Dream Castle Tobacco Company Natural Cavendish

This is some really bizzare tobacco. I get a free sampler of this every time I order up a few pounds from pipesandcigars.com and I tried it yesterday for the first time. It's like smoking....nothing. It has no taste hardly at all, no nicotine whatsoever. If it weren't for the smoke coming out of my mouth I'd say the pipe went out LOL. If you really stoke the pipe and get it hot it kind of burns your mouth and nose, but goes away quickly leaving no nicotine buzz. If you want to smoke all day long this may be your bacca, but it's not for me. I like a good tasting tobacco, latakia, virginia, even a mild aromatic is better than 'nothing', and I really enjoy my nicotine when I get in the 'zone'. On the flip side, if you have a blend that is too strong in taste or nicotine, or perhaps too heavily cased, this stuff would be a fantastic blending tobacco to thin out other tobacco. I didn't know what a mild tobacco was until I tried this, you should try it at least once. I have some extra if you want some! I didn't get the tounge bite like other reviewers below, and it stayed lit for me very well.

I create my own aromatic blends with numerous extracts and also some professionally prepared tobacco sauces. I prefer a mild cavendish, burley and virginia mix for this purpose. The label for this blend is Super Value. There are other flavors in this line of tobacco available such as cherry, vanilla and whiskey. Since I sauce tobacco, I use only unflavored or natural tobacco. This blend caught my eye because it is called Natural Cavendish. This tobacco probably has been sprayed in preparation with a cavendish flavor enhancer which merely adds natural tobacco taste. It was surprisingly moist in the bag. Ideally, 15% moisture content would be perfect. But, I would say the moisture level of the bag I bought is is more like 20% and requires some drying time before smoking and especially if applying aromatic sauces to it. All things considered, I view this as a qualilty tobacco product very reasonably priced and readily available. I enjoy applying my various aromatics to this brand/blend of tobacco. I have applied an aromatic sauce of butterscotch and cinnamon to it and the result is worth the effort. Other flavor applications will likely work very well with it, too, as long as sufficient drying time is allowed before spraying with an aromatic flavor.

***EDITED 4/4/09***

I much prefer flavoring my own tobacco using C&D (Cornell & Diehl) blending tobacco's as they are never treated with proylene glycol used by Altadis in their Natural Cavendish. As a result, you will experience a much better smoke because your finished blend will not be so heavily laden with moisture preservative.

This was the first pipe tobacco I tried. It smelled wonderful in the bag. I first tried it in a cob and was very bitten and nearly gave up the idea of pipe smoking. It was a very moist blend and I had to puff like crazy to get/keep it lit.

After letting the blend "cellar" for about a year, I re-tried it in a Dr. Grabow Golden Duke. After some aging, it lit muck better and was actually quite a pleasant smoke.

If one were to buy this, I would recommend letting it dry out and using a fairly good-sized bowl to smoke it in.