Borkum Riff Cherry Liqueur

In the pouch, this stringy, fine-cut mixture has an authentic cherry liqueur scent, behind which some huskier tobacco scents can be detected.

A blend of cavendished bright VAs and burleys along with a significant portion of black cavendish, the flavor tilts to the darkly sweet end of the spectrum. And though sweet, it is not jarring, and the topping does not intrude.

Cavendish fans will find Cherry Liqueur to be contemplative and quite refined. This will ghost a briar and seemed best in narrow to medium gauge chambers.

Not bad but nothing great either. A bit too dry. I'd smoke this again if I can't find anything else. Be careful because it bites.

An exciting blend of burning car tyres, burning plastic and chemical artificial cherry. This is the pipe tobacco you get a new pipe smoker to smoke so they know to never ever go down that road again. Gastly

Just get the cherry cavendish one instead.

This doesn't have anywhere near as nice of a cherry flavour or aroma as the cherry cavendish.

Maybe try it if you think the other one has too much flavouring. It was disappointing to me.

I have received a few pouches of this as gifts over the years, and it must be said that the blend has improved a bit over the decades that I've been familiar with it. Still, this is a mediocre blend at best.

Upon initially opening a new pouch, one is greeted with a powerful maraschino cherry aroma. I happen to love cherries, and find this an irresistible invitation to load up and fire away. Sadly, the smoking experience goes quite downhill from there.

Borkum Riff Cherry Liqueur is very moist upon first opening, is not at all appealing from a visual standpoint, and feels not unlike cold spaghetti to the fingers as one loads up. It is a very difficult smoke to manage effectively. One must sip very slowly to avoid tongue bite, and this means frequent relights as the mixture just won't stay lit unless you constantly draw upon on it. Even when sipped cautiously, one will still find their pipe gurgling away by mid-bowl.

Flavor is another disappointment--weak and insipid, there just isn't much here. This is a very light burley mixture, and the primary flavor note is that of very mild Burley with additions of sweetness and a Merlot-like tang from the cherry casing. Acrid, ashy off-notes are also ever-present here. Note that I said Merlot, rather than cherry. The lack of genuine cherry notes here was another letdown.

On a positive note, the blend does present a pleasant cherry aroma to the nose and elicits positive reactions from those sharing the room. Truly, this is a blend that may well be enjoyed more by the bystander than by those smoking it.

All in all, this blend is generally not recommended. This was the first blend I ever purchased when getting into pipe smoking decades ago, and it was such a difficult and unrewarding exercise that I was left to wonder if pipe smoking was even worth the bother. Absolutely not recommended to the beginner, this may hold a few rewards for the experienced piper wishing for a very light blend that will likely please those around him.

I must have got an old dry packet as there was no goopy red mess. What little taste I can detect is actually a very pleasant nectarine/champagne like flavor. Nothing at all resembling cherry.

My local tobacconist in New Zealand tried to sell me this a while back and that pouch had a strong artificial-cherry-flavored-medicine aroma so I decided not to be extorted the US$40 a pouch of tobacco costs in NZ.

The Australian stuff is quite different, it has a very mild almost undetectable nectarine pouch aroma similar to the taste, which is why I decided to give it a whirl, as I love nectarines.

Another typical tasteless Borkum. If there was more flavoring it would not be that bad at all. It has slighlty more detecable flavor than Borkum original, Vanilla cavendish and Black cavendish so it gets two stars.

If you want a good "drug store" cherry, try the Borkum cherry cavendish (the crimson pouch), it is vastly better than this and actually tastes like real black cherries.

In my locale, there are only 2 otc brands available: Captain Black and Borkum Riff. I tried nearly all the CBs and they actually weren't that bad. I figured I would try BR so I purchased this Cherry Liqueur and Bourbon Whiskey (reviewed separately). It was only after I had purchased these and a few other tobaccos that I started reading tobaccoreviews.com. Well here's my experience. Please pass it on, especially to newbies.

I read that it tastes like chemicals, burns the tongue easily, and leaves a bad room note. I think someone complained about it leaving a goop in the bowl after smoking it. I've read that it ghosts your pipe. To reduce the possibility of goop and bite I left it open in its pouch for 2 days. It was fairly dry when I smoked it. It started OK, but there was very little flavor. I had trouble keeping it lit. I think because of the frequent relights and the irresistable urge to puff harder to try to get some flavor, you end up getting tongue bite. So I let it cool about a minute between relights and I relaxed my puffing cadence. It bit much less. Now for me, there was never any cherry flavor, not even a scent in the pouch when it was first opened. What I tasted in the smoke was plastic. Very unpleasant. Some of the worst cigarettes I've smoked tasted better than this smoke. It left a stale aroma in the air afterwards, worse than the aforementioned cigarettes. At the very least it did not ghost my pipe, maybe cuz I only allowed the smoke to take 15 minutes. Lastly, although it was not cheap at $10, I couldn't force myself to consider smoking another bowl ever again. I tossed it in the garbage. The Bourbon Whiskey was only marginally better, but still bad. I can't recommend this tobacco when the other otc brand does it so much better.

Over the last 40 years I have tried all the BR blends. Even the ones such as cognac blend and rum blend which are no longer available. IMHO, Of all the BR blends, the black cavendish and the cherry liqueur are the only ones that are bad. It's true none of them are top notch but they are better than most OTC blends.

As others have noted, cherry liqueur is syrupy and goopy and it does bite. Another BR blend, cherry cavendish, is often confused with the cherry liqueur blend. The cherry cavendish is ok.

This was the second pouch I bought when I first started pipe smoking. I walked into the smoke shop and asked what he recommended, and was then told that "this one is popular".

Packed a bowl of goopy red tobacco into a new missouri meerschaum, and attempted to light it. Finally it did light, and then it bit my tounge.

I then threw the missouri meerschaum and the pouch into the trash. This was, and still is, the worst tobacco I have ever smoked.