House of Windsor Union Leader

I usually like the burley blends from House of Windsor... but to me this stuff was more like crushing up Pall Mall in your pipe and smoking it. It started off OK & Yes, mulled cider is a wonderful description. But then after I got the pipe up to my usual temperature (on the hot side!) it went downhill for me. An OK experience for a can, but not a repeat purchase for me.

This is one of those 'who cares?' reviews. Union Leader is part of a group of old time blends that House of Windsor revived, kept on life support for a few years, and then snuffed out. I just happened upon a can a few weeks back in a local shop and thought I might as well revisit the blend.

Union Leader is a mildly topped Burley-dominated blend that should recall various other American classics. I find in vaguely apple-ish, but the top note is subtle. I actually preferred that recent tin to either Carter Hall or Prince Albert. Then again, I suspect that the rarity factor made it taste better.

Even if it were widely available again, I can't imagine that I'd be investing in much Union Leader. But it was a nice little diversion when it was around.

A good burley/honey style mix. I like the topping. If you just want burley it would resemble 'model' HoW. If you like Burleys, want a mild aromatic-like honey, the price is right you cant go wrong!

I used to like this, but I have ruined myself by smoking Burley blends from Wilke and Peretti. This stuff is just too harsh for me these days.

Straight burley leaf, that is all. I tasted an earthy almost soil like flavor. Not bad, but not for me. This is what I would assume tobacco tasted like in the early years of the american colonies.

This is a nice, lightly flavored, ribbon-cut Burley mixture. It will probably not set your world on fire, but it's a comfortable, honest smoke, good for summers, and probably just fine for an all-day smoker. The price is very good, and this blend smokes as well as many tobaccos costing much more. I find this blend a bit boring if I smoke it in a large bowl, or more than once a day. It excels as a "working smoke," though--something to puff on where you're otherwise occupied and not looking for a demanding or complex blend.

Sampling notes: I smoked a two ounce tin of this blend in a variety of meerschaums, cobs, and briars. It smokes about the same, and that's pretty well, in just about any pipe. To my taste, it does best with some drying and airing. Union Leader can be smoked, apparently, at just about any humidity level--I've smoked some that was cinder-dry and it smoked just fine.

This is a tough tobacco to review, in a number of different ways. Union Leader was a burley-based, crimp cut. It was a favorite of the 1930s through the early 1970s, pretty much without any alteration to its basic character. Dark redfoil pack, golden eagle logo; pride of the United States Tobacco Company. It was sold in a pocket tin but I never did see that version. The package said it all: For cigarettes and pipe. It was a uniformly mixture of browns: light to golden brown, some darker chocolate brown cuts, very much like Prince Albert in color and texture. While PA had, and continues to have, a slightly sweet aftertaste, UL was a true burley base w/o casing or adornment. It had a warm coffee and bread taste when fresh. Easy to fill your pipe, just cup your hand around a pipebowl, leaving enough space to pour out the crimp cut into the bowl, then jam the tobacco w/ your thumb. Draw once,use wooden kitchen matches which last longer, and blue/gray clouds of smoke are emitted from nose and mouth. A medium sized bowl always worked best for me, for a shorter smoke. The room presence was striking, like burning autumn leaves. In a closed automobile, the aroma could be lethal after a while. But, there was a sense that you were smoking a "classic" blend. No bite, no moisture, but no real flavor either. This blend was as complex as a brick, and slightly more flavorful; small bowl or large, the flavor was consistent through the smoke.

It was a unique time for these crimp cut blends. Many companies had a crimp cut (so-called because the leaves were 'crimped' or pressed together and chopped, but not confused with granulated like Bull Durham or Plowboy), but they also offered a fuller cut tobacco. There was PA with George Washington Rough Cut, and Velvet with Granger Rough Cut, but UL never had a fuller cut. Sad, really, because UL was not a bad tobacco, just unexciting and serviceable.

You will note that I used the past tense. I have not had much recent success in finding any foil packets of this blend, and I'm not adventuresome enough to but a large can.

This was my introduction into the HOW line of blends. I realy wanted to like this but was somewhat disappointed. The tin aroma was wonderful, the cut was realy good and in my opinion the moisture was just right (a little on the dry side) straight out of the tin. The flavor was pretty good as well. My biggest and only complaint about this tobacco is that it burns on the hot side for me. If it burned cooler I would enjoy this much more. I tried this in several differant pipes with very slow puffing rate and had the same effect. There could be a possibility that there is something in this blend that just disagrees with my tongue. It almost gives me the impression that this tin is young and raw and needs more age. Most virginia/burley blends do not give me this problem. I will probably age this one for a while and see if my opinion on this blend changes.

The tin says "pipe or cigarette"......and I was a bit nervous in opening the lid. I half expected to see a mess of diced cigarette tobacco but instead found a nice medium brown crimp cut tobacco blend. It is lightly cased......and I agree with previous speculations that it's honey. The light casing adds a nice aroma to the tin but really doesn't come through in flavor or aroma from the smoke. I did pick up a definite acrid taste that began to come through about halfway through the bowl which really ruined what I thought was a pretty nice, middle of the road natural tobacco blend. I'll probably give this one a whirl a time or two more, but if the acrid flavor wasn't a coincidence, this one will be banished from the cabinet forever.