Ten years later, I tried it again, thankfully from the pouch of a fellow pipe smoker who had bought it and not from anything I had put my own money into. The blend had been changed to something acrid, cigarette-ish, and re-blended to what I guess the people at Swedish Match (note the initials...) thought would be better suited to American taste buds.

It certainly is not suited to mine. I find it to taste flat, lack any niceness of any form (wish there were an option for the room note like "unpleasant"), and the burning qualities are hit-and-miss; I had to do a lot of heavy puffing just to keep it lit though it was not too moist.

Nothing here for me; I guess I'll stick to the manufacturer's southern neighbours.

I had to power puff just to feel like I was smoking something, which in turn burnt the heck out of my mouth. Give me sawdust it would taste more like tobacco then this. I seldom dislike a tobacco so much to say things negative about but yuck, I rather smoke a weasel for my health. My Personal notes give this a .01 my lowest rating of any tobacco I have ever tried.

Borkum Riff is one of the most omnipresent pipe tobaccos in European drugstores. In spite of showing off an old sail ship in its packages, and although it is named after an dutch island and lighthouse, it is neither an old concoction nor is it made in the Netherlands; it's rather a modern, swedish product.

I bought it thinking that being manufactured in Scandinavia would assure a high quality level ? at the very least because these nordic people have a huge percentage of pipe smokers in their populations, much more so than the british, for instance. I was wrong. Provenance of the product is not everything.

Borkum Riff original smells flowery in the pouch, but has an intense mould-like aroma when smoked ? even if there is no sign of mould itself in the tobacco. The casing simply tastes so. I puffed some twenty bowls of it, just to make a fair assessment ? untill I gave up. Not only the taste was bad: the aftertaste was even worse, as if I had paved my tongue with tar. Truly unpleasant. I won't buy it or try it again.

First bowl was ok, but every other bowl and i mean EVERY other bowl has been of foul taste. Far too 'flowery' for my liking and bites hard. This was with both pouches i had obtained (6 months apart from each other). The tobacco quality was ok in the first puch, but six months on and I found stems and other parts of the tobacco plant in the pouch.

Not worth the time or money and almost made me give up. Definitely better (and easier) tobaccos to start off with and smoke.

UPDATE: Now that my skills have developed, I have revisited this one and found to be ok. Doesn't burn as I remembered and stays lit ok now. Still will never buy it again though.