Cornell & Diehl Easy Times

During our 2017 NASPC show, a man wheeled a cart over to my table bearing a huge, lidded plastic tub loaded down to the brim with various and sundry pipe weed blends from the last twenty-odd years and we came to terms. Older on the bottom and newer on the top, I found two tins of this blend just below halfway. They were an earlier version with brass bottoms and a circular picture label on the lid and bore tinning dates in August of 2003; making that wonderful twenty year old burley now thirty-six years old. The tin presentation is of a relatively uniform medium tan tobacco blend in a broad ribbon cut with pieces of some broken flake mixed in. The tin aroma tells you that Latakia is present, but, it also tells you something else. Unlike most other light Englishes, one gets to savor a moderately strong aroma of Red Virginia and Kentucky Burley. My tin was relatively dry on opening and made me wonder just how fine was that tin aroma when this blend was freshly tinned? I remember this blend coming onto the market but, unfortunately, did not smoke it back then when freshly tinned. Speaking of smoking, this blend smokes fairly consistently from pipe to pipe and seems to prefer taller and narrower chambers. Every bowl I have smoked has progressed down the same line of development: top third magnificent and four stars, middle third some what toned down and sagging a little and the bottom third coming back to life in a new and surprising profile. The Latakia now gone, the other two tobaccos get together in a new way and provide a Burley/Virginia smoke of major proportions that is, in essence, four stars in it's own right. Off hand, I can't think of another blend that smokes quite like C&D's Easy Times and recommend it highly with four stars. I only hope some of you can find these pre-2012 tins so you, too, can enjoy this strange, but magnificent, blend.