Samuel Gawith Grousemoor

First, I am new to pipe smoking....around a year but what I lack in experience I make up for in enthusiasm for my new hobby. I have made it my mission to sample all manner and style of pipe tobaccos on offer.

That being said, in my short pipe smoking career I have attempted to try each tobacco with an open and unbiased approach giving each one its own due course before developing my opinion.

So this brings me to Grousemoor. I was excited to try my first "Lakeland style" tobacco. Admittedly, I was unsure what this meant but I still wanted to give it a go.

I opened the tin with same excitement that I have opened every tin....expecting to find a new and interesting experience within. I certainly did. The tin note of Grousemoor can best be explained as eccentric I think. I have not encountered another tobacco quite like it yet. I could smell the tobacco components but it was the other aromas within the tobacco that took over at my first whiff immediately. I describe that aroma as follows; pungent old lady perfume, flowery and herbal and a touch citrusy. Mostly however, it smells like of the flowery perfume. I wasn't put off by the tin note but I have to honest and say that I wasn't encouraged. It was a bit off putting to this old sniffer.

I packed a bowl and proceeded to light. I puffed away. I am glad to say that it smoked and tasted different than the tin would have suggested. However, this is not to say that I necessarily enjoyed it. If you remember "Thrills" gum (not sure if its made anymore......little pinkish-purple Chiclet type gum) this is how I would describe the flavour of Grousemoor. Admittedly, I hated that gum. It tasted floral and soapy with a bit of white sugary sweetness. Grousemoor also tastes like this to me. I finished the bowl and was happy it was done. I tucked the tin away in my tobacco drawer never to be seen again. No not really, im sure I will give it another go but not for a while. It is certainly a different experience for me as a pipe smoker.

Im sure there is a loyal and dedicated following of this type of tobacco out there but I shall not be including myself in that category.

I tried this for once and I'm looking for the same taste in every tobacco i try. This one is the real deal, my favourite tobacco. Nice smell, full aroma, medium strength.

First it should be noted that GROUSEMOOR is indeed a special tobacco, that requires somewhat different initial approach than other SG tobaccos. And that fact is crucial and really important! I think the approach to smoke grousemoor requires a relatively long drying time (much longer than for other SG blends!). By that i mean the tobacco should be really bone dry...BONE DRY. It should be dry to the level, one could think it would simply turn into dust by itself. Grousemoor needs to by dried to such level! I normally dry the whole tin quantity for 3-5 days (i put the whole tobacco on large tray and let it dry). During that period that famous lemongrass aroma evaporated to the extend it is more inoffensive. After 5 days i put the tobacco back in the original tin. EVEN AFTER ONE YEAR (!) the tobacco in this (bone dry) condition is still perfectly smokable. It seem Grousemoor could newer be to dry!

When i first purchased a tin of Grousemoor i of coarse didn't know how initially to process the tobacco. I was disappointed. If You smoke grousemoor that is still wet, the aroma can be a bit overpowering, the natural sweetness of the virginia to much subdued. No fun at all. If grousemoor is really properly dry; one could enjoy the mild, CREAMY, SWEET Lakeland blend at its best!

I think GROUSEMOOR receives so much negative critics because fellow smokers simply don't know how to treat, preprepare GROUSEMOOR. Therefore always bear in mind it should be dried even more than some other SG blends. As all virginias you should smoke Grousemoor in medium sized pipes (MISSOURI MEERSCHAM LEGEND!!!!!), take Your tin, sip the tobacco and enjoy life!

Grousemoor is a serious Lakeland tobacco. The mildest one on market today. The 200+ years of production is indeed a good indicator for a quality tobacco pipe tobacco. One of my all time favourite ribbon cut virginias, that i dedicate for special moments and smoke for almost 11 years.

This blend is an assault on the senses from start to finish. Upon opening the tin, it seems very damp, as seems to be the case with SG. The lemongrass is immediately noticeable, but nothing else really comes through until you smoke it. It's certainly not unsmokably wet straight out of the tin though, so that's what I did. Loaded up a clay tavern pipe, for fear of ghosting a briar if I didn't like it.

Didn't take to light immediately, or stay lit constantly at first, but it certainly wasnt impossible to get going. Again, the lemongrass comes through instantly, but not so overpoweringly so. It is, surprisingly I found, reminiscent of heather covered moors, and I even got a whiff of leather, cream, and vanilla. The good woman noticed heather, but I didn't so much. It's not half as perfumey as it smells, and smokes wonderfully.

All in all, this is a lovely tobacco. The room note was lovely, to the extent that the good woman consented to let me smoke it inside. I wouldn't smoke it if I was walking on the moors, but for sitting in the morning with a nice cup of tea, it was absolutely perfect, and even affected the taste of the tea, but not unpleasantly. I could smoke this day and night and not get bored of it. The only downside was the very end of the bowl was rather bitter, this is the only point the tobacco got overly lemony. Not much nicotine at all either, but I have other tobaccos for that. Will certainly be buying more.

Gawith tobaccos seem to be uneven. Some, like BBF, FVF or SL, are very good, in terms of their consistency and of the clarity of their flavour (e.g.: straight Virginia or good, strong Latakia). I find others to have an indefinable quality, in the sense that one does not know exactly what the stuff your smoking is made of.

IMO, Grousemoore (togehter with Perfection) is one of them. It purports to be a kind of Virginia blend, with a slight aroma. I couldn't make out neither. Some reviews question the "soapy" taste of many a British tobacco. In this case, it is not so much a soapy taste, but a sour-sweet concoction that pervades whatever tobacco there may be in this blend, effectivel turning it (at least for me) into something I cannot smoke.

At worst, it reminds me of something called Palladin Black Cherry; at best, it is akin to Erinmore mixture (i.e, a pineapple gone bad).

The sealed tin I received was from 2015 so it had a few years of age on it. The tobacco is a beautiful bright golden color; significantly lighter in appearance than many other golden Virginia blends that I've smoked (this aged tin was a little on the dry side). I'm not sure if a newer tin would arrive with more moisture ... guess I'll have to pick up a new one to find out.

Me thinks the flue-cured Zimbabwe leaf is most likely the main star here. The age-old top note that SG uses is purported to be a 200+ year old family secret ... and I can attest that I've never tasted anything quite like this before now. Nonetheless, in my humble opinion the top note does not overly sublimate the tobacco yet promotes a cool, clean, & fresh smoking experience. Others have described it as lightly fruity, citrusy, lemon grass, perfume-like, soapy ... to all this I say "yeah". Sure I've smoked & enjoyed other Lakeland Floral blends ... but this one is uniquely different and lightly done. The flavor nuances come out best when smoked slowly. If puffed like a freight train I think you'll miss the unique flavor profile this one intends to deliver.

All said, if you can handle Lakeland Florals I'd recommend giving it a whirl. I myself am an old American upland bird hunter ... so what's not to like about the brace of English Setter bird dogs on the tin cover? It takes me back to youthful & simpler times ... I've enjoyed the companionship of many a good bird dog ... boy do I miss 'em!

I am a huge fan of Lakeland tobaccos, GH better than SG. Even among those, Grousemoor is still one of a kind. It’s rather mild in nicotine content and its perfume is light and fresh, unlike my favorite Ennerdale which I would classify as dense. This makes Grousemoor a very good all-day smoke. As with the best blends, the result is more than the sum of parts. Apart from the evident Virginia and floral and citrus notes, I also feel tea and chocolate (in the way a good Assam tea reminds of chocolate). I found some variation from tin to tin, sometimes more pungent and sometimes less. As with many SG tobacco it is worth letting it dry a little, but not too much, or it may lose some of its flavour.

When I was a kid, I spent many a spring and summer at the family property outside of Honesdale, PA. There were two waterfalls on the property, with lots of woods surrounding them. Moss, ferns, old leaves, clean mountain air, rich earth, fresh running water, Mountain Laurel, trees, lichens - typical Pocono mountain terrain and fauna. Put all that in a pipe, add some lemon grass, and smoke it - that is my take on Grousemoor. A more simpler analogy might be Earl Gray tea. No matter, either way you get a great approximation of this venerable smoke. Wonderful stuff.

It's a Lakeland blend, but in the earthy sense of Samuel Gawith blends - not the floral sense of Gawith, Hogarth, and Company blends. I got the SG version right off the bat, but the GH&C version took me a bit longer to appreciate - and Grousemoor was the first SG blend I ever tried. That was about four years ago, and I've had a few tins of Grousemoor in my cellar ever since.

Some people recommend letting it dry for quite some time before you smoke it. This is a good idea, since it really allows the quality of the top notch Virginia leaf to shine. Let it dry less, and the wonderful mossy/earthy Lakeland essence shines. Both of these approaches have their merits, but I kind of prefer to let the mossy/earthy notes to come peaking through. Either way, though, I enjoy this bend very much and I can see how it's been a classic for 200 years now. I could smoke it all day, every day, and be a happy camper. However, I prefer to just smoke a tin every now and then so that it never loses its special appeal and becomes just another smoke.

I can see how this could be a "love it or hate it" smoke. Personally, I love it. It's not something I could smoke on a daily basis. Frankly, that is a good thing, in my book. It's certainly got a pronounced lemongrass flavor, with no bite for me. I think smoking it every day would cause me to eventually get sick of it. Instead, I appreciate it once in a while for a nice change of pace, even though my tastes range widely (from super-sweet aromatics to the heaviest English blends, and just about everything in between). There certainly isn't another blend out on the market like it. In fact, the closest thing I can think of is an Earl Grey blend I make for a small B&M cigar and pipe place my wife and I own, and even that blend is a good distance apart from this fine blend. Grousemoor is simply one of my favorite pipe smokes of all time. My compliments to the chef.