This is an excellent tobacco blend. I smoke it often and I never seem to tire of it.

Keeping it short and sweet, for this review I would like to compare parts of it to the famed Balkan Sobranie original mixture:

Is it a dead-ringer for Balkan Sobranie? No. It is however quite reminiscent, it certainly does have that "velvet hammer" approach and texture. Balkan Sobranie does offer more depth and has more of that "dry cellar/basement" taste that I really like.

Grab yourself a bowl and enjoy the pleasure of an expertly crafted blend. Excellent tobacco and an excellent value.

I find this to be a very decent, middle-of-the-road Balkan with few pretenses to greatness but very smokable. In fact, if I hadn't smoked a fair amount of GLP and Compton's balkans, this one might rank a little higher with me. But the low cost and high quality of this one make for a nice smoke. It's a medium balkan with good flavor and burning qualities. Nothing to ring too many chimes but certainly good enough. Rather than ranking it with Balkan Sobranie, I'd put it up there with Balkan Sasieni... which makes sense since it's also a Stokkebye product. My tasting notes on the Sasieni were similar - good but not great. The bulk price of this elevates it beyond the Sasieni as a "best buy". Good oriental presence and the latakia never overpowers. This is kind of a Dunhill 965 with less of a personality, although I hesitate to call it "965 Lite". It has a fuller flavor than a "lite" would typically have.

Overall good smoke! I recommend it for those who enjoy a nice balkan. In fact, I think any balkan lover should give this a spin. I simply prefer other blends, but naturally that doesn't mean everyone will. But at this price, you can't afford to not try it at least!

I detected a lot of flavors I'm very familiar with, virginia, orientals, & latakia, but their use here is so full...the smoke is so well balanced, everything in its place and working together. Very close to perfection.

Latakia should be banned outright. A few flakes of latakia I can take, but this is a latakia nuclear dirty bomb. In the bag it smells like chemicals from a sewage treatment plant, but wait, the explosion comes when you light it. Everything around you will smell like latakia. And the taste it leaved behind in your mouth, I can't even go there, just can't.... think of a happy place... think of a happy place.

You have been warned.

My first bowl I eagerly lit thinking of the high praise it receives here. Mistake. Now, I'm no Balkan expert(at all), but the Balkans I've had to date all did the same thing for me...the Latakia tended to mask the other components, whether for a few puffs, or for many bowls, before I could start isolating other flavors. This is apparently a body chemistry thing of mine. I like Latakia a lot, but higher percentages just overwhelm my palette to a point it takes a while to enjoy the whole blend. Not so with PS BS. Wait a tic...that's a good thing! After a couple bowls I realized it wasn't what I thought it would be(and hence, a low rating), it was something different(and I liked that difference, a high rating)!

So there I am, smoking a blend on it's own merits...(yeah, of course it's the only good reason). Latakia light, to my mind, with a 'creamed butter on wheat toast/candy corn' snork that I just can't describe better. It's totally unique, and quite tasty. I have to assume this is a weird interplay of the cavendish and orientals. I only wish I could actually spot the orientals on their own...but I can't. The cavendish I'm pretty sure I can pick up in that snork, however. Now in a good blend, maybe easy isolation of components is impossible(hence-a good blend), so I should maybe sing praises here, but this one quite doesn't do it for me.(Too sweet, maybe? Dunno.) I'll enjoy the last couple or three ounces I have, but it may be a bit before I entertain getting more. Still, at the current price point, I can heartily recommend BS to anyone who likes Latakia blends. The reviews here attest to it's popularity. I may even come around with a fourth star one day.

nice and fluffy and pungent in the bag. almost jet black and gold ribbons. very classic quintessential pipe tobacco aroma, the kind you expect to smell when you enter the tobacconists. packed and tamped packed and tamped until i had a proper bowl. lights well and expands quite a bit so i had to tamp again after lighting. flavor is immediate and soothing. smoke is medium to creamy and abundant. if i had to describe the flavor i would say its "rustic" otherwise its just very well procured and blended tobacco. the oriental gives it a little color and is slightly detectable but i mostly taste Latakia and Virginian. very mild and tasty. made my mouth water enough to slobber down the stem and make it gurgle a bit. this tobaccos aroma will linger a bit after a pipe so dont smoke it if moms coming home soon. this one is in my top ten favorites but not my all time. still an amazing blend kudos to stokkebye.

9/29/2010 Update I've always wondered how my father, grandfather and other loyal pipe smokers could stick with one blend their entire life........Now I get it! PSBS is that mixture. I can't smoke it wrong. It is complex enough to keep my interest and simple enough to crave. I love this blend!!!!!!!

While smoking this tabak I was reminded of a painting I saw once at the MoMA in NY. Its a large wall sized work by Matisse called 'the piano lesson', (1916): a small boy peers out over the top of a his sheet music, a steel grey room is illuminated by strong green light from a French balcony, a teacher sits perched and distant, faceless, watching from far in the background. The boy isn't so much looking at us as within himself; at once discovering that all these push-button notes he's been plodding away at actually come together to make music. He has had to stop to take in this discovery of a whole new world of pleasure, suddenly available to him.

I'd seen the painting many times in books, but I sat and stared at the real thing for over 20 minutes, even with the evening crowds of tourist passing in front of it. I looked at the way the greys were quite varied, how a lot of attention was paid to the way the disperate edges came together, creating more than architecture, but a real moment in time. And that look on the boy's face!

That (amongst all the fine sentiments mentioned by others) is how this tobacco works, tastes and is savoured, and I fianlly have my first 4 star smoke.

To be more clear, this is and probably always will be my primary Balkan mixture. It is WAY beyond good! Oh, and to any who might question what I said about Sobranie...... I smoked MANY, MANY cans of that wonderful classic. While memory can fail, my sense of smell is pretty accurate most of the time. :)