House of Windsor Union Leader

I recently went up to Springfield IL to take care of some personal business and stopped into the tobacco store located downtown. I used to go in there to buy cigars before the prices went nuts years ago. Anyway I was pleasently surprise that they had several tobacco blends Rattrays, Galwaith, and upon walking out the door spied a House of Windsor display. I grabbed one of Barking Dog, Mapleton, and lastly Union Leader tins and only mention the shop for those stuck in Springfield and or central Illinois who need a tobacco fix this was a nice shop.

I lit up Union Leader first being rather wary after smoking Briggs which was just super bland to me. This tobacco was much better. Little sweet and lil nutty from the burley. I found myself smoking this in these last few hot days of summer and finding it went well with the conditions. It has a nice room note, though not too strong, and seemed to leave fairly soon. The tobacco seemed like a good place to start for those interested in burley blends for it seemed a step up from others of this ilk that one would find in a drug store.

As Pop-Pop put it, this is one great no bull$%#@ tobacco! I would not have normally gone for something so "straight up" from a blender I had never tried, but was graced with a sample recently. Very mellow, easy to burn, sweet but not cloying smoke. Americana tobacco at it's best, rivaling C+D's mastery of this genre. I probably won't smoke it all the time, just due to personal taste, but if you want a straight forward quality smoke, try this!

My kind of smoke! I can do this all day. A straight up american burley and virginia blend of excellent quality with a sweet old fashioned pipe room note. Reminds me of my great-grandfathers pipe aroma. An excellent old time no bulls##t blend. Five stars in my book.

Like others have noted here, I picked this up because of the P&T article and the description being a Burley and Virginia without casings. This has to be one of the best new (to me) blends I've tried in a long time. I've been smoking this in a bunch of corncobs and it works well in every size, from the cheap drugstore ones to the Mac Arthur big ones. My bucket seems to have quite a bit of Virginia leaf mixed in and sometimes during the smoke it actually steps up over the Burleys. It's a crimp cut, very dry and without much of a tin aroma. The burn is excellent, there's no bite and the pipe doesn't get hot even though it's so dry. This one is definately a keeper and might turn into my new everyday smoke since it has almost everything I'm looking for and is reasonably priced too. If it was a cube cut Burley, it would be my Holy Grail...Wonderful stuff.