate smoke.

Mouthfeel: It is a moderate smoke. It can get warm. But I feel it bites less than Glengarry flake.

Taste: Sweetness, it does not have the tang of darker Virginias. If the darker flavors are desired, Honeydew probably will not statisfy.

This is an everyday tobacco. I go through a rotation of many varieties of tobacco, from latakia to pure Va. Honeydew is consumed daily.

Let me preface my remarks, by saying that I am not a big fan of straight Virginia. I have tried a number of them over the years, without being impressed. Honeydew reminds me of the Mclelland Christmas blends, with a barely perceptible topping. The flavor lacks the sharpness of some Virginias I have tried, but has very little sweetness or complexity. I would call the flavor thin and cigarette-like. I did not rub this out at all, simply packing some of the broken flakes into an Upshall straight apple and lighting up. The blend burned cleanly with few relights, but tended to be hot. Perhaps some years of aging would bring out more flavor.

One note: Over the course of 20 pipefuls (1 tin) I never experienced the bite that some others have mentioned. For me, this was always an extremely mild smoke.

Note to Guyrox: Holmes is never mentioned as smoking Honeydew. He is simply shown a container of the tobacco as a clue in one of the stories. The stuff Holmes usually did smoke is pretty distressing.(g)

On another note, McClelland deserves a lot of credit for its attempt to re-capture the essences of late-Victorian era tobaccos smoked by the literary super-sleuth and his companion.

The coarse cut gets one to pondering just how to prepare this pipe-weed for the bowl. I have found the slightest bit of rubbing out works best. Too much, and the heat uncomfortably increases. With a good char, this blend burns evenly and with minimal relighting.

The sweetness is relatively noticable from first puff, decreasing somewhat by midbowl. Mind that this is not the black Cavendish style of sweetness, but a much lighter and more natural touch. Still, it is aromatic, with honey overtones. Fanciers of straight Virginias may well find this cloying, as I did. The bottom third of the bowl is the most satisfying.

Alas, this pipe-weed is a hot and biting experience, if not given attention at all times. A few thoughtless draws, and you'll be nursing your tongue. This is what I find to be Honeydew's undoing. There is insufficient reward for the trouble required. I am forced to slow my puffing down to levels I find annoying.

I'm setting this tin aside in hopes its bite will diminish over time. I wonder if I shall even finish it. I certainly will not be acquiring more.

This would be a great introduction into Virginias...I find even the best straight VAs to be boring and unsatisfying in comparison to the usual richness of my light or medium English blends. This is neither straight VA nor aromatic though it does have some aromatic properties. The sweetness seems to come more from the tobacco than any flavoring, and the flavoring is indeed transient as some other folks said.

I am a die-hard McClelland fan and I did not initially think I would enjoy this blend, but it is now high on my list of occasional or moody smokes. This and Arcadia are outstanding.

It's not bad at all, just not good enough in my opinion to warrant the price. If were available in bulk at a good price, then it would be easier to justify this tobacco. I may, or may not, end up finishing the tin, but smoking it isn't something I particularly look forward to. I'll stick with the real Irish flake, Erinmore.

I feared this tobacco might be too artificially sweet or goopy, but it's not. I usually love McClelland's virginia flakes, but I didn't like the idea of this one to be some sort of aromatic. I was wrong, as the honeydew flavoring perfectly complements the leaf.

In the tin, the usual McC vinegar smell is very subdued compared to some of their other offerings. The impression is of honey, good fermented tobacco, hay, dried plums. Mouthwatering!

So far I have only smoked this tobacco by slightly rubbing out the flakes (not completely, mind you) and it was extremely enjoyable. Sweet and tasty from the charring light to the very bottom of the bowl. No off-notes, no bitterness, no harshness, no wetness, no tonguebite. Pure pleasure. Yes, it IS on the very sweet side, but it's not a "fake" sweetness like the one you get from heavily cased aromatics (which BTW tend to have a sweet perfume but little taste, usually).

Of course it's not a perfect tobacco: tastiness and sweetness come at the expense of complexity. There is not much flavour development: it's simply honeyish and nutty from beginning to start. But I'm not complaining, as it's quite a unique flavor for me. It's probably the only very sweet tobacco I can endure.

Give it a try: you will love it or hate it because of that pronounced honeyish sweetness. I sure loved it.

I had decided to buy a tin and to try it, based on my reminiscense of Gallaher's Rich Dark Honeydew. However, it was so long ago that I smoked the Gallaher's flake that I cannot remember how it was. I guess that the nature of Gallaher's Honeydew is not really relevant to the discussion at hand. On to my experiences with McClelland Honeydew!

On opening the tin, ketchup, what ketchup? Many people seem to get put off unneccessarily by some characteristic scent from McClelland's fermentation, I believe. get over it and enjoy the tobacco IMHO! Rather, I found the tin aroma to be pleasant, with a charactreistic fermented Virginia scent. In addition, it smoked as sweet as it smelled out of the tin, which was dated 2005.

I smoked this flake several times already and found that it burned well, either fully rubbed out and loaded into the bowl, or folded and stuffed into the pipe. A medium-sized bowl full lasted about an hour with modest relighting. Smoking it slowly brought out the subtlties that delighted me greatly, once again due to te Virginia content. It is true that this is a tobacco to be enjoyed by smoking slowly.

Each time I smoked it, near the end, the flavour got a bit stronger, but still very pleasant and sweet, without any souring whatsoever. Also, I noticed some components that I would describe as being very similar to a burley coming out into the spotlight. However, this could be the nuttiness of the apparently high grade of Virginias used in this blend IMHO. Near the end of the bowl, in all cases, the dottle that remained was very small and dry, if there was one at all, and not at all syrupy or pipe-fowling.

All in all a wonderfully successful blend by McClelland. Next time, I will try it out in my Peterson's large Kinsale, with a deerstalker cap on my head, for added effect! But seriously, I believe that I have found a new flake to love.

shakenbake

a) you dry it well

b) you smoke it slowly with concentration

c) you smoke it in a clean pipe

d) you don't mind a subtle honeydew taste that comes and goes as you smoke.

This is not at all a walk-around-and-do-things blend. This is a pay-attention-or-you-miss-it blend.