Uhle's Blend 71

The nutty, earthy, molasses sweet burleys are the star components. The smoky, dry wine-like, woody, slightly sweet Syrian latakia is a condiment as is the buttery sweet, mildly dry, woody Turkish. The spicy, raisiny, figgy, plumy perique is a continual background player. I detect a very mild rum topping which serves to remind me this blend is like a more burley forward Barking Dog. The rum weakens just a tad in the last quarter of the proceedings. The nic-hit is a step past mild. No chance of bite or harshness. Burns cool, clean, and slightly slow with a fairly consistent flavor. Leaves little moisture in the bowl, and needs a few relights. Has a very pleasant, slightly lingering nutty, smoky, sweet after taste, and room note. Can be an all day smoke.

-JimInks

I bought a one and a half ounce pouch of Blend #71 about a year ago and smoked a couple of bowls, lost interest, then tossed in it a drawer and forgot about it. Now, about a year later, while cleaning out the pipe room, I came across it and gave it another shot. Blend #71 is a well done, light English style blend. It smokes nice and cool and its very smooth with no bite. The flavor is not very complex and like all Uhle's tobaccos it is made with high quality leaf. #71 is the kind of blend that you can smoke all day without the need to pay much attention to it. The high quality Uhle's Burley comes through nicely and I think many folks will enjoy this blend. It just lacks the depth I'm looking for and I find it just gets boring for me. #71 is a two star blend for me, but it is so well done, I think it would be unjust to rate it under three stars.

Classic American Latakia blend. Smooth and cool burning. If you need tangy orientals, or perique, it will leave you flat. I suspect it has just a bit of cocoa as a top dressing, and a little sweetener to smooth it out. Nevertheless, the room note probably won't win you friends.

Unlike so many homage blends, this is the real thing. It has been around a long time. Smooth, cedar-pine scented, burley-latakia goodness. It makes me think of the 1930s and 40s.

I like it a bunch, and it is certainly worth sampling.

Man is this an interesting tobacco. Maybe it is because I am a 2 yearish pipe smoker and still consider myself "new" but his is a very unique English and has helped me understand what people mean when I read "American English" . The tin note is vibrant and lively. Nutty Burley and sweet Virginia's and some sweetness from the Perique (a faint fig smell).Woody Orientals are in the background and just a hint of Latakia smoke. The smoke is Burley with Virginias and Oriental/Turkish rounding them out. The Latakia and Perique are used very sparingly used as a condiment and really compliment the blend. A heavy Latakia English this is not. This is a fresh lively smoke that is toasty, nutty and woody and with just enough sweetness to make it "English". I have really struggled to put words to the flavors but what I came up with are: Aromatic woods (Cedar and Pine nuts) almost a chocolate/maple like flavor that is very subtle. In the last third of almost every bowl I get the creosote like flavor from the Latakia, very lightly and very subtle but it hits consistently at the end of the smoke. Uhle's is living up to it's reputation with Burley in my humble opinion. Great smoke as a light "American English".

Barking Dog with Syrian Latakia. Very nice Burley based blend and the sweeter, milder Syrian leaf added interest. Not a lot of depth here, but that's not a negative. It is a clean burning and easy to smoke all day blend that I am sure many pipers would enjoy. And with Uhle's, you know you are always going to get quality leaf.

If one has never seen a Uhle's tobacco brochure, then one is missing a marvelous piece of American pipe-smoking history and an eloquent testament to truth in advertising. The late and much- loved Jack Uhle was an honest man, as honest as the tobacco blends that bear his name.

In the description of Blend 71, Jack told the story of how he had been afraid to use Latakia, and that a tobacco salesman helped him cross that Rubicon that led to Blend 71, the store's second- oldest. From there, Uhle sallied forth to create some "American- English" classics.

Blend 71 is just plain good, harkening back to a day when Latakia often appeaared in American tobacco blends. The names are the stuff of memory--Brush Creek, Crosby Square, Bond Street, Holiday. Aside from store blends from Pipeworks & Wilke, et al, the only one left is Middleton's Walnut. House of Windsor's Revelation, Barking Dog, and Country Doctor are not copies of the authentic tobaccos, though they aren't bad.

Uhle's Blend 71 stands above all of them. There is nothing here but tobacco, OUTSTANDING tobacco, as with all Uhle natural blends. Burley orchestrates the symphony...cool, nutty, just earthy enough. The Virginia component adds sweetness, but no heat. The black Cavendish taste is masked by the Latakia, but adds a plus to the room note for those not fond of the Cyprian weed. There isn't a bite to be found in any bowlful, and virtually any smoker will find something to like here.

An ideal warm weather smoke for those who MUST have Latakia, a nice change for the Burley fancier, a satisfying, tasty, all-day smoke. It will leave you mellow...and your pipe dry.

4/23/13 This venerable blend has evolved, and now has even more to recommend it. For some reason, there is a wonderful presence of genuine Syrian Latakia that I have not found in other Uhle's blends. I cannot define the difference for those who have never savored the Syrian weed...but, if you give Blend 71 a try, you will define it for yourself!

Uhle's can do Burleys arguably better than any blender, so it stands to reason that they can also do a fantastic job on an American English such as Blend 71. Indeed, they did IMO.

|I truly enjoyed this one and wish I had more of it in my cellar. I will put it on the wishlist to get one day, but it won't be easy as I live in one of the states to which Uhle's does not ship.

On to this tobacco, it is a burley blend foremost as burley is the star. This, to me, is how an American English should be. The Latakia, Perique and oriental components are condimetally used and do impart both smoke and spice to the blend. This is what many of the old school OTC American English blends wish they could be.

There is no sense of PG or any chemical type taste to this, it is all of tobacco and, odd to the genre, there is some shifting of the flavors and some complexity. I am automatically reminded of the C&D blends of this ilk when I am smoking this, but I prefer this to those blends in that it has more nutty sweetness, whereas the C&D equivalents feature a more earthy (and bitter) burley that tend to take away from the condiments.

In my experience, this is the best tasting American English blend that I have tried and earns four stars for that distinction alone.

I do not normally smoke English blends but do from time to time at night. This mild English is unique in that it has burley and Syrian latakia for added flavor. I think the description is right on about having a steak like flavor, picture salt and pepper with a charcoal grilled aroma and taste. Really hits the spot if you enjoy mild to medium English blends that don't hit you over the head with latakia. As always Uhles uses the finest ingredients. A+ stuff here and a nice change from traditional English Blends.

Uhle's take on the American-English blend, particularly Middleton's Walnut. The two tasted similar - very smooth, with a fair bit of sweetness and a dash of spice to top it off. This was a chop-type cut. I saw some small cubes and some narrow ribbon, so it was sort of a mish-mash. Loaded very easily and burned properly.

This one smelled more like a haunted bookshop than the blend of that name from C&D. If there is such a thing as an "OTC aroma", this has it, along with C&D's Americana. The bag aroma reminded me of old books, musty and inviting. As I said above, the taste was a take on Walnut, at least the first half-bowl.

The 2nd half of the bowl is where things got interesting. This tobacco really evolved! The taste became very spicy as the sweetness burned down and the complexity of the blend really shined. This is a smooth blend, but the 2nd half shed some of this and the blend became more earthy and brazen. Yes, brazen! Stupid reviewer word, but it's what kept coming to my mind when I smoked this. It was showing off... cocky... and that was totally unlike the top half, even though the differing flavors themselves weren't that different. The 2nd half didn't get "stronger" as much as it simply grew more confident.

Interesting blend. I'm sticking with Bishop's Move, but this is definitely one to try if you want to experience Uhle blends. This one seems like a statement blend to me. Fun to smoke.

Things change. Tobacco processors come and go. Tobaccos, themselves, come and go. But very rarely is the blender of a smoking mixture today the same guy who blended it two decades ago. Happily, Chris Rentner of Uhle's is the exception.

A very recent purchase of Uhle's Blend 71 perplexed me. It was certainly different from the blend as I remembered it from 1982 until 2012. Excellent, but different. The cut now is more of the cut-plug type, whereas it used to be a broad ribbon. The moisture level is much higher than it used to be. The Perique is now very much in evidence, where it used to be detectable only half-way down the bowl. And that wonderful Syrian Latakia is now replaced with Cyprian. The pouch aroma is now very much Perique-forward.

The smoke, however, was as good as it has always been...but...different. So I called Chris Rentner at Uhle's to see what gives. According to Chris, just about EVERYTHING. Both the Syrian Latakia and the Burley used as the base are no-longer obtainable. So Blend 71 has been re-formulated. And part of that is the mightier role the Perique now plays. Chris said that big-time changes came down when he ran out of Syrian Latakia.

But the story has a happy ending. Instead of being a compromise, the current iteration of Blend 71 is a triumph. It is, if you will, a re-imagining of an old idea. It is not really better or worse, but new and interesting. This is still about the best "American English" on the market. Its only equal is LJ Peretti's Blend 7485. They are totally different variations on the same theme, but are equally marvelous.

"Savory." That is how I would describe today's Blend 71. It is quite expensive, but if you are a fan of the "American English" genre, it is worth every penny.