Cornell & Diehl Briar Fox

Review of free 1/2 oz sample...First of all, be careful when breaking up this kake as it may contain a few sharp woody bits. Bag note is sweet Virginia at it's best! Moisture level is perfect; ready to smoke soon after crumbling. 95% good quality tobacco with just a few woody or stemy bits to pick over. Very tasty sweet Virg from charring light to bottom of bowl; more of a fig like sweetness, less raisiny than Old Gowrie. That great C&D Burley is present and makes for a bit quicker/hotter burn than a straight Virg. Very well behaved in my pipe; no fuss and smokes to a fine clean ash. N level is medium- and very predictable. I've enjoyed this stuff quite a bit and feel that it makes a great morning smoke. I'll be buying some soon. Hope this helps.

This is going to be a regular rotation in the cold winter months, especially during hunting season. I found it to smoke warm. But it had a nice full flavor and a great heady satisfying smoke. A very strange smoke to me. Not the typical virginia. Not the expected sweetness, but something really quite good.

Briar Fox comes in a perfect crumble cake perfect for rubbing out to a great packable tobacco. This blend burns slow and smooth. As for flavor I first have to say that Virginia tobaccos are amazing. One leaf has so many possible flavors. sweet, spicy, light, dark, strong, mild. What an amazing leaf virginia tobacco is. Briar Fox is to me an example of how spicy virginias can be. Overall its a delightful, strong, bold, spicy virginia of the highest quality. Bravo Cornell & Diehl.

While the rating of a specific blend is ultimately the subjective perception of the reviewer, certain observations regarding the composition may be offered objectively. For example, although I am not particularly enamored of a few of the Dunhill blends (Royal Yacht comes to mind), none can deny that not only is top quality leaf employed, but world class craftsmanship is standard operating procedure. As in the case of Dunhill, the appearance of the words "Cornell and Diehl" on a tin is as sure a sign of quality as one could hope for, irrespective of one?s opinion of a particular blend. Briar Fox is interesting. Nestled inside the smallish tin, topped with the requisite whimsical C&D label, is a clump (there is no better word) of what on first impression appears to be small, dense slabs of meat loaf (as so ably indicated by Tantric). The three to four puzzling little slabs are not sliced, as in Penzance, and tend towards the dry side. Mostly mid-brown to black, the overall appearance is fairly dark. Tin aroma is pure, and fairly mild. Crumbling the cakes is a chore or a kick, depending on one?s disposition, and a light hand is recommended, as it is all too easy to pulverize them into quarks. It lights easily, and produces such copious amounts of smoke that at least one person has commented "Sir, your pipe is on fire." Despite this instant pool hall/card game/mosquito repellent quality, room note is fairly mild, if cloudy. The flavors, at first quite pedestrian, quickly settle into stride and reveal a smooth, medium bodied palate redolent of pure, unadulterated, Virginia leaf- a delicious, unalloyed tobacco. Special care must be taken, as it can easily burn out of hand. It won?t bite, but you may notice your pipe far hotter than usual. It continues to gain in complexity to the rather abrupt end. My complaints are admittedly petty and trite. I find myself getting fewer bowls per tin (due to the construction), fewer minutes per bowl (due to the rapid burn), and, consequently, fewer hours per tin. This may make it one of the more expensive blends to smoke in my portfolio, but I?ll certainly live with it. It?s a small price to pay to enjoy one of the middleweight contenders in the world of straight Virginias. Overall, it?s not a life changing, epiphany inducing smoke, but it serves quite nicely, and is worth seeking out.

Addendum: Repeated tastings of this blend seem to accentuate its shortcomings. The hot, excessively dry burn and the lack of complexity grow tiring, and I must lower my recommendation.

The cake is a melange of red, orange, and brown leaf. There are sparse black flecks of leaf interspersed. There is no Perique, Latakia, or black cavendish billed in the description. I was thinking maybe DFK, and I rubbed one such black leaf between my fingers. When I sniffed there was no smokiness to suggest DFK. So, what exactly is the black leaf, who knows?

This summed up the tin note, mild, bland. The tobacco smokes fairly wet, but the smoke stays smooth. I got delicious notes of dark cocoa bean and roasted nuts every bowl. This is a simple pure tobacco experience. It is earthy , only lightly toasty. Per my experiences with BF, the burley seems to rule the roost, running roughshod on the VA. This may burn on the wet side, but it stays cool. The neutral burn qualities make this blend perfect to break in a new pipe. Not at all a bad blend, just kind of “meh.”

A cake with quite subtle aromas, perhaps a certain farmyard smell predominates. Humidity is perfect for immediate charging. It turns on very easily and hardly needs re-ignition. Everything flows easily from the first flame to the end of the pipe. I don't appreciate any kind of coverage. On the contrary, its qualities seem those of a totally natural tobacco.

There may be just "a hint of burley" as the presentation says, but its earthiness and flavor feels like there is a superior amount. Either that, or the tobacco-making process makes the burley outshine the virginia. It has a strong, good-quality cigarette flavor and is quite dry. Six years of aging does not appear to have changed the properties of Briar Fox relative to other reviews here on younger tin. In the mouth and in the pipe it behaves perfectly, without a trace of bite or moisture, not even when you accelerate the speed of the smoke.

If you are a Burley lover, you will probably like this one a lot ...

I thought I'd give this one a go since it's been sitting unopened for about two years now. The tin on this blend is interesting to say the least, and as it says on the tin, this was the favorite blend of the late Peter Heeschen a Danish pipe maker. Upon opening the tin there is a nice mottled brown crumble cake. The smell in the jar is of soft hay, nuts, mustiness, and dark fruits. The cake breaks apart and rubs out easily. It's smokable right put of the tin, and it's easy to keep lit.

Now to the taste department. This really is a simple blend. The Burley is typical of C&D: well balanced, nutty, soft, woody, with the barest hint of chocolate. The Virginias are very bread like, sweet in a honey or stewed fruit sort of way to my taste, and carry a slight hay like quality. The Burley appears to take the lead, with the Virginias giving body.

The taste here is a medium. It fills the mouth pleasantly and doesn't take over you tastebuds. The strength is mild-medium. The room note is heavy of Burley and may remind your friends of cigarettes. This is a great all day blend, good for sitting down with, or puffing on while you're puttering on with chores or hobbies. It takes a lot to get this hot, and it burns nice and slow.

So this is another blend i have held back on reviewing, not because it needed age but because I needed some time with it. This is one good Burley blend, and that is saying a lot for me because I am hit and miss with Burley. Tin note is sour with a touch of chocolate. The flavor is nutty with a touch of sweetness, dark caramel. The VA's give an earthy mulch like flavor ( in a good way). As the bowl burns down the general nuttiness becomes like cashews. not a complex smoke but a great taste from start to finish. A little bit bold in the nicotine department, but if smoked on a full stomach and and slowly you won't notice it ( I am not a big nic guy). Believe the hype, this is a great smoke.

I will add that I had to rewatch Song of the South while I wrote the review and smoked a bowl in a small German Clay.

First off, I have become enamored with Krumble Kakes recently. I just love the presentation and enjoy tearing off a chunk to put in my pipe. Briar Fox comes as one of these Kake brownies in the tin with gold, brown, and flecks of black tobaccos. Looks an awful lot like a "blondie."

The tin note to me is more Burley than Virginia. I detect more chocolatey, raisiny, nuttiness than sweetness, breadiness, and tang. I know BF is considered a VA/Bur, but I think of it more as a Bur/VA. If that makes sense. I find it to be more dominant in Burley than Virginia. That may not be the case, but I definitely taste more Burley than Virginia. At any rate, I definitely enjoyed it. This is a great tobacco that I will revisit on occasion. Probably pretty frequently, at that.