Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) Clan Aromatic (Original)

Clan Original, an original mixture so hated as loved. First of all we have to say that its notoriety is due more to the pleasant scent you can smell when smoked rather than its real taste. Ok, the room note is pleasant, the taste so and so. All in all it’s a good aromatic, with a lot of sweet nuances, but you can perceive also the tobacco taste, according to the dutch tradition. A fairly good flavored mixture. In my personal rating system (from 1 to 10) my score is 7 and two and a half stars.

Scandinavian Tobacco Group - Clan.

Ok, so I reviewed this a few years ago, was fairly brutal, and when I read it back I thought I sounded like the proverbial tobacco snob. So, I deleted my former review, opened a fresh pouch up, and thought I'd be as impartial as is humanly possible.

To begin on a good note the blend has an appealing appearance: snippets of all shades of weed, and to be fair the moisture's good. The pouch note was made a little tricky to identify by the smell of plastic/chemicals from the seal glue, but forgetting those there isn't anything particularly preeminent about the note.

The smoke isn't as bad as I remembered it to be, as an otc blend it isn't in the league of St. Bruno or Condor, they get four stars but I wouldn't rate Clan with only one star. The added flavourings are very mild, the main tastes are the tobaccos: I get a very toasty note from the Burley. This seems to me the stronger of the leaves, the rest make a cornucopia of flavours: I guess that's the polite way of saying it tastes a bit messy! As subjective as it is, the tongue bite deters me somewhat: it's ok for the first quarter, but does begin to give me grief after that. The burn from Clan is reasonably good, but it tends to be a touch quick.

The room-note from Clan is its best feature, and the nicotine's below medium.

This isn't THAT bad, nothing spectacular, but not the worst:

Two and a half stars.

Well. I tried this as it was the first tobacco I saw and recognised. I was 19, a student and had only smoked Marlboro, Golden Virginia and the odd Hamlet Special Reserve (Remember them?) or Castella Panatella! (We won't be going into the other student kind of smokes although it might have improved my views on Clan....) OK, this nearly put me off pipes for life. Maybe it was me, my age, my penchant for cigarettes or something, but what I remember the most is that the pack smelled wonderful, like playdoh in the best possible way. I was really looking forward to it. On a par with Gold Block really. That said I've known people who swear by Clan and my old woodwork teacher used to smoke Gold Block all day long, so each to their own on this one.

I purchased a pouch of this stuff on my recent trip to Europe. It was purchased out of necessity because though I had a couple of pipes with me, I neglected to bring any tobacco, figuring I could find some good baccy somewhere in Rome—it turned out I was wrong. The four Tabachi's I visited always seemed to stock the following: Clan, Skandinavik(s) and Amphora. I decided on Clan. I suppose I could have held out for something better, as I'm sure somewhere in Rome there's a shop that has better selection but, alas, I ran out of time (I should have held out for Milan, where in fact I did purchase some better baccy later).

I suppose, in a pinch, Clan's not all that bad, but, I really didn't enjoy the taste much, nor it's other rather displeasing characteristics, such as it being rather harsh and, despite what they claim, it burned fast and hot (not slow). Tastewise, it didn't remind me of an aromatic, more just a plain uncomplicated tobacco taste (which, considering how many different tobaccos are in this, rather surprised me. Also, the blender claims an alcohol additive—perhaps, I didn't really notice it).

Not the worst tobacco I've had, but no where near the best. A grudging 2 stars here, for me.

Keep on Piping!

'Blandly inoffensive' might be a good term for my reaction. I didn't get scorched, it didn't taste bad -- this seems to be a very mildly cased Cavendish with a trace of burley. What little casing there was might be somewhat dark fruit related? It was light enough I really couldn't tell. That combo doesn't appeal to me; I can see where it might to others.

As my first experience of pipe tobacco some three months ago i feel I should mention this one for my first review. I must mention also my girlfriend so hated my stinking cigarette smoking she bought me a pipe and a pack of this for my 40th! I've not stopped thanking her though not necessarily for this tobacco in particular.

However, I think as a supermarket regular easy to buy smoke which weirdly smokes best in my least expensive pipe it has given me a good introduction to pipe smoking. I'm not going to try and wax lyrical regarding the tastes i get being just a beginner, though i find it smooth, sweet and easy smoking.

The smoke is very sweet but can become disgusting.

This isn't a real review, since I only had one bowl from a sealed yet very dried out pouch. I assume it was older, yet not classic. I reconstituted it a bit. I did conclude that I won't be buying any. There are just too many tobaccos in the blend that just seemed thrown together, it was boring (though not so spoiled that I couldn't tell what a newer pouch would basically taste like), and after sniffing the jar a few times over the months and deciding that I just didn't want to relive the experience of that one bowl, threw it out, something I rarely do. Since this was never sold in a tin, I can never really hope to try a well-aged classic sample, so I will have to take certain of the old hand's assertions on faith that this was at one time a decent smoke.

I rate this stuff "somewhat recommended" for 2 basic reasons:

- it is known as the roughest and "pop" tobacco of all the "historic" ones on italian market... -my beloved grandpa, now gone, use to smoke tons of this when i was a kid and its room note makes me think of those times....

After all I can't really understand what kinda floreal-candylike flavour they may have used to case this but it's weird...I can't taste any perique in it but I do taste some smokey flavour maybe cause of kentucky.

Weird. weird, weird but I smoked worse ones. That peasant tavern room note, I just can't forget...