G. L. Pease Cumberland

Tin note of mild Worcestershire, tangy barbeque, and wood. Tobacco is coarse cut is mostly dark brown with some light brown and black. Tobacco is moist but needs no drying. Burns moderate with few relights. The strength is medium to strong and nic is medium. No flavoring detected. Taste is mild to medium to full and consistent, with notes of wood, floral, spiced figs, leather, Rasin bread, mild sweet grass, and a moderately peppery retro. Virginias are barely leading, with Kentucky on its heels. Perique is supporting. Room note is pleasant to tolerable, and aftertaste is great.

"Well-aged Kentucky." The two questions that immediately popped into my head were "what for?" and “where from?”. I hardly can imagine a person who would age burley-made tobacco, because changes are very little for burley over the years. I just see in real some farmer somewhere in North Carolina invites Pease to the shed with the unmarketable stuff and saying, "Here I have the rarest Kentucky in the whole state - these bales are two decades old! Yet my old dad tried to sell them!" - And Gregory says, "I'll sell." That's crazy... And he sold them, by the way! He's been selling them for ten years. All right, twenty years old, you say. As long as the price and quality were not affected for the worse. At least, my tin already had a new composition.

Appearance: I got a 2 oz. tin with a production date of "December 12, 2013" which was half-empty. Cumberland is a blend of tobaccos with a coarse cut. Over the years, the color of the blend has become an almost monochromatic shade of light roasted coffee beans with occasional flecks of darker perique. The tobacco is a little drier than I would have liked, plus get some veins from the leaf.

Flavor: Salty and slightly smoky almonds, well-dried hay, almost without floral and bread notes, some wood chaff, a bit of earth, barely perceptible boiled fruit, with a slight "aroma" of burnt rubber mixed in. Nevertheless, everything is very smooth and mellow, although absolutely nothing like the flavors of those blends I consume.

Taste: minimally sweet herbal notes, drowning in a semi-dry woody, earthy bog after a long ago fire. Perique adds just a barely perceptible harshness and the slightest hint of plum to this landscape. Faint nutty notes gradually gain strength toward the middle of the pipe, taking the place of Virginia, which was already scarce. Strangely enough, a hint of sweetness remains in the blend, but, but the blend acquires a rather dense "cigarette" taste (I'm talking about good cigarettes - if such still exist), which is enhanced by a woody-rubber aftertaste. Tobacco is very tolerant to the speed of smoking, although if you feel the bitter notes - then you've obviously overheated it. Another argument for slow smoking is the strength of the tobacco. I'd say it's above average, although my sensitivity to burley and Kentucky may have heightened my perception of strength somewhat. The tobacco burns evenly into ash of an even gray color with small black flecks, leaving almost no moisture in the pipe.

The smoke, as is typical of a blend with a lot of Kentucky or Burley, is very abundant, with a characteristic smell of smoldering wood with an admixture of walnut and dust. Of course, it is quite persistent.

What's the result? As for the sample I smoked, don't look for the sweetness and sophistication of Three Nuns or Sovereign. This blend is of a completely different order. I don't know how it smokes fresh, but I'm guessing it doesn't taste much different when aged.

Un gran tabaco, muy complejo, yo diría que debes invertir tiempo en conocerles un tabaco que exige un ritmo lento de fumada, es como tener una conversación con un buen amigo, inicia en forma casual, pero conforme avanza la platica esta se vuelve compleja, así, la fumada, pasando un tercio de la pipa es increible, cada bocanada de humo es completamente diferente a la anterior, ya te lleva a un poco de picor a un ligero amargo como de humo de habano, a pasar a un humo dulce propio de los virginias, como en una buena charla, pasando de un tema a otro, regresando a uno anterior pero con sutiles diferencias. Eso sí, es un tabaco celoso, debes estar al pendiente y ser sutil con un ritmo lento, su complejidad hace difícil pensar en el maridaje ideal, un vaso de agua simple es lo que recomiendo. Quizá lo mejor es que tras terminar la fumada, el sabor sigue evolucionando en el paladar,. Gran tabaco,