Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG) Troost Aromatic Cavendish

This is a good substitute for Amphora green. It's slightly of better quality than Amphora. It has a nutty taste and a balmy sweet aroma. Relatively a cool smoke. Like all Dutch blends it has good nicotine punch.

Troost Aromatic is an economical Dutch Cavendish that reminds me of Sail Regular. Like Sail, it's a seemingly well-cut broken flake that looks and smells like tobacco.

The resemblance ends there, unfortunately.

Sail comes properly humidified; Troost comes dry as a bone and takes several days to moisten into something smokable. Sail smokes dry and cool; Troost smokes hot and bites. Sail has a light, sweet, natural taste; Troost tastes like the bitter burley that it is, and leaves an acrid aftertaste.

In general, for summertime smoking I prefer the Dutch cavendishes to the Danish blends (excepting Mac Baren Navy Flake, which I always have on hand). They generally taste and smoke better to me. Troost Aromatic is the exception to this rule, though. At $4 for a 50-gram pouch, it's a bargain, and it can be made to smoke passably well, but for a few pennies more, you can buy Sail, and why not? Sail is one of the great summertime smokes, and it runs less than half the cost of your average tinned delectable.

Well, it's been almost a year since I have even smoked an aromatic and on a complete nostalgia-fueled whim, I decided to order a pouch of Troost Aromatic Cavendish from Watch City Cigar. (And with all the poor reviews here, I was certainly questioning my own sanity about the decision!)

To my surprise, this is a very nice aromatic. My pouch was nicely compressed into a thick candy bar shape and the moisture content was close to the ideal. I took out a clump, spread it out on a piece of paper and it was good to go after about 30 mins.

Taste-wise, it's mild tobacco-y with a light fruity casing that's definitely not overly done with sweetness. The aroma is especially nice and possibly the nicest thing about the blend - some wood smoke with a just touch of classic aromatic sweetness - I would call it Aromatic "Mature" so if you favor English blends like I do, you might actually like this blend for a light change of pace or warm weather blend.

All in all, despite the low scores here, my experience has been just the opposite so I’m glad I took the plunge - this blend smokes cool and without any tongue bite. (I do smoke aromatics in 9mm filter pipes to minimize the possibility of tongue bite and I also smoke at a leisurely pace.)

I find this blend somewhat similar to Sail Aromatic (Green) and Amphora Full Aroma so this is a great alternative, allbeit at a much higher price.

Because they were old and packaged attractively, I bought two 100g tins of this blend on Ebay in the Spring of 2017. I had them on my 2017, 2018 and 2019 NASPC tables but they attracted scant attention. What attention they did attract centered around the quaint and touching illustration on the lid of a man giving a pull off of his clay to another guy in a stockade. One person looked at them in 2017, but, they were the aromatic variety and he wanted the non-aro version. Now, in my Covid-19 isolation, I am opening one to see just what Troost Cavendish Aromatic is all about-or not. The tin looked like it was circa 1980, was still sealed and is the original Van Rossem product. Instead of tobacco I saw a paper circle in between the beautiful doily liner and the tobacco which advertised how to collect coupons to send in for a clay white and blue tobacco cannister or a white and blue clay pipe (no thanks). The tobacco itself reminded me of Amphora or other blends of that ilk. There was alarmingly little aroma from the tin and the tobacco was 75% dried out; making it instantly smokable. Roughing it up was a serious chore, as, the tobacco had become somewhat stiff and brittle with age and was filled with sharp pointed sticks that tried to pierce my fingers very annoyingly. The blend lit fairly well but produced a confused and vague taste and aroma at first. The top third settled down to a light smoke that was unfamiliar to me and only marginally enjoyable. The middle third took on a slight strength in both taste and aroma but was still way below my enjoyment threshold. Oddly, the bottom third was the best part of the smoke. Where most blends go south, this blend got to it's best point in that third. I have no desire to light a second bowl. I tried blending with Troost AC but the results were mediocre. So, not actually offensive or anything, I rate this at two stars and somewhat recommend it to the reader. It will be hard to find tins of this blend to sample and, even if you do, you might wanna pass.

I guess that I have been spoiled by smoking high quality tobacco, but I am sorry I soiled my pipe with this stuff. No aromatic flavor that I can taste. Smells and tastes like a cigarette. I suppose that some may like it, but I don't. If it was the only pipe tobacco available, I would give up smoking. It isn't the worst I have ever tasted, but it's in the top 5. I would rate it as 0 stars for myself, but because some folks find it OK, I will reluctantly give it 2 stars. And it is a gift.

I bought this on a whim, I saw an add that said it was being discontinued and thought I had to give it a try. Apparently this is one of those classic, nostalgic blends that I had never tried before. To some degree, I am glad that I did. I went into it with no expectations other than a decent aromatic experience. when I popped open the pouch, I found it to be quite dry. Not like hay, but tightly packed together and it slightly crumbled as it came out of the pouch. Part of my issue with it stems from this. I tried it straight with out trying to rehydrate it at all, but it tasted and smelled like it looked.... dry and lifeless. I decided to give this a real chance and took a large chunk out of the pouch and put it in a jar with some hydration stones and it really helped. What came after that was a very mild and interesting taste sensation. I may have over hydrated it because it burned the skin off my tongue after about half a bowl. I took it extremely slow for the remainder of smokes I had, and it evened out. Unfortunately it was never really very stellar to me. Many people will probably like this tobacco, I know I did somewhat, but in truth it didn't really wow me. There are too many other brands to try without forcing myself to like it all. I give this a solid "Meh... its ok i guess"

Smokable while doing something else, stacking firewood, cutting grass etc. Packs and lights OK. I needed another match a couple of times but no big hassle. Nice aroma but not much in the way of flavor, nicotine, complexity, or any other redeeming qualities. Puffed on Troost in between shipments of other tobaccos then tossed the remainder of the pouch.

I was looking for danish style aromatics when I picked this up. It may be in part because, in that same batch, I picked up some Skandinavik, but this blend - while far from gross - was unimpressive.

A little too heavily topped for the style, Troost still feels like a danish blend. It's light and mild while remaining at least somewhat flavorful and filling the room with a pleasant room note.

That said, it's a bit too heavy-handed with the topping and there is little to no leveled complexity which one expects from the style.

This tobacco had a nice pouch smell. It lit well and and burned a bit warm. The flavor was very mild, absent really. It was very boring, halfway through the bowl it began to feel like a chore to smoke.