J. F. Germain & Son Royal Jersey Perique Mixture

This is unlike any VaPer i have ever tried. This is more like a Virginia mixture, full bodied in the sense of Royal Yacht, minus the plum topping. The blend presents cigar like notes; earthy, spicy with a very slight hint of sweetness.

Burning properties are excellent producing voluminous smoke with minimal relights.

This is a blend with a lot of flavour and complexity that will keep the seasoned smoker engaged.

This Perique mixture is intriguing for me. The old school presentation of mostly brown and dark shag cut in the tin is a testament to English tobacco making know how. A smell of fermented, almost rotten vegetables assail my nostrils, this could be good! My tin was five years old and had some plume on the thicker and darker strands of Perique.

Lighting the pipe is easy and right away the condiment show up, a mixture of mostly peppery and a more subdued plum taste. The matured Virginias complete the roundness and add a sporadic creaminess to this tobacco. It leaves a nice cigarlike aftertaste and burns to a white ash. I also agree with Pre Republic Peterson for his comparison with those Cuban cigars.

Virginia lover

Royal Jersey is in my weekly rotation. I have a very large stash of this and honestly I cringe every time I open up a tin. It seems harder to find but I just can not resist. It is an afternoon smoke for me when I am looking for something light. I have read the reviews here and I really do not know we're people get the flavors from. In years of smoking this I have never detected the flavors most people claim. When opened right out of the tin you can smell the Va. Pack strong with two pinch. Light. Tamp. Relight and enjoy for the next hour.

I find this tobacco very different from many of the Perique mixtures with this one "playing off" the Virginia tobacco in a most pleasant way.

While I enjoy Perique in more substantial quantities than most...too much can be "heady" and loose appeal quickly. The quality of the Virginia must also be considered. This tobacco has both high quality tobaccos and is blended nicely.

Taste and aroma throughout the bowl are superior and consistency appears to be well above average.

Enjoyed in a group 5-6 size pipe and could well serve as an all-day smoke...

...a pipe is to be savored...

UPDATE 7/13/13

Cracked another tin of this that has about 2 years worth of age on it. My below opinion hasn't changed. As a VaPer, it's pretty lightweight, although not bad. There are other blends that are light in perique that seem to use a better batch of virginias or something to bring out more flavor. This is a decent blend but I find nothing special in it, certainly nothing to warrant more than 2 stars.

ORIGINAL REVIEW

This is a brick of near-shag tobacco with a dull color and a heavy, fruity scent of perique. Excellent tin aroma - very enticing. Unfortunately, this wonderful, heady aroma doesn't transfer to the taste as much as I'd like.

This blend had the usual shag difficulty in loading and I had to be careful not to over-or-underload. Once ignited, it burned with ease and produced no tongue maligning steam. The flavor, however, was dumbed down to the point that it never elevated itself beyond "OK". The perique was barely noticeable in the taste and the virginias seemed vapid and ill-conceived, although not unpleasant. Weird description, I know. This is a smooth, congenial blend with a very light sweetness, but is simply too light in flavor. Down the bowl, the mild perique spice simply becomes lost in a sea non-descript warm air. This blend exhibits no major flaws but there is little to recommend it unless the smoker happens to enjoy a very mellow, unobtrusive taste that calls no attention to itself.

If you like Perique, you must try this blend. I don't find it to be a VaPer; it is a PerVa. Deep brown/mohagany in colour. A little moist, and a little musty. It is a ready-to-smoke perique blend, with all the goodness that Perique offers. It didn't appear to be a broken flake as much as a rubbed out and ribbon cut mixture. Smokes cool and stays lit well. Tastes and smells like a good perique pipe-weed. If you prefer VaPer's where Va is the keel then this may come up a bit short for you.

Good mouthfeel, good burn, great sensory satisfaction. I really liked this one- progresses very well through the bowl. I could smoke this all the time but my tastes are too diverse to stick with it. I would certainly keep a tin of this in the cellar for the future...

Royal Jersey Perique Mixture is an excellent Virginia/Perique. The tin notes state that mature Virginias comprise this mixture, their color a muted green. These mature Virginias lack LF?s austerity and taste, their flavor profile more akin to the signature Virginias found in the prior recipe of Samuel Gawith?s Full Virginia Flake (the current recipe so vastly different). The melding of the Virginia and Perique together sum to a tobacco greater than the sum of its parts?just delicious!

In Pease?s tin notes for ?Stratford? he describes the blend as a mixture of ?sugar and spice,? yet after smoking a 1.5 oz sample, I found the Perique imperceptible. His description fits RJP far more aptly. The Perique is again about 5%, clearly discernible, and the Virginias are sweet, with a commanding yet not intense full-body, such as are found in Wessex Dark Flake. This blend tastes has the signature Virginia/Perique flavor profile of sweetness and spice. The Virginias are of such superior quality that I feel I could smoke them quite enjoyably without the Perique; with it they find their perfect compliment.

LF is the clear winner of the two blends, the flavor, although monochromatic, more savory. Still RJP is a winner in its own right, one of the best Viriginia/Periques I?ve ever smoked.

As an aside, both tobaccos are what I would term ?traditional Virginia/Periques,? although LF less so than RJP; i.e. both have clear taste demarcations between the Virginias and Perique. In comparison Escudo and Three Nuns Version, second version, I would term ?non-traditional? Virginia/Periques in that the Perique is so well melded to the Virginias in the blend that separating one from the other is more difficult.

Germain's royal Jersey with perique is a light va/per with a distinctly English character.. Not ultra complex but with just enough to set it apart.. quality virginia of the smoother variety.. has that slightly antique sort of mustiness that is common to many germain products.. the perique is very light.. this isn't necessarily a bad thing.. but it won't give you the oomph you might crave from a perique blend.. its pretty much a shag cut so it burns pretty fast.. the Cavendish seems to help temper the burn.. it oddly smokes pretty cool overall.. it is a subtle and pleasant smoke.. but not a surprising or earth shattering experience.. reminds me just a little of telegraph hill.. but perhaps even more subdued.. I would stock a few to age but availability being what it is makes it darn near impossible.. not a huge loss.. many va/per blends I like just as much.. but this was definitely worth trying.

The Royal Jersey line is my least favorite in the Germain stable. They tend to be inconsistent in terms of flavor, at least to my tastes. Of them RJ with Latakia is my favorite. This one I was hesitant to review since I have smoked about 3 + oz's and I find them to be all over the place. I decided to write this now as I discovered that this is a blend for the cob and is best smoked bordering on brittle. The Virginia's are grassy and uncharacteristically bland. I find very little sweetness in this blend, but it is sweetest in a cob. The Perique provides some peppery notes but not much of the raisin and plum flavors that I like most about Perique. The bottom quarter of the bowl becomes a bit toasty and has some bready flavor. Regardless of moisture content, it can get harsh if you don't smoke this slowly. Not what I would call a VAPer but it is interesting. I will likely see what some age will do for it.