Theodorus Niemeyer Flying Dutchman

Please Note: I am trying to work off my back log of tobaccos i have tried years and years ago. In most cases i have no clue anymore when. Or who produced it back in the day. Also my memories are faded by time and those reviews are based mostly on my notes but sometimes i have a current tin for comparison as well:

Back in the day i enjoyed Flying Dutchman quiet some bit. It was cheap and readily available, the pouch note was an intriguing mystery to me and the taste was just marvelous. *IF* you packed and smoked your pipe correctly or the Dutchman would put quiet some curse on your tongue. It was the blend that taught me how to slowly and controlled just gently puff a pipe. Since the Dutchman i can smoke that slow and cool that i can even hold my smallest clay pipes very comfortably on the bowl and never even leave the comfort zone of a comforting warmth.

The taste was of floral, soapy tones and some very nice and sweet vanilla wood notes with some smokiness to it. Also every now and then there where some caramel and honey. And there is more to it as well but i fail to describe its unique taste which also stems from the wild variety of tobaccos used in this blend. All in all if you managed to smoke it cool it was an almost perfect all day smoke and never was boring. And it even had a nice enough progression throughout the bowl to be interesting enough to be smoked in the evening. Well, except for it's mildness in nicotine that is.

Then they changed the recipe or the maker or whatever they did and it was just a lousy tobacco. However, to many smokers it was a lousy blend to begin with ;o) But i really did enjoy it thoroughly.

So i give it three stars, even tho that the latest versions of this blend, incl. its current incarnation, that i sampled, only would deserve two stars ... tops.

Several weeks ago on a "junk hunt" at some antique stores I happened across this old Flying Dutchman tin. Being a fan of old tins, nautical stuff and it being priced well I snapped it up. As an added treat I found a few crispy bowls worth of tobacco inside: a vintage blend I'd never tried free with a cool, old tin! Of course I'd have to rehydrate it before I could smoke it but that wasn't a big deal.

I looked the blend up on TobaccoReviews.com and found this information: Rich and aromatic. An old favorite. Burley, cavendish and Virginia, ribbon-cut, no longer in production. http://www.tobaccoreviews.com/brand/147/theodorus-niemeyer

After rehydrating this vintage tobacco I found I'd inadvertently made it too moist. I left it in a plastic container to slowly dry back down over the last two weeks. Today it was, to my tastes, perfect for smoking: not too dry or crispy and not so wet as to as the pinch test. So, I loaded up a bowl in a Missouri Meerschaum Country Gentleman to test drive.

As I felt the moisture content and then loaded the pipe notes of cinnamon and spice were still abundant even after all the years of improper storage. There was also a faint hint of vanilla in the background.

The tobacco took flame with ease and plumed just a tad. A tamp and relight and it's "off to sea" I went!

The flavor profile while smoking was similar to the tin note yet a bit different, too. The vanilla seemed to be the major player with the cinnamon far in the background. After a few puffs a cardamon-like spice began to come into play, just under the vanilla note. This flavor stayed very consistent until the last quarter bowl when it began to become rather flat, though not bitter. While there wasn't much real tobacco taste, the blend also wasn't overly sweet, which I appreciated. And it burned to a nice, dry ash with no dottle.

My wife said the room note was very mild and pleasant, which means it would plead most anyone: She's the only person on Earth that dislikes the room note of 1Q!

The blend burned fast, in my opinion, but not hot. Of course I was being careful to sip it slowly as I didn't fancy being bitten this morning. Although I can't recall the burn-time, I'd hazard to say it was 50% less than the normal time I'd get smoking a Gent.

All in all, and considering I'm not an aromatic fan generally, I would give this blend 3 out of 5 stars. Considering the unknown time of improperly being stored, being rehydrated, then dehydrated, it held a nice flavor and made for a pleasant smoking experience. I'll even go as far as to say that it's a shame it's not still around to try fresh!

Chestnut brown crimp cut in the tin with a fairly heavy tin aroma of licorice. Came rather dry and took to the match like it was doused in gasoline. Flavor started out mild but the tongue bite that seems to be this ones heritage came out quickly. Not a full-fledged bite but a healthy tongue sizzle that felt like pepper had been poured on my tongue. Most unpleasant, and slowing down my puffing cadence to a point that I found irritable did not tame the sizzle.

If that were not enough, the licorice-vanilla flavor became wearing early in the bowl. Along with the sizzle, it felt like my tongue was coated with a graininess that required some effort to remove. To sum up, I found no redeeming features to this one and could only tolerate 3 bowls. This one is best forgotten and it looks up at one star on my personal grid... somewhere around 0.75 stars.

Not the same as it was back in the 70's, I was told. I wasn't alive back in the early 70's, but I can tell you the blend of today will never be placed in my pipes again. A scorcher for sure.

Now, this one is one of my all time favourites. I smoked this the first time when I was 9 years old (no, I am not kidding). Since then it became my usual pipe tobacco, which my dad and I enjoyed often in front of the fireplace or near the beach. I remember that until the early 90s it was sold in a round tin, like most quality tobaccos. Then they started putting it in pouches and the price started growing. Notice I am talking about European markets here. Now, 10 years ago the tobacco was moist, cut in thin ribbons and very aromatic. The room note was very pleasant and was appreciated by many non smokers when they entered my study back in Europe.

When I moved to the US I had the luck of finding it again, 4 years ago. It was sold in a pouch. When I opened it the smell was the same, but not at all inhebriating, like I remembered it being. When I pulled it out and started loading my pipe I was really surprised. This tobacco smelled the same, looked the same, but felt completely different. The moisture was (and is) gone, thus instead of the pleasant and slow burning bowl I expected, I got my tongue badly burned. I tried buying it again in other shops, thinking it was just a bad batch, but so far all the pouches I found contained this very dry version of Flying Dutchman. This tobacco certainly contains oriental mixtures you can smell it as soon as you light up. In Italy and France it is one of the most prized tobaccos sold in specialty shops.

But the oriental notes are very difficult to perceive if the tobacco is smoked faster than a little draw per minute (in the dry version). Plus the bowl lasts very little time. I don't know why this tobacco evolved to this new dry version, but when I visit Europe again I'll make sure to try the batches sold there and see if it is as dry as the one sold here in the US. Meanwhile I'll add the moisture artificially (half of an apple in a ziploc bag with the tobacco, or just a spray of filtered water).

I smoked a bowl from an already opened tin that contained a finely cut, very dry tobacco. It packed easily and lit easily and from the very first puff it reminded me of nothing that I have ever smoked before. This shag cut blend was tasty, in an old fashioned sort of way and provided a lot of strength. Mostly Burley with a touch of Virginia.

My dad smoked pipes and the occasional cigar. Inevitably I fell in love with tobacco. But I am particular about just about everything. I hated conventional cigaret smoke - still do. I do love the smell of pipe tobacco. I do not care for the taste of essentially all of them. That said, in 1974 my friend Pat was smoking a roll-your-own. I related the above to him following with, " But yours I like." He offered me one and I declined. Several weeks later we had the same conversation but shorter with the same result. A few weeks after that I accepted the offer. It was a Flying Dutchman hand rolled in Abadie Rolling papers out of a Rizla Cadet rolling machine. I was done right there. At that time a blend of 18 tobaccos, according to the label on the large can. Shortly thereafter my best buddy's sister showed me how to roll by hand. Within two years I was using un-gummed Club papers. I tried smoking a pipe for years but that pretty much requires a sedentary situation, I still have them and drag them out every once in a while. As reported by others, Dutchman can get quite hot and sharp. Around 1979 the small tin changed to include blue printing on the bottom of the tin and a reduction of the number of blended tobaccos to 14. By 1984 the blend was reduced to 12 and I had to accept defeat as no 'new old stock' could be found in Portland. In the 1990s I attempted several times to re-create my lost love - disappointment. In 2010 I found the 50% Captain Black ( White paper label, Black medallion and Gold trim ) 40% Capt. Black ( Gold paper label, Black medallion ) & 10% Capt. Black ( Red paper label w/ black medallion ) made a fine substitute if one mixes in a steel bowl and cuts it down a bit with good stout scissors. There is a good deal more tar in this combination and so I cut off about 1 1/2 inches of garden variety printer paper and fashion a mouthpiece/filter which is rolled into the end. This prevents yellowing teeth and fingers. Sadly, it does nothing to prevent 'meteor strikes' on all of my clothing. I still use only Modiano Club papers with out gum. Folks who dislike smokers still remark that mine smell good.

When I was a youngn', my father had a tin of this that wa partially open enough for me to be able to smell the aroma, and it was captivating. That licorice/anisette smell was so inviting! As I was venturing out into the pipe world myself, I tried some, and it was a great experience! I bought tins of The Dutchman regularly throughout my college years, and the aroma never got tiresome. Then...... The stuff became available in pouches, and the world changed for the worst. The tobacco was not the same. I cannot begin to tell anyone what it was that changed, but it was simply not the same tobacco that roped me in earlier. I have moved on, but I do keep my eyes out for old tins of the stuff. That was the "stuff of dreams".

A very typical dutch-style aromatic with its pros (few: great aroma to the nose, either raw or smoked) and cons (a few more: excessive sweetness - although, in this case, more natural than usual for an aromatic -, some tongue biting if you don't smoke it very, very slowly, a long and annoying persistence in mouth). 2,0/5 in my personal rating system.