Mac Baren Latakia Rolls Limited Edition

This is a first Impression - I will edit this in a week or so when I'm half way through a tin:

The presentation is nice (lovely tin) and the crispy rolls are perfectly dry out of the can. It looks very similar to a can of Dark Twist.

This smells notably smokier from the can than it tastes.

I took a walk with a brand new freehand cob and stuffed it with 5 rolls from the newly opened tin (#5977 of 7500). This behaved very well for an hour of lunting.

The main flavour I'm picking up is mild to medium and quite pleasant. You can detect the mild sugar/maple casing which is ubiquitous to Mac Baren roll-cakes.

A smoked, mildy nutty, caramelised crème brulée was the overall impression I got. Definite hints of custard and cream.

That flavour seems to be consistent through to the end of the bowl where it ramped up nicely to a somewhat strong cinnamon/spice finish. The smoke itself is smooth and middling to full in volume.

But yes - I will have to keep smoking it. So far it's a very nice smoke. Quite mild, fairly sweet. Not at all a latakia bomb, but it acts as a pleasant condiment. I only lit it once and it burned all the way to the bottom.

I will be tempted to up this to 4 stars if it keeps it up.

Appearance: Coins, slightly irregularly rounded with a diameter of about 30 mm. Inside each coin you can clearly see sliced latakia flakes wrapped in other tobaccos, which makes up about a third of the inside of the coin. The latakia is not in the center of the disc, but as one of the lobes. The wrapper layer of the disc consists, judging by the color, of yellow and red Virginia, while inside, along with the latakia, is a mixture of Kentucky and a couple of kinds of Virginia. The moisture content of the tobacco is perfect.

The flavor of the tobacco is quite difficult to separate into its constituent parts. Nevertheless, Kentucky clearly leads the way, leaving the latakia not even in second place, but somewhere on par with Virginia, in the overall chorus of other scents. The tarry and woody note with a nutty touch defines the general bouquet, it is supported by dried apples, fresh wheat bread, some hay, suede, and only then, smelling slightly of incense, "Her Majesty, the Black Queen" lazily and cautiously enters the stage. The flavor of tobacco reveals itself very slowly. If you wait a while, the undertones become somewhat brighter, but the overall bouquet remains calm and unobtrusive.

I didn't have much luck determining the taste of the blend at first. I tried my first pipe of Latakia Rolls in the evening, after two or three samples of other tobaccos and a good dinner with spirits. Of course, as a result, it all came down to one main note, and that note turned out to be a dense aged Kentucky. I dislike Kentucky even more than I dislike dark Burley, because of its characteristic smell, which reminds me of burnt rubber, and its peculiar taste. So I approached the second pipe with some apprehension. Quite dense recognizable notes of Kentucky, of course, again echoed first, but this time the Kentucky was not alone. The overall taste of the blend was quite complex and contained, in addition, halftones of malt, some dark sweet dried fruit, a woody note, smokiness and a bit of meat. The notes were very well blended into a dense bouquet, transitioning one into the other. I closed my eyes, added a little imagination... Drinking a shot of mescal, snacking on a good piece of charcoal roast, and sipping a nice, dense, slightly sweet stout from an old oak mug, with tar showing through in places. That said, the taste of the blend was fairly subdued, not hitting the receptors. I hoped that it would be brighter if I took a longer puff-and immediately realized my mistake: the tobacco tried to bite my tongue. I realized that I would have to be patient. However, the threat to my tongue disappeared only in the middle of the pipe, so I had to smoke it very slowly and carefully. This gave me the opportunity to appreciate the smooth transition of flavor when the Kentucky stopped prevailing. However, it did not cede the lead to the latakia, but took a back seat to the Virginia influence. Latakia, on the other hand, was only in support of these two tobaccos. At the same time, as I smoked, the notes of Virginia continued to grow until the end, displacing not only the latakia but also the Kentucky. By the end of the pipe, the Kentucky had all but disappeared, and that's when the blend tasted much more like a classic English. Subsequently, I smoked another pipe, a different shape, replacing the billiard with a half pipe to gauge the effect of the shape on the taste of the tobacco. Alas, bad news for latakia lovers: the Virginia and Kentucky in the curved pipe appeared slightly more vibrant, while the latakia was even more muted. The tobacco has a medium strength, is able to smoke extremely slow and cool, but, as I have already noted, requires patience. The speed of smoking this tobacco is easy enough to determine by the color of the ash: if it is dark and relatively large - you smoke the mixture too fast. If you smoke it correctly, the mixture burns out almost to a light gray dust. Tobacco leaves a small amount of moisture in the pipe.

The dense smoke has a tannic, woody smell and settles into the room in a rather heavy carpet. I don't think those around me would be thrilled with it. I smoked the mixture in a draught, but after an hour I could still smell traces of it in the room.

What's the bottom line? First of all, the manufacturer's description of the tobacco was very accurate, except for the fact that, for such a high-profile name, the latakia in the mixture, in my opinion, still spared. As a result, the blend could have been called Kentucky Rolls with Latakia. I also didn't like how the tobacco behaved in the first third: omitting even the fact that I don't like Kentucky - it was a bit stiff. But I can't help but celebrate the success of the overall idea - a complex aroma and flavor. I think if I halved the amount of Kentucky and added latakia in its place, the result would have been completely to my taste. Either way, it was a great experience.

While this is not an instant classic, it is a very enjoyable coin cut roll cake. Sweet and spicy at varying levels. Not one i go to often but a good sometimes smoke.