J. F. Germain & Son Plum Cake Mixture

In my opinion this is not a good blend. The taste is sickly and overwhelming and it left me with a nasty tounge bite. Never again Thankyou.

This one is a funny cookie. A nice long cut, almost shag like, but not quite.

Very nice tin aroma, maybe something close to rum (like MacBaren's Plumcake).

Smoking it was not the most exciting experience however. Sure it smokes and burns well, but...something is missing. Vitamin N, I believe!

Germain has a reputation for high quality that is well deserved. This was the first of their blends that I have tried. Plum Cake has a delicious tin aroma that does indeed stimulate the appetite. It is reminiscent of raisins. It could be described as a very long ribbon cut. It was very tightly packed in the tin and needs to be rubbed out a bit to make packing into the pipe easier. It lit easily and produced clouds of thick smoke.

The taste, despite the tin aroma was very very mild. There was little there to ponder on, so I just puffed away. It maintained a pretty steady one note flavor the whole way down. It was not a hot blend by any means. Still, I was looking for a little more excitement.

It was not a total disappointment, but nothing to write home about either. If it were not for the price it would make a good all day blend for working in the yard and such that you dont want an overpowering blend or something to think about. There are other blends that do that for far less cost. Still it is not bad at all, just not that great either.

Germains Plum Cake Mixture- It is fruity sweet with a wine and herbal floral thing going on . What herbs and spices? I have no idea what it is but it is certainly unsual . The air cured leaf gives the blend some body and strength to contrast the sweet flue cured Virginias. It reminds me of no blend or flavors I have tasted before . It has a slighly bitter note sometimes in a good way . It has some fig like and vanilla notes also . If you want something different to try , this is it . Truly original . 3

My second foray into the world of J.F Germaine. Plum cake, as much as I wanted to live it, I couldn't. While not an awful tobacco it just didn't hit the right notes for me. Very thin long strands, and WET! this needs drying before putting into a pipe or it will be like trying to set fore to wet grass. Flavour notes are of spiced cake batter, red wine tannins with no trace of plum. Once dried and packed right, both must be perfect or it just will not work, it is a decent smoke. Must be smoked slow or will bite. However I just don't think the effort is worth the end result. Quite mild in every area, once working as it should is palatable but thats about it. 1 star would be unfair so two is about right.

Not for me, this one. I did dry it a little from the pouch and it lit and stayed lit well. However, from the first taste, all through the bowl it was sour and really unpleasant. It was so unpleasant that I can't bring myself to try it again. I could taste the wine flavour that some reviewers speak of, but it was more like wine vinegar. I am sure others will have a better experience, but for me, I'm not going to try again. I'll swap this out for other Germain blends that are far superior to this.

Grassy hay like Virginia. The casing wears off even with light puffing. Not much too This mixture at all. Medium to strong nicotine hit. Enjoyable and will buy again .

YUK! I purchased two aged tins of this on Ebay over a year ago...I opened one, smoked one bowl, thought it was awful! But I put it in a Mason Jar for a year to see if it helped...WELL, it did not. Hot and Nasty with very little flavor, this blend is not even worth smoking. AND, I have another sealed tin! Oh well, at least the artwork on the tin is nice. ALSO, I don't know what the "unique added flavour" is, but what it tastes like is a word I like to use frequently, but is considered profane language and is not welcome on this forum.

I bought some of this on the recommendation of a friend, who suggested that it was so unique I had to give it a try. Having done so, I find that there are a few rather similar blends available (I'll come to that later), but it is worth a try and I found it quite enjoyable.

The tobacco was supplied very moist indeed - far too moist to my tastes, and I smoked it both as provided and after some drying time. It's mostly a tan coloured, very fine and even ribbon cut, with a little black leaf some of which is obviously rubbed from flake. The aroma in the bag is vinous and fruity with an underlying mild, hay like tobacco aroma.

Ignition can take a little work despite the fine cut, owing to the moisture, and the flavour is mild. It's in the side stream aroma that I got the surprise - an olfactory flashback to smoking the Erinmore Mixture! I got through a fair bit of that stuff back in the day (not so much because of quality, I preferred the flake, but they sold it me cheap) and was astonished that something in the topping of this blend is a dead ringer for the Erinmore essence. It's a kind of old school artificial fruity scent, pleasant in its own way. The Erinmore Mixture I remember was much more heavily sauced with it, this is more subtle. To me, this sits in a particular category of old fashioned British tobaccos with a fruity flavouring, in which I include Erinmore, Royal Yacht and Three Year Matured Virginia.

The flavour of this blend is mild, the fruity essence doesn't saturate the tongue, and it doesn't bite despite being rather wet and steamy. I smoked it on holiday in Germany, in some very hot weather - the bowl of the pipe got pretty warm. It's pretty low on the nicotine front, so I've tended to pick my more capacious pipes for it. All in all, quite agreeable, but I think I'd prefer Royal Yacht, mostly because it's got more nicotine punch and the flavouring is more subdued.