Cornell & Diehl Junkyard Dawg

Cornell & Diehl - Junkyard Dawg.

This has taken ages to get to me! Smokingpipes.com sent it a few months ago but good old customs impounded it and it took forever and a day for them to send the surcharge slip so it could be delivered. But, I got it in the end!

It's quite a well rubbed broken flake, and it's easy to see which is the lesser of the three leaves: the Latakia. Moisture? Not good. One of the dryer C+D blends I've had.

Robust. This is the apt word for the smoke. Something else to spring to mind is disappointing. It isn't horrible, but nowhere near as good as some of their other blends. Like the appearance implied, and others have noted, the Latakia isn't too notable. It's easier to taste at the beginning, but quickly dissipates, and then vanishes. I also find the Virginia lightly applied; it isn't as delicately included as the Lat', but nor is it as formidable as the Burley. I find this leads the flavour, with a sort of unrefined note. Because of the dehydration the burn's rubbish: fast and hot.

The nicotine: medium. The room-note: quite bad.

Hmmmm, Junkyard Dawg? If it wasn't dry it wouldn't have been as bad, so considering that I'll somewhat recommend it. If every tin arrived as dry I wouldn't!

Somewhat recommended.

The aroma in the tin is a nice pungent burley smell. You can see the light amount of latakia present and the burley is a cube-cut. I bought this thinking it would be a latakia based smoke, but that only comes up a little bit while enjoying it. This is mostly a nutty-smokey burley, and really it's pretty good. I'm new to smoking the pipe, and haven't really smoked burley heavy tobacco, but I found this was a good smoke for the early evening and note that I smoked this in the cob and the briar but I liked it better in the cob. It has a real strong, down-to-earth flavor about it that is pretty nice, but if you are looking for heavy latakia, this won't be it. I'd give it an 7 out of 10 stars.

Edit, I honestly don't care for this much in a briar pipe, for me it must be a corn-cob.

**update, I have found I like this one more if I blend a bit of cavendish in with it, not much, maybe an 3/8 of the volume.

Insofar as taste goes, this is probably the best of C&D's English/American hybrids (that's meant as a very high compliment). The VAs are far more noticeable here than in Morley's Best or Bailey's Front Porch, and the ingredients tend to wax and wane in relative strength as the bowl progresses. One minute you're tasting latakia, the next it's burley, and then a strong hit of sweet VA. Unfortunately, there are two serious problems with his blend. One, it's not much easier to keep lit than GLP's Barbary Coast, a blend which could conceivably be used as a fire-retardant stuffing for furniture. Looking at the ingredients, I can't figure out why the Dawg would behave this way, but the problem is enough to knock off a star. Also, as others have noted, the Dawg can BITE, which is always a serious drawback. As I indicated earlier, the flavor is incredible -- if it weren't for the other issues, it would easily earn a four-star rating. I've gone through two 2-ounce batches of this so far, and I've got another tin socked away for aging. With luck, a couple of years in the cellar will turn this into something more manageable.

The latakia is covering everything else, i think. Very easy burning (little fast) and some tongue bite. Nothing special for this one except the very good quality known tobaccos for this company.

I am not a burley fan and that should be taken into account when reading this review. I bought Junkyard Dog making another attempt to like burley. I read the tobacco is high quality. The tin art is super. The reviews are good. i think possibly this is the tobacco that will show me what others see in burley. Nope. To me it is just more of the same. I gave it two stars because outside of having a butt load of burley in it, it is not otherwise offensive.