Packing and Lighting: This packs easily and well and lights up easily and stays lit.

Taste: It may be laced with fruit essences but I don't taste much fruit, just the satisfying sweet/sour note of aged Virginias. Produces nice thick substantial smoke, very little steam as far as I can tell. Consistent throughout the bowl except that towards the end the smoke becomes richer and more flavorful.

For the aromatic smoker this would be something good to try if you're looking for something a little stronger and a little more complex. For Virginia smokers, don't be put off by the idea of flavoring. Flavored it is, but the bulk of the smoking experience is pure matured Virginia.

It is wonderful! I like tobaccos with a strong nicotine kick, but alas, so many of them lack the civility needed to be smoked in public. Those that have impeccable public manners are as limp as overcooked pasta. This is the tobacco to choose if you want something that people around you will like and still satisfy you. When smoking this in a public place without fail someone will come up to me and tell me how wonderful it smells- it does have a magnificent aroma for the non-smoker. And for you, the smoker, you won't have to contend with that question that I get after smoking so many other aromatics: "Did I just smoke something?" No, you'll know that you did, your wobbly knees will speak volumes.

What this blend does have in common with virginias is that to really enjoy it you need to smoke it slowly. While it doesn't bite too badly because of the orientals in it, if you puff too hard you'll lose the remarkable flavor of this blend. Slow smoking will release a constant stream of berry flavor (raspberry/blackcurrant/whatever) into your mouth and into the room around you. It comes very close to tasting like it smells.

I realize that the dedicated Virginia smoker would probably find this far too heavily flavored for his tastes. I realize that the English smoker would find it far too sweet. But for those of us who have a palate that ranges far and wide, this is one tobacco that shouldn't be skipped.

Update. After a few more bowls, I think that the flavor is more like Black Currant than Raspberry.

The tobacco was delightfully fresh; the moisture was just right, and the dark shreds of leaf were streaked with sugar crystals. I was able to scrape my first 2/3 bowlful from what had adhered to the paper disc without difficulty and pack it into the smooth Stanwell billiard I'd chosen for it. The charring light gave me the impression that the topping had indeed been increased a hundredfold from the original version, but was nevertheless essentialy the same blend. I also had the impression it would more closely resemble my 40-year old sample if it were dried out for some years and then rehydrated (which is what happened to my old sample). The main difference, I find, is that this current stuff is strong -- not the flavor, but the nicotine hit. By the time the top was charred and I was reaching for my tamper, the garage was starting to sway a little. Upon relighting, I decided that breath smoking was the way to go. From then on, it was much the same as the old stuff. I did notice that the sugar crystals gave the smoke a certain quality that I've only encountered with similarly aged C&D Blockade Runner, a sweet, musty, silky smoothness that brings on a temptation to puff harder and more often. But giving in to this is inviting tongue bite and a hot, wet smoke and as it was, the tobacco burned to a very clean, dry white ash.

In short, I was a bit disconcerted and apprehensive about the apparent heavy-handedness with the topping. But once I settled into the main smoke, I found it a faithful successor to the original. I wouldn't have either the original or the new production as an everyday or all-day smoke, but it is a great change of pace smoke, very pleasant. Too bad winter is just about gone, this would be great on frosty nights with a nice steaming mug of Darjeeling tea or apple cider.

The Virginia component is, I imagine, of good quality, but for the life of me I can't taste it beneath all the fruity toppings. This might be a good step up for the piper who's accustomed to those godawful "cherry cordial" drugstore blends. Other beware.

That much said, I will freely admit this _is_ a fun tobacco to fire up now and then in a corncob, when I feel like smoking a bowl of Frankenberries.

English aromatics are like English cuisine: something to be made fun of, without actually committing the mistake of trying it out. But every-so-often a family member who ought to know better passes the Dunhill store in Park Ave, and buys My Highness a tin of something?after all, don't I smoke a pipe?

Model family love, my selfless sense of duty to TobaccoReviews, perhaps a lingering tendency or penchant for masochism, prompted me to try this Three-Year object. It is not bad...it is just so weird. Trevert was utterly correct in associating it with unknown galaxies.

Undoubtedly matured in a secure, undisclosed location, sort of like our vice-presidents, THREE YEAR adds to the etiolated douceur of cavendished Virginia, à l' Anglaise, a trowelled topping that makes ERINMORE taste like ERINLESS. Think blancmange dolled out with fermented elderberries...

The result is neither cheap nor, God knows, humdrum: I would call it, well, hallucinatory.

When Wagner's Siegfried, who has never seen a woman before, finally meets one, he cleverly cries out, rather enthusiastically, "This is not a man!" Likewise, if I were an alien from Planet Mongo and had never experienced FLAVOUR before, I would know I had experienced flavour after smoking this! Not tobacco flavour, no, but...weeeee...it is, like, psychedelic, yeah.

How could one resist it, my fellow boomers?

PS./ Smoking this whilst strumming a guitar strikes me as exquisitely apt.

I think the great Eulenburg has nailed it when he refers to this tobacco as "cavendished à l' Anglaise", with a note of elderberries. It is a very subtle and mild smoke (quite surprising for a Dunhill), perhaps redesigned so to meet the flavouring demands/expectations of a would be new generation of pipe smokers?-something which seems apparent with all these new Dunhills in a rectangular tin: Aromatic, Mild and Ready Rubbed. I guess that many of us are used to Dunhill tobaccos as the equivalent of grand symphonies and concertos, and all of a sudden we are presented with these rather insubstantial impromptus that are closer to the Carpenters than to the more structured Brahms or Beethoven. Non the less, I would recommend it for someone new to the pipe smoking experience, or else as a bold change of pace within the Virginia smoking range.

You see, there are many aromatic smokers who do not know any better than to puff away on Borkum and the Captain. Give them a tin of this stuff and they will be confirmed members of the brotherhood. 3 Year Matured is a fun change of pace for me. When I opened the tin, I didn't know whether to reach for a spoon or pipe, but am glad I chose a pipe to load it in. Yummy!

I have read in the 1960's it was introduced as a straight virginia, but it is obviously being re-introduced to be different now.

I did not know for sure it was aromatic until I had opened a tin a year ago, but it did smell sweeter or more fruity in the tin than a straight virginia. My memory is that it was slightly sweet, but a much more pleasant blend, to me, than Dunhill's Royal Yacht, which is stronger, etc. I've read since then the three year matured virginia tobacco is sauced with a bit of rasberry. Toward the end of the tin, about two weeks worth of smoking, it started to dry out, so that shows it was not too wet with anything. But if you take more than two weeks to smoke it, you need to preserve it better than just screwing the lid back on. I seldom smoke more than two bowls a day of it (or any blend).

Upon reading these reviews, I opened up another tin (I have two cellared now for about a year). I also read the quite brief review of one gentleman from a fairly recent Ephemeris issue, which was fairly nice, and from the most recent Winter 2001/2002 issue of Pipes and Tobaccos. Their reviewer is harsh on most aromatics, as you know, but his review is most fair to this unusual but sweet blend.

I have recently smoked nearly another tin of this blend in the same Dunhill pipe. This pipe remained unsmoked in the interim (from the last tin). It is a good pipe and most receptive of this sweet blend again. It has over 30 bowls of this blend in the cake now. It will continue to be enhanced with smoking, but I feel I can certainly give a true evaluation of this blend in such a pipe.

To me, it is mild and quite nice, and definitely on the sweet side. But not heavy. A light type of wine-like or fruity sweetness persists. There is a quality virginia underneath. It is very cool, biteless, and though not a real dry smoke, it takes little effort to run a pipe cleaner through my straight stem pipe once or twice in the last half of the smoke. Much dryer than St. Bruno's flake. It is also much better to me still than Royal Yacht, which I know does not say much, but the emphasis is on the word "much".

If you only like straight english, heavy scottish, balkan, or straight virginia/perique blend types, or do not like aromatics at all, this blend is not for you. If you're more flexible and have a sweet tooth at times (and I like the foregoing blend types myself), give it a full tin try in a good pipe. Don't jump to a conclusion by a sniff, a puff, a touch, or by imagination. If it doesn't sound like your cup of tea, don't bother with it at all. A bowl won't convince you in that case. But if you want to try a smoke on the sweet side, something suitable for an occasional smoke over a few weeks of different experience and pleasure, give it a try.

I know I'm going to finish up the last few bowls from my tin before I let this Dunhill hibernate again for a while. This is a special, not everyday treat. I hope Dunhill keeps up this blend in small quantities for us few in the U.S. who will continue to partake.