Wilke Pipe Tobacco Surbrug's Jackson

If you like hearty Burley blends this could be a three star blend for you, otherwise two stars. Perhaps the percentages in my two ounce sample were different than what others have received, but I didn’t get much of the sweet black Cavendish which would have helped. First light gives a little bitterness like walnut shell, but that soon subsides to a background earthiness. I get some black walnut and unsweetened pecan, a little earthy baked potato skin now and then. The nutty tastes here are not complimented by any of the usual molasses sweetener, and the overall texture is rather firm, not creamy. Cigar smokers won’t be bothered at all by this, but to me it tastes a bit coarse. If this were my blend I probably would have adjusted the pH a little more or used some TS-3 brown Cavendish.

With this amount of burly Burley I probably wouldn’t have wasted good Yenidje in the blend, as it is almost entirely lost. Latakia and Virginia are there if you look for them, but this is first and foremost a Burley blend. The right Perique, like Stokkebye’s dark fruity Perique would have helped here, rather than the slight black peppery Perique we get (the Perique used by Wilke seems to vary by supplier). It’s a real stretch to call what I received an English, or a Latakia dominant blend. I consider it more of an American style mishmash. Altogether, with caveats I could give this three stars (a charcoal filter also helps reduce some of the firmness), but for my general pipe smoking pleasure this only gets two stars.