Cornell & Diehl Steamworks

The exceptionally tangy vintage sun cured Orientals include year 2005 Black Sea Sokhoum and provide an abundance of earth, wood, floralness, vegetation, herbs, some spice, leather, dry sourness, mild buttery, creamy sweetness, smoke, cigar, and a little nuttiness as the lead components. The spicy St. James perique offers plenty of earth, wood, dried plums, some raisin, figs, and a little floralness as a strong supporting player. The old belt (North Carolina and Georgia) orange, mahogany, bright, and six grades of red Virginias (with 17.72% sugar) are steamed to various degrees as secondary supporters. They produce a fair amount of tart and tangy citrus, sugar, bread, earth, wood, grass, tangy ripe dark fruit, mild vegetation, floralness, light spice, and touches of acidic vinegar. The red Virginias lightly lead the other Virginias. The strength and taste are fulsome. The nicotine is almost as potent. No chance of bite or harshness. Rough edges are very minimal. This broken flake mixture is a tad more than mildly moist, but as is my custom, I did not dry them. Your mileage may vary on this point. Well balanced, deeply rich and piquantly zesty, it burns cool, clean and a little slow with a consistent spicy, floral, herbal, creamy sweet and dryly sour, fruity, smoky, mildly cigarish, nutty, very tangy flavor that extends to the pleasantly long lingering after taste. The room note is pungent. Leaves little dampness in the bowl, and requires some relights. It’s not an all day smoke, and I recommend a small to medium bowl for this hearty blend. Four stars.

-JimInks

C&D Steamworks- This Flake is very smooth but at the same time very hearty , tangy , spicy and crackling with flavor . The Virginias are sweet and tangy and earthy and no grassy hay notes or aromas to be had . Dark fruity and a hint of vinegar . The Virginias lead but the orientals come into play for sure . I sometimes get a few cigar like notes . Creamy and floral and slightly tart and savory . The Perique pops in at times but is in the background mostly . I was going to take a pass on this one as I usually like orientals with latakia but the blender hit a home run on this flake . Very pleased with my purchase, I wish I has bought more tins . This on will get your motor running ! 4

Whoa, someone put a cigar in my pipe!

Steamworks smoked as advertised, cool and slow. It came a hint moister than ideal and like JimInks I smoked it straight out of the tin without additional drying. This led to a little more moisture than I'd have preferred in the bottom 1/4 of the bowl , so the smoke got a little hotter towards the end and lost a little flavor, subsequently.

This only added to the cigar like experience. Like the hot tail end of an exceptional cigar that is finally coming to an end, alas, you can't put it down - determined as you are to eek out every last mm of the stick.

Someone took a spicier sun grown mexican wrapper and shoved it under the normal wrapper of Drew Estate Liga Privada No.9, unaged, then chopped it up and put in my Steamworks tin!

All I will say is, thank you, it's delicious. Deep leathery tones complemented with earth and wood comprise the body of this smoke, with occasional tangy notes. Spiciness oscillates in and out through the entire bowl, taking center stage whenever it pleases, wholly reminiscent of the spice from a cigar wrapped in sun grown mexican leaf. All this underpinned by an effervescent sweetness than bevels off any harsh edges that would otherwise seem forthcoming.

Rich dark flakes that smell like rich tobacco. I get some caramel flavor when sipped that is welcomed and separates this blend for me. I picked up a similar sweetness with Anthology. Nice casual smoke with Vit.N ready when you are. Smoked to bottom of the bowl and loaded another. We are fortunate to have C&D readily available.

Opened my tin and to my relief there wasn’t any mold. Others weren’t so lucky. The flakes are typical C&D soft loose brokenish flakes. The aroma from the tin is fruity and sweet. Fruit, wine, vinegar, with some barn yard hay, vegetation, and wood. Moist, harder to pack and light unless dried out a bit.

The taste is rather mellow but with a bigger mouth feel. Buttery, wood, cedar, spice. More wood, earth, vegetative, floral, buttery than fruity and peppery. Little if any tart or tang. It has a nice sweetness to it. Gets more woody and peppery as the bowl continues. Something different than the usual vaper orientals I usually go for. Nicotine is medium and I wouldn’t smoke on an empty stomach. No harshness or astringent mouth feel. A rather pleasant smoke with a slight pepper after taste.

I see some people get hints of cigar with this and I can understand that. Definitely more wood earth pepper flavor with a mellow creamy smoke to it like a Connecticut cigar. It’s an interesting smoke.

This is a weird one.
Out of the tin it is a beautiful thick, wet flake. I mean wet. C&D seems to have gone from smokable from the tin pop to wet rat, but that is okay, I am patient.
Tin note is kind of flat but nice: breads, earthy, woody with a hint of sweetness.
I smoked a tin and a half of this prior to review and I'm not sure that is enough. In a word phrase, I love this stuff! Disclaimer: I am a huge Oriental fan, huge VA fan, huger VA Oriental/VA fan. This is a COMPLEX smoke. I have never heard of this Oriental. I can claim cricket fart and sour old lady panties but this one is new and hard to put a few flavors I can't quite pin down. I find this to be a base of Orientals with some VA kicking in to make the favor profile rock. Never heard of a blend like this, but I have never heard of Sea Horse clam bake tobacco either (joke). There is a solid base of wood, saw dust, slightly sour, chalky (?), dry soda with some light floral notes. The Perique is clearly there in the spice and retrohale, even some figs in the distance
There is something else going on here: depth, nuance...some mottled hay cased with buttered rum??..not sure but this is some really good stuff.
If you are a lat bomb smoker this may not do it for you. If you like VA's or Orientals, or both this might be the best there is!

Appearance: the 2 oz. tin was packaged on December 14, 2023. So, in fact, it can be counted as the fresh tobacco. The blend is a fluffy broken flake bitter chocolate-colored of the usual consistency for the products of this American company, which can be easily broken and crumbled. Here is where the pipe-maker should be careful: when creating a very fine fraction and dense filling, the tobacco overheats quite easily. I recommend to prepare it to the ready-rubbed form. However, you will have to dry the mixture a bit - its humidity is a bit excessive.

Flavor: dense, even a little over-dense, notes of citrus, molasses, prunes, dark raisins, a bouquet of spices, from which coriander and cloves are slightly on a front, a little earthiness and moss, a little leather and cedar, a faint note of olive oil, literally a drop of vinegar and cocoa crumbs. Typical Virginia bread and woody notes are deeply buried under this blanket, remaining heavily muted. As for the floral or hay notes, they are virtually absent.

Taste: moderately bright but complex and very voluminous bouquet. Woody notes neighbor with a good dose of spices, seasoned with quite enough sweetness and very light sourness, soft notes of dark apricots and raisins are intertwined with the same soft notes of white pepper and coriander, in the background along with the woody notes there is a little walnut and a little bit of bitter chocolate... Wait, am I sure I'm smoking a pipe? A great many of the notes from the bouquet reminded me of a Connecticut leaf cigar. Certainly there are some major differences - for example, almost no dusty earthy notes, nut and wood not so pronounced, more sweetness of tobacco and perique slightly tickling the nostrils on the retrohale. During the smoking process, all the notes smooth out and the bouquet becomes more familiar to pipe tobacco, although individual spicy notes occasionally tend to come to the forefront. Nevertheless, the tobacco has no harsh tones, does not bite, it is very tolerant to overheating, although some part of the taste is lost. The strength of the tobacco is some above average - even in just a large pipe I felt a slight nicotine hit by the end of smoking. The blend slowly burns out into a gray dusty ash with no lumps, leaving some moisture in the pipe even when well-dried. The aftertaste is sweet and sour, not persistent.

The spicy-wood smoke is quite persistent in the room, but I wouldn't call it abundant.

What's the bottom line? Jeremy Reeves seems to have made a serious bid to fill the niche created when Samuel Gawith tobaccos became significantly less affordable in the American market. This is almost the first attempt of hot processing of Virginias and Orientals for Cornell & Diehl, AFAIR, and I like the result - a kind of answer to Sam's Flake with the involvement of heavy artillery by exclusive perique and Black Sea Orientals with the name "Soukhum" very familiar to the Russian ear. An addiditional advantage of this blend is the fact that it can be smoked fresh without additional aging. This is a strong, dense, soft tobacco, the only disadvantage of which I can call only a limited edition.

Let me start by saying that I am no fan of high amounts of oriental leaf in the blends I smoke.
However, this tobacco is fantastic.

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TIN NOTE

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Full and complex. Notes of wood, forest floor, a little barnyard, figs, dried dates, cocoa, and baking spices. Smells delicious.

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SMOKING NOTES

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The processed Virginias and Black Sea Sokhoum lead the way. They give sweetness, a dash of malt vinegar, floral notes, spiciness, a little acidity, leather, and earth. The perique adds the white pepper, dark stewed fruits and raisins. The cavendished Virginias give creaminess and additional molasses notes.

It in a bold/full tobacco. The nicotine hit was not big. The room note was strong though.

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MECHANICS

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The broken flake was presented beautifully. Uniformed and stacked in the can. The tobacco was on the wet side, and I needed to keep it out for around an hour breaking the flake. Once dried, it packed well. Took to light easily. Produced a good amount of smoke. Well balanced blend. Burned to ash leaving almost no dottle.

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SUMMARY

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In my opinion, this is probably a unicorn tobacco blend with high ageing potential. It’s solid, consistent, easy to smoke, complex, and deep. It pairs extremely well with wine. It is a must-have in every cellar! I feel sad I only got 3 tins on the initial release. Next time, I will be stocking up properly.

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[F][O][U][R] [S][T][A][R][S]

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Tin 4240 of 8000, has notes of dried figs, spices and fermented vegetation. Tobacco is a flake of dark brown and brown with a little tan sprinkled throughout. Moisture content is great. No drying needed. Flakes rub out with a little effort. Burns slow with a normal amount of relights. The strength is medium and nic is mild. No flavoring detected. Taste is medium to full and very consistent, with notes of tangy dried dark plums and figs, herbal incense, spices, grassy floral, very savory, dry bitter citrus peel, fermented vegetation, slightly spicy, wood, an earthy hay and bready background note, and a very peppery retro. Orientals are leading with Virginia, Perique supporting. Room note is tolerable, and aftertaste is good.

I'm a longtime fan of VaOr blends, so I was hyped up for this release. In a world where the majority of orientals in use are Izmir and Katerini, the 2005 Black Sea Sokoum is a welcome addition.

Six different Virginia leaves with varying degrees of stoving form the foundation. It's not often a Virginia based blend is considered complex, but this is as close as they get. Each Virginia leaf lends its own unique character to the overall flavor, so every puff sings a different note. Beautiful!
The orientals are all well aged and add both quick points of flavor, and some drawn out measures of lasting variance through the bowl. Fresh earth, worm castings, minerals, wood, and treacle are all present to varying degrees along the way.
The perique becomes most apparent in the second half of the smoke - with its spice and nuanced dark sweetness. Most importantly it provides extra body and nicotine to the blend.

Overall this may be my all time favorite release from C&D! It's a delight, especially when you're able to take your time and concentrate on the smoke.