Nat Sherman 307 Mild Cavendish

Though a devotee of the English blends, here I am ready to wholeheartedly declare: a damn fine tobacco. This is a fascinating blend that looks quite nice in the tin. It posesses a good, even mix of dark shades of brown and black. Like most tinned tobaccos, this one needs some drying. I would reccomend emptying and spreading it out onto a sheet of paper for a day or so.

On the nose, it has a very pleasent and classic toasted cavedish odor. However, when smoking it I detected another level of natural sweetness coming from the cavendish. I detect some mild vanilla casings in the burley and maybe something else, something with an almost red-wine-like quality that I cannot nail down- but it is absolutley spectacular.

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This Sherman packs, lights, and burns very nicely. It produces some sumptuos, soft, velvety clouds of smoke that fill the room with an odor that is very true to its unsmoked tin aroma. During the entire smoke it retained its excellent burning properties but started getting very wet toward the end.

The flavor of this tobacco is great thanks to its immaculate blending. It is poignant,rich,delicious and with an underlying natural tobacco flavor that is well rounded by the slight casing. The toasted cavendish is the key here. From the start, it works to sublty mesh all of the flavors perfectly. Unlike many tobaccos, the effect on the palate is very true to the odor it has in the tin. This is also true for its room aroma. If you do not smoke a pipe, then the Sherman 307 is a really good reason to start. Just be sure to dry it out some first. - The Rabbi

I picked up a tin of 307 on a whim while I was perusing the tins at my local B&M. Being from North Jersey originally, I get nostalgic seeing the beautiful tins with the Manhatten skyline on them. Having been to the Nat Sherman store in NY I can say it really is the pinnacle of tobacconists! 307 is a black Cavendish with Burley and very high quality. The paper that contains the tobacco was stained with topping and the tobac was sticky but the fact that it does dry out and has nice flavors leads me to believe they left out the PG and used high quality tobacco. This makes a marvelous blender but smokes like a dream by itself also... Vanilla Black Cavendish blends are a dime a dozen but when done well like Nat Sherman does, it really becomes a treat!

I've rewritten my review of this marvelous aromatic. My first tin was good and my initial review reflected that.

I ordered 9 more tins from Pipes and Cigars and was pleasantly surprised. The blend was about 50% drier out of the tin than the first and needed no drying time. There was a lot less black cavendish, which meant that the casing was cut back by a third to about 20%. I can taste the wonderful burley with the vanilla-rum casing in the background.

I would rate this a Hall of Famer and the best aromatic out there.

Update: I'm lowering my rating to three stars as the amount of effort in drying out this blend diminishes my enjoyment.

Update 2: I've found that adding 3-4% of perique adds a lot of flavor and improves the burning qualities.

This is soaking wet,tin smells like vanilla or rum.The aromatic taste seems like a cedar taste or it was aged in a rum barrel but the barrel is what stands out in the smoke.After you get past the aromatics the tobacco is nice full mellow burley and a little peppery tasting on the end.Lights good Burns good No tongue bite,I like smoking this at night.

Although I normally smoke VA or VA/Perique flakes, this is one of the better aromatics that I've recently tried. The dark brown to jet black wide ribbons were too moist from the tin and smoked wet. They stained the white tin liner dark brown in many areas. They smelled very sweet ~ vanilla from the tin but this decreased with several days of drying and resulted in a better smoke with much less condensation. With the drying the smoking, lighting and packing properties also improved to the point that I could recommend your trial. The nutty Burley is nicely balanced with the cased Balck Cavendish. However, this blend is very mild and I would only choose it more for the benefit of the room aroma on the few occasions that I can smoke socially. 307 is a giant step in quality above the drug store aromatics.

The tin, well sealed, had a 2008 excise tax without any indication of the year of manufacture. The tobacco inside was very moist, even though the mixture had been in the tin for over 10 years, and the paper liner was stained brown. The tobacco itself is a smooth milk chocolate color with a dark brown cavendish mixed in. Ribbon cutting. The tobacco should be a little dry before smoking, which I did.

Smell: The base is the nutty note of a good portion of burley, to which the woody smell of cedar, vanilla, prune and rum. Which of these is the flavoring and which relates to the cavendish, it's hard to know - the blend is very harmonious. Filling a large pipe, I was pleased to smoke it.

The tobacco flavor is a bit of sweet dark plum, vanilla, walnut, and rum. Despite the slight flavoring, the flavor is dense, as a burley should be, and only slightly sweet. Closer to the end of the pipe, there's mostly a nutty burley note with a slight sweetness, and the flavoring fades away. The tobacco does not bite, does not burn the tongue, smokes cool and slow enough. The strength is below average, nicotine strike is not threatened even when smoking large quantities.

The ash is loose, dark gray in color, there is relatively a lot of it. The smoke from tobacco smells like nuts, vanilla and wood - the smell is fairly unobtrusive and does not irritate those around you, but it stays in the room for a long time

Bottom line: I don't like burley blends, but this is a very good tobacco, quite in the spirit of the American flavoring tradition. It tastes very mild, burns slowly and coolly, creating a soft and pleasant room flavor. The only downside is the aftertaste in the pipe, which lasts a few days - and the fact the tobbaco doesn't produce anymore.