J. F. Germain & Son Germain's Special Latakia Flake

I guess it's my own fault for expecting a blend similar to Penzance... it's hard not to enter into this tobacco without that expectation. I should say Penzance is my absolute favorite blend, for many reasons, but as we all know, it's hard to obtain.

This was a good blend for what it is, which is a latakia based blend. Orientals and latakia dominate, and it's pleasant for the most part. One think I did not like is that I found this blend bitter at times, and not in a good way. It could have been the pipe I used, but I kept find this blend bitter. It wasn't so bitter to overpower the other smoky/earthy notes, but it was present much of the time. If there were a 2.5 star option, I would give it that, but I'll give the benefit rating it as recommended. Certainly give it a shot if you come across it, but I don't think I'll be buying again (not to say I wouldn't smoke it again). To my taste, there are just too many other great english blends to spend more time on this.

The thin, fragile slices of this mottled flake tobacco are stacked and pressed rather disorderly into the rectangular tin and effuse a rich, earthy, peaty scent with salty notes of seaweed and tar, reminding me of a walk on the waterfront, and hints of apricot jelly. There might be some precipitate of sugar crystals, which must not be confused with mold.

In a fresh tin the sticky flakes are rather moist, which is why I usually leave it open overnight to let the tobacco dry. After that you can carefully take a flake from the stack, maybe with the aid of a sharp knife (the one I use for cutting plugs), and fill your bowl with the fold and stuff method. It's important to pack your pipe neither too tightly nor too loosely. To facilitate lighting I like to put some broken bits and pieces on top, which will always be at hand. A thorough charring light is required, before leveling out the ashes and putting an equally thorough true light to the tobacco. After that it usually burns down evenly from top to bottom.

The cool smoke is not extremely dense, but has a rather full bodied, savory, ballanced taste which mixes hints of incense, leather and spicy peat fire from the Latakia and Orientals with a tangy sweetness from the Virginias and an aftertaste of rye bread. There's no danger of tongue bite, even if you draw more eagerly on your pipe or enjoy it outdoors in a windy environment. It leaves some dry, almost white ash with some dark spots.

The room note is dominated by the smokiness from the Latakia.

As mentioned in previous reviews, the presentation of this flake is peculiar; the different tobaccos are visible as stripes through the flake. Because of this, in order to make a fair review I spent a couple of days smoking this by cutting across the width of the flakes into thirds and loading them into my pipe to get a good representation of the taste of the entire blend.

Straight out of the tin this tobacco is slightly too moist to smoke immediately, but it doesn't require a lot of drying time and I find filling a bowl before dinner and smoking it afterwards to be sufficient.

The latakia gives this tobacco a full bodied, savoury taste, but at no point did I find it overpowering. If prepared in the way I did, the virginia sweetness is present all the way down the bowl and makes this good for a slow, contemplative smoke. The orientals are noticeable but not enough for me to consider them a defining point of the blend.

If you hold back and wait a few minutes or so for a relight the sweet aspect really shines through, but sipped in a slow rhythm I get a balanced taste of coffee cake with meatiness in the background. It's fairly well behaved and can withstand some absent minded heavy puffing for some time without giving tongue bit, but obviously you'll get the best out of it when you take it slow.

Overall, SLF isn't a mind blowing tobacco but I can't fault it either, three stars.

Salty, and not in a good way. Like a packet of salted peanuts with extra salt sprinkled in. Or like a smoke from a bowl after an alcohol-salt treatment gone wrong. I have never had a tobacco in any way similar. Maybe some sort of brine solution was overused in preserving the tobacco for this tin, i don't know, but after one bowl my mouth felt like i'd been bingeing at McDonald's since morning. Another bowl the next day confirmed my initial impressions. And the ghost of salt stayed in the pipes used for at least another pipeful of some other (normal) English blend. Bizarre. I won't be smoking the rest of this tin. It's possible that I bought a bad tin, but I won't be risking buying another. Germain and Sons should stop selling us second-rate tobacco and find a way to bring their best blends (Penzance, Margate, Stonehaven) on to the British market.

from the name you'd expect this to be a balkan but out of the tin the orientals & turk tell you it's an english. the Latakia just sits along side offering a constant cool flavour. this is a very cool smoke but more to the point creamy, i hear this word used regarding the aesthetics of a smoke but this one is an english milkshake to saver. contemplative and very tasty. I suggested folding length-ways then fold in half, a few twists to screw it into a neat ball and gently ease it in your bowl, a perfect air-pocket method smoke. Slightly off topic this is a good tobacco to cycle with.

What a wonderful blend. I was turned onto this by a friend at my tobacconist who knew I liked Penzance and suggested I give this a try.

The tin & pressed flake is a nice presentation.I like tobac that needs rubbing out as this one does. You don't have to be careful rubbing this out like you do with penzance (which will turn to powder if you overdo it). I found it necessary to air-dry mine for a couple hours.To make things easier I cut up the whole tin in half before putting up in a mason jar.

Filled my briar,lit up,and was greeted with a creamy full rich taste. It was blended with the latakia, virginias and Oriental perfectly blended so one does not overwhelm. Half way through the latakia shows some dominance but not such as to dull the hint of sweetness or smoothness thats ever present in this blend.Burns with a nice white ash with ample clouds of blue smoke.What a pleasure.

I had a lot of trouble with this one because it took a LOT of drying out. I don't think it was because it was so wet, per se, but it seemed to have some humectant. It did no good to pop the tin and leave it; you had to expose it to open air. Before it was dried out enough, this was not a very pleasant smoke at all. Bitter, hot, and just plain nasty. That's the bad news.

But the good news is, when this is dried out well, it delivers a unique and mouth-watering smoke. The best results came from taking a hefty portion out of the tin (say, 1/3 of the whole), rubbing it completely out, letting it dry...and dry some more...and dry some more. Then the smoke was unbelievable. It started like a good standard English tobacco: lots of smoky latakia and sweet virginias (brown-sugar tasting), with a subdued oriental component. But the exra, fire-cured component (Kentucky?) was the centerpiece. Often this component was very much in the background at the beginning of the smoke and built and built until it was quite powerful at the end. It was spicy and strong with the kind of piquant mouth-feel I've come to expect from perique (though, of course, there is no actual perique). Really exquisite.

This is one of the tobacco world's best kept secrets. For my money, Penzance (by the same blender) is not as interesting or tasty. But if you disagree, that's fine. Leaves more of this for me!

I purchased this tin on a whim in my perfect latakia hunt. The tin aroma is a deep leathery musk, with almost a prune like overtone. The tobacco is very moist, and packs great with just a rub between two fingers. It takes a little while to get lit, but once it is going it's great. Large plumes of almost sweet smoke, and the latakia sings harmoniously with the little amount of orientals in the background. The room note is not opressive, and has almost a molasses quality to it. Truly a womderful smoke.

A rich tasting Latakia blend and I would guess that if there is Syrian in this blend it's pretty much in the background.It comes in a cool little tin and the cut is a rougher or more rustic flake that I've seen.A flake cut is my favorite by far, but the smoker has to rub or adjust it to their liking.After opening the tin it gave off a delicious leather like aroma that I love. The tobacco was very moist,actually too moist to smoke without lighting multiple times to get it going and thusly giving a harsh and incomplete smoke. This blend should be rubbed and left to dry on your tray for 30 minutes to an hour. Drying changes this blend from mediocre at best into a smooth, creamy, sweet, non-biting, drool down your chin Latakia experience that is unrivaled. A medium sized meerschaum or large briar bowl enhances the cool sweetness even more. This blend goes to the head of the line over Penzance, Old Ironsides,Odyssey and any other Cyprian Latakia based blends except possibly Kendal's Balkan Mixture by Gawith Hoggarth. It took me a month to learn to get the most out of this blend and that was time well spent.I know that I'm starting to rave so I won't write anymore lest the wrong people read this and make it illegal. This gets my top four star rating.