Seattle Pipe Club Plum Pudding Bourbon Barrel Aged

The constituent tobaccos are the same as regular Plum Pudding. The smoky, woodsy, earthy, musty sweet Cyprian Latakia is the lead component that is an occasional team player with the Orientals. The woody, earthy, floral, dry, herbal, vegetative, and lightly buttery sweet, spicy Orientals are an important supporting player. The Virginias have a little grass and light tart and tangy citrus along with a bit of earth, wood, bread, and some tangy, piquant dark fruit with a touch of “barbecue” as the third star in the firmament. The spicy, raisiny, plumy, earthy, figgy perique is a minor player that lurks in the background. The unsweetened black cavendish adds some smoothing brown sugar to tame potential rough edges as well as adding a little dimension to the mixture. A pinch or two of gold cavendish adds a touch of toast, though it is often elusive. The nic-hit is in the center of mild to medium. The strength starts a slot below the medium mark, but gathers a little potency by the half way mark, and settles at the medium threshold. The taste is medium at the start, and at the same spot the strength steps up to medium, the taste climbs a rung higher. It won't bite or get harsh, and has no rough edges. It is aged for thirty days in charred oak Kentucky bourbon barrels, a chunk of which is placed in every tin. While the Kentucky bourbon sublimates the varietals to a fair degree, it also synergistically helps form a deeply rich, sweet and mildly savory, complex, consistent flavor from start to finish.

It is an easily broken apart crumble cake that may need a light dry time, depending on your personal preference. It burns cool, clean, and a little slow, and will require a fair amount of relights. It leaves little moisture in the bowl. The pleasant, campfire sweet after taste and room note will linger a mite. This is an aromatic English that can be an all day smoke for the veteran as well as the less experienced. Four stars.

-JimInks

The smoky, woodsy, earthy, musty... okay, I’m not Jim so you’re not gonna get his type of review from me.

What I can tell you is that this tobacco is DELICIOUS. I like Plum Pudding fairly well, absolutely love PP Special Reserve, and this is easily the best of the three. It is extremely easy to smoke, though it does not often want to stay lit (I didn’t allow any drying time for any of the bowls I’ve smoked so far but I will the next) and it never bites no matter how often or how hard you puff. I hit it like it was a delicious snickerdoodle milkshake and it never even considered biting me.

This blend is a huge winner. Stock up on it before I buy it all.

Seattle Pipe Club - Plum Pudding Bourbon Barrel Aged.

My blend's more broken than the picture here, over a third of the tin could just be stuffed and puffed! Just the nose from the tin indicates that the aging in bourbon barrels has permeated the tobaccos with a good amount of whiskey. The pieces of kake are dark with a very seldom amount of lighter specks. It's quite moist but not wet.

I'm impressed by the amount of flavour from the aging process. This has given the tobacco more than just a 'hint' of bourbon, making it a lot more aromatic than I'd anticipated; not 'strong', but still definite. Like Plum Pudding original the tobaccos have a smooth, sweet, sumptuous, Balkan flavour; it isn't a Lat-Bomb and the Perique gives just a spot of plummy fruit; there's no real spice from it. To my palate the star of the smoke is the bourbon. It burns without a glitch, making a cool, thick, palpable, smoke.

Nicotine: medium at a push. Room-note: quite nice.

Plum Pudding Bourbon Barrel Aged? Very unique and worthy of four stars:

Highly recommended.

Some call this an "aromatic" but that isn't the case at all to my mind. In a way, this designation seems to arise from a very 'purist' notion.

An aromatic is generally understood to be a (usually lower grade) tobacco that has been essentially saturated in some sort of simulated flavouring -- which is what gives the aromatic scent of the smoke when it burns as well. This is not that.

This is your usual, high-grade, Penzance-like, Plum Pudding blend that has then been aged inside old bourbon barrels and as such it has become infused with some of that scent and flavour just by association. (It's not PP saturated in bourbon flavouring in other words.) This is why it doesn't smell like an aromatic when smoked, and the taste is extremely mild. The main place you notice the bourbon is the tin note (and in significant part that is because they've also included a bourbon barrel stave in the tin itself, so you're inheriting a lot of the scent from it.)

Overall, I'm still trying to decide what I think about the blend. I like it, though in some ways I think I may still prefer the traditoinal PP blend, if only because it has the "brownie in a bowl" thing going on as you smoke it down. PPBBA doesn't quite have that, likely because of the charactertistics that come from the bourbon barrel aging.

Still it's a good blend overall, and a nice way to change up PP, and something I definitely want in the cellar. The main downside on that front is the price point, sitting at around $19 USD for a 2oz. tin. That makes it a little 'stiff' to stock up on in any great numbers. Hopefully SPC will consider putting out an 8oz. tin of this at some point with some additional savings, just like they do for their regular PP blend.

Overall, I think for this type of so-called crossover blend, McClelland's FMC is still the better of the two to my own taste, but that may be just because I'm not a huge fan of perique (which PP and PPBBA has).

Plum Pudding is one of my favorites and so I bought this to see if the bourbon added or detracted from Plum Pudding. Smoking the tobacco immediately after opening the tin, the bourbon is a bit too strong and covers the subtle flavors I enjoy in Plum Pudding. However, canning the tobacco and letting sit for about a month and smoking it again, the bourbon mellowed and I am now able to pick up the flavors I typically get in the straight tobacco. The bourbon now plays a less dominant role and adds to the overall flavor profile. If you are turned off by the bourbon upon first opening the tin, let it sit for a while and try it again. I think you will really like what the bourbon does for Plum Pudding.

Delightfully distinguished... I will start off by saying that the bourbon in the tin note is delightful and strong. I took one of the slices out of the tin, crumbled it very easily, and left it out to dry for an hour. Not that it necessarily needs any drying time, I just find Cyprian Latakia to hold a good bit of moisture. Between this blend and Gentleman Caller I am not sure which I would rather have as a cologne. The bourbon is there and in my opinion noticed throughout the bowl; however, it does not take away from the smoke. The normal burnt rubber, spicy goodness of Cyprian Latakia is complimented with a tingle of bourbon in the nose and on the tongue. Although, that could also be the Perique. I do not believe it to be bite. Sweetness from the Virginia came in towards the middle of the bowl, which was welcomed on my palate. The blend really melds well towards the end of the bowl when the Orientals kick in. That is when you can tell the blender was going for Balkan qualities in the tobacco. This is a very good contemplative blend. Let me get this out of the way - this is nothing like Frog Morton Cellar. If you were hoping for such, keep hoping. I cannot say for sure, but I am pretty sure FMC was topped with something and this blend is not. This blend is infused and smokes as such. Is it a 4-star blend? Absolutely. Just do not get into it expecting it to be what it is not. #PeacefulPuffs

Well… I'm not Jim either, so I won't try to dissect all the nuances of this mix. I will only say that I am glad that the high expectations I had for this tobacco have been fulfilled, because when you read so many wonders about anything you run the risk of being disappointed. In this case it is the opposite: he deserves all the elegies that are dedicated to him. It's delicious.

As already stated it is the same Plum Pudding aged for a month in a Bourbon barrel that had been emptied of its alcohol load two weeks earlier, so the Bourbon aroma was intense. A piece of the barrel is included in each tin.

Opening the tin looks like a bottle of whiskey has been uncovered. The aroma of Bourbon is very noticeable but it blends well with tobacco. This makes the smoke absolutely exquisite in the first third of the pipe. Later, as usually happens with this type of liquor flavored, it gradually disappears and leaves the prominence to Latakia and Orientales, becoming something more similar to a more common English mixture (or perhaps it is more accurate to say Balkan). That mixture of light sweetness, Latakia and liquor has seemed like a delicatessen. Important to add that I allowed a drying time of 3 hours and it was perfect. I had no relight problems and it held the flavor very well.

I hope it doesn't run out before I can get hold of more tin. I also hope that the other two mixes that I have purchased from the same Seattle Pipe Club and which are Mississippi River Rum Barrel Aged and Deception Pass are at the same level. Absolutely recommended.

1st review 10/09/2020: I have finished my first tin of this mix and have already stocked a couple more tin cans for the future. I have discovered that if you smoke more slowly the perique becomes more present, something that did not happen when, driven by gluttony, I smoked it more hastily. As a few days passed, the tobacco progressively lost its initial moisture, so I had to reduce the drying time from three hours to none. I ended up loading the tobacco straight from the tin. The tobacco lasted me about two weeks, smoking a large bowl every night. I reaffirm myself in the idea that it is delicious.

I've never taken the time to review a tobacco before, but Plum Pudding Bourbon Barrel Aged, I had to. Being a relatively new pipe smoker (less than 2 years), my palate is by no means refined, so I can't really get into the tasting notes, but of the dozens of highly rated tobaccos that I have tried, this is my favorite.

I had reservations about ordering this blend, figuring it was just an overhyped kake with a piece of oak that was charred to resemble a piece of a bourbon barrel. Boy, am I glad I pulled the trigger. I have religiously placed a large order (3-5lbs) of tobacco at the end of summer for the last 15 years. I added a tin of this to the order, and promptly smoked the entire tin in short order.

As StevieB said, my tin was also mostly broke kake, with a few intact slices. 1/4 inch thick slices of easy to crumble kake that easily breaks apart. Comprised of mostly dark brown flake, with light bits of light Va. Moisture content seems to be on the high end of the smokable range when the tin is first cracked, This doesn't effect the smoking qualities at all.

The tin note is absolutely intoxicating. The smokiness of the Latakia and the aroma of the bourbon infusion is a match made in heaven.

PPBBA lights and packs with ease. An initial light and a tamp, following another light, and you are surrounded by thick volumes of glorious cloudy smoke. This blend is smoky sweet, bready and toasty, with the flavor and aroma of the bourbon shining through. Nothing but high quality leaf that burns clean and cool to the bottom of the bowl. Leaves a wonderful clean aftertaste on the palate.

This is my favorite iteration of this blend yet! Sure they took the idear from FMC but they improved upon it and far surpassed Frog Morton Cellar. This stuff is just delicious! I think this stuff is on par with Smokers Heaven Cognac Mixture & Esoterica’s Pembroke, sure those two are topped with cognac and this one here is flavored in bourbon barrels but the end result is just a different variation of the same theme. Liquor toppings usually don’t get me excited but hotdog this blend has got me all excited! Don’t get me wrong, I think FMC was tasty, it reminded me of smoked egg nog but the blend itself was just too light for my taste, I never did get into the McClelland’s English blends, I went to them for their VA’s. For those seeking something similar to FMC but would prefer a more stout, full bodied smoke than this is it. If you love. Cognac Mixture and/or Pembroke but are tired of hunting them down and paying a premium, I would highly recommend this one. This is the best new English (Latakia) blend I’ve seen in a long, long time. Hats off to Joe Langford for improving on the idear.

Essential