Low Country Pipe & Cigar Natural Virginia & Oriental

The Old Belt red Virginia offers mild tangy dark fruit, earth, wood, bread, light floralness and vegetation along with pinches of sugar, spice, and a touch of malty vinegar as the lead component. The potently floral, woody, earthy, very sour, spicy, herbal, vegetative, slightly buttery sweet, sharp, acidic Turkish is a secondary supporting player despite the claim there’s just a touch of it present. The strength, nic-hit and taste levels are a couple of steps below the medium mark. There’s no chance of bite or harshness, though there are a few rough edges. Well balanced and mildly complex, it burns cool and clean at a moderate pace with a very consistent sweet and sour, savory, spicy, floral flavor that translates to the pleasantly lingering after taste. The room note is a notch stronger. Barely leaves any dampness in the bowl, and requires few relights. An all day smoke with some depth and body.

-JimInks

The tobacco came at a good level of hydration for me. It is a mix of tans in a medium ribbon. There are some irregular chopped bits, but it is really a short ribbon. This bag and the Natural Virginia are very similar in appearance with this one being slightly darker.

This is a pleasant smoke. It is slightly sweet and there is a little spice from the Orientals. It makes a good combination. The smoking was uneventful - it did not smoke hot or damp. It was not challenging to keep it lit. Flavors were consistent. It is fairly mild in the nicotine, and the flavor is on the medium end of the range. I have to say I have enjoyed the Oriental signature, and it seems to grow on me.

I think this is a better all-day smoke than the Natural Virginia, and I might buy more of this. It is a solid 3 on the scale.

Mostly mid brown tobacco with a scattering of pale leaf. There is a sweet nondescript bag note somewhere in the brown sugar part of the spectrum and some spice on the nose that reminded me of cinnamon and cloves. It is a short ribbon cut that tends towards dry.

Takes a light easily and burns well.

This is solid red Va territory with bread like aromas filling the mid palate. Orientals provide a distinct sharp acidity on the top end and this marries with some lemon and grass from the Virginias. If this were a wine it would be a Riesling. It doesn't have a lot of complexity, nor is there appreciable transition as the bowl progresses. I haven't tried adding Lat or Perique to this blend, but given the price point this might be a good candidate for a base blend to experiment with. If you like baccy on the tangy and sharp side then this will fit the bill as it is.

I enjoyed this straightforward blend and will surely buy more of it.

Low County - Natural Virginia.

A very well rubbed-out ribbon, medium brown, with a great hydration to it. Although the blend contains a few coarser pieces, the majority's shag-like, so there's no pieces in need of discarding.

Something which reduces the rating is the temperature of the burn. Unless a gentle technique is used it becomes quite warm. It says there's a 'touch' of Turkish, but mine has the flavour of more than just a touch. The Turkish adds a fragrant, floral, taste. The Virginia accounts for a lot of the smoke, but has quite a mediocre flavour. It burns well, apart from the heat, and doesn't bite me.

Nicotine: medium. Room-note: pleasant to tolerable.

It's not exactly my cup of tea! Two stars:

Somewhat recommended.

At less than $20 a POUND in 2021 I figured this one was worth a try. It was less than 2 months blended (Feb 2021) when I first smoked it, so it's very Green. Comes in a large Ziplock bag which isn't heat-sealed.

The bag note is grassy and a little floral. Moisture content was great. It's a ribbon cut on the shaggy side similar to some RYO mixes. My bag was well mixed and I didn't see any twigs or larger pieces.

It's an easy mixture to pack and lights well. The smoke has a grassy high note from the VA's with some sweetness. The Oriental (maybe Izmir?) adds a good level of floral/spice and the combination reminds me slightly (in a good way) of a camel unfiltered.

It's not overly complex and I found the smoke repeatable in different shaped bowls. It does want to burn warm if pushed, but if sipped plays nicely. I found it a little "ashy" in some smokes towards the end of the bow, but not enough to stop smoking.

At the price-point (no more than a tin of some tobaccos) it provides a smoke which is solid by itself and also lends itself quite nicely as a base for blending.

Adding some latakia will move it towards the light english range while some perique hits a VaPer. Some additional Izmir or other oriental can boost that side of the smoke if you find it lacking.

Package note of dried dark fruit and hay. Tobacco is a Ribbon cut of brown and light brown. Moisture content is great. Burns moderately fast with few relights. The strength is mild to medium and nic is mild. No flavoring detected. Taste is medium and moderately consistent, with notes of tangy dark fruit, floral, tart citrus, sugar, spices, hay, earth, bread, musty vegetation, wood, zesty lemon grass, slightly acidic, dry bitter, mildly savory, a spicy herbal incense background note, and a peppery retro. Virginia is leading with Oriental/Turkish supporting. Room note is pleasant to tolerable, and aftertaste is great.

Let me say from the start that, while some of my favorite blends are from C&D (Dreams of Kadath, Haunted Bookshop), I have been burned by their virginias enough times that I sort of made a rule for myself that I wasn't going to try any of their primarily virginia-based blends (for anyone who might not know, and someone correct me if i'm wrong here—Low Country pipe tobaccos are made by Cornell & Diehl. Low Country, Smokingpipes.com, Laudisi, and C&D are, for all intents and purposes, the same thing). Previous C&D virginias for me have lacked all sweetness and often so rough on my throat I could hardly smoke a bowl.

However, I love me some orientals, and I love C&D's orientals, and they are really one of the few producer/manufacturers that really pay much attention at all to oriental-lovers. So it was with a high degree of skepticism and a tiny bit of hope that I ordered an ounce of this one to try—and I figured at less than 2 bucks it wouldn't be a big deal if it was another C&D virginia bust

Uniform ribbon cut, quite dry, but not crispy or over-dried. A pleasing medium reddish-brown I'm guessing are the Red Vas, with some lighter browns that might be the orientals, or some of it bright leaf if there is any (it does not mention bright leaf in the description, even though Low Country Natural Virginia, sans ori, is said to contain it). Pleasant sour, malty, tangy fragrance in the jar. Good signs, but then again, I have been fooled before.

because of the dryness of the ribbon, I packed it tighter than I normally do. Almost too tight, but it didn't turn out to be too much of a problem, just had to be careful about tamping as I smoked it.

Incense, butter, woody comes through from prevalent Orientals—good news. And while I don't taste the virginias much, that's not a bad thing. Virginia is there, but SO mild. More of a spine to the blend that supports the orientals—a spine that holds everything up and that you don't notice because it isn't hurting you, is really what a good spine should do (I was in physical therapy most of last year for back problems so I know).

If I had got this primarily for the Virginia flavor I think I would be disappointed. But with my expectation for C&D virginia being what it is, these virginias, being even quietly sweet and only a small bit of mild rough edges, are such an improvement from my usual experience that I'm delighted. And the point, of course, was the orientals, which come through well.

The description says that it's mostly Red Vas with a bit of Orientals. As others have commented in the reviews, the taste almost seems flipped from that description. But I believe that is because we're dealing with C&D red virginia… I'm not going to keep bashing that dead horse, my feelings on that are clear enough at this point.

Creamy, rich white smoke. Excellent in that regard. I like seeing and feeling and smelling big clouds of smoke around me. The blend can smoke very hot, though. My pipe got pretty uncomfortable to touch a few times and I had to slow down and let it rest a bit. I do not think it translated so much into the flavor, though perhaps the cause of some of its rough edges (again, remarkably mild compared to my past C&D rodeos).

Medium-low to medium nicotine. More than I expected, in fact.

The bottom line: I liked it. I might buy more, seeing as there aren't a whole lot of inexpensive and easy to find oriental blends out there without latakia. Then again, I have a pretty good VaPerOr home blend made with C&D izmir and sutliff everything else. The flavor of my home blend is more rich, but it's more expensive. But with the Low Country blend, we're talking about a really great value bulk blend here—I repeat, this is less than 2 dollars an ounce! Of course my home blend is more expensive than that, even if it's also pretty dang cheap.

If you, like me, want to try a cheap Va/Ori blend but are suspicious of C&D virginias, give this one a shot. It might surprise you.

If you are already a fan of C&D and have no qualms with their other virginia-based blends, then these cheap Low Country bulks are like a C&D cheat code

Based on this experience I am interested in trying more, even might pay more than the bulk prices to try their tinned VaPerOr offering, Atalaya