Solani 113: Sweet Mystery

I've got to agree with the previous reviewer on this one. Hot and nasty sums up my thoughts on Sweet Misery. In fact, I think this crap just might earn a place on my 25 worst pipe mixtures of all time.

* Update 12/28/2011 (Changed all the review to express better my opinion. The stars remain the same)



Worthless tobacco in my opinion. "Why that?" some of you might ask. Well, for the following reasons

1) Nice, but pungent tin aroma

2) TOO MUCH CHEMICAL FLAVORING. To get an idea, the surrounding paper of my tin was yellow. I haven't seen that in other blends.

3) EXTREME tongue bite in my first bowl.

4) No taste at all in my opinion. And I have smoked this 3-4 times.

Really, I cannot see why tobaccos should be chemically flavored so much. Artificial sweeteners and aromas alter the taste of the tobacco. With the heat they decompose, polymerize, oxidize and god knows what else... So don't expect this tobacco to taste like Blackcurrants and Bacardi.

If you want something sweet, go buy a cheesecake. It will taste much better.

Sweet Mystery is built of beautiful wild-cut Virginias and Cavendish. It is a remarkably cool smoke and it finishes with a nice white ash. It burns well. It has a wonderful aroma. In fact, Sweet Mystery is so obviously a quality offering that one may, for a few moments, somehow miss that for this tobacco, as with Gertrude Stein's Oakland, there is no there there. At the top of the bowl, this tastes mostly like nothing. In the middle, it tastes like nothing plus maybe the hint of a taste that is not quite identifiable. At the bottom of the bowl, it is nothing, still nothing, but there is a taste, perhaps, that comes and goes, and it may be sort of fruity. If you smoke this in a briar, over a few dozen smokes, maybe a tin, you might be able cobble up the impression that you're smoking tobacco. Then again, you might not. For fans of Erik Satie only.

Upon opening this tin I had high hopes for this blend. Good cut and color, intriguing tin note, a well regarded brand, I loved their aged burley flake blend 656. I believe I am a well rounded pipe smoker, 50/50 aros and non-aros, and I'll try just about anything once.

IMHO this stuff was crap. Tasteless, impossible to keep lit even when fairly dry, room note was almost nonexistent (sez the better half who likes the smell of Dunhill 965, Momoyama II, as well as Hobbits Weed and Red Sky), so I trust her implicitly in this.

The only redeeming factor was the lack of tongue bite, but if that is the only good thing you can say about a blend you might as well dump it in the trash, which I did, only keeping the tin because I always have uses for empty tins. Don't waste your hard earned money on this loser. If you want a complex smooth fruity aro get some Hobbits Weed and don't look back.

Sometimes I have the impression that I give a lot of dedication to the tobacco I don´t "understand", or the one which I don´t like, more than the one I like the most (which is given for granted will always please me), always doing this with the aim to find the breaking point where I can understand or like it. This happened with Sweet Mystery with no chance for reconciliation.

I opened the can, the smell was fantastic, sweet and at least intriguing, i wouldn´t dare to say mysterious, fruity, rum like, peachy, but after that the factual test of smoking that dissaproved the initial impression.

Rum and vanilla notes are noticeable with variable accents of undetermined fruit flavour, peach? currant? and even though the initial quarter of the bowl remains palatable and indulging, then the ordeal of the "ashy" and "goopy" kingdom starts to proliferate and you have to fight with it via slowing down the intake or driving the smoke into a different portion of the mouth. But nevermind, it will always return, granting this sensation of ash taste as contour of the flavours. It´s not pleasant at all.

The liquor notes tend to accent from the middle on and remain prevalent. It has a great room aroma though, the kind that people will admire, but hey, even if we can please others that is not enough if what we are smoking is not really pleasing us. That being said, after several months rotating this can, giving a try in different places, at different times of the day with different weather in different pipes i came to the conclusion that I wouldn´t buy another. Something to notice, even if this tobacco burns easily it tends to be goopy and oily after smoked, leaving your pipe filled with greasy tar and nauseus smell, not the kind that after smoked leaves your pipe perfumed with fragrance that is pleasant to smell.

First off, I am not a real fan of heavily flavored aromatics, that said, this tobacco is one reason I got away from stuff like this when I first started pipe smoking 40 some odd years ago. This tobacco would do the beginner justice for about one bowl, then after the nice room note faded, your left with that sickly sweet taste. Yuck. If you like tobacco to taste something other than tobacco then this is for you. For me, the strong flavoring of black currents, cherries, etc., was too much. As usual, it has a great smell, but tastes like hell. I wouldn't even give this away...it's straight to the trash.

The casing just dont work for me. Soloni's aromatics just seem extremely "overcased".