J. F. Germain & Son Germain's Mixture No.7

many years ago, i smoked a tin of this weed, and found it strange, interesting, and not very much to my liking. unmistakingly germain's, and fine quality, of course.

this time round, i find it completely unrecognizable. it's a heavily cased (and top flavoured, too, i reckon) aromatic. a goopy and disgusting blend.

closer inspection of the paper disc inside the tin, reveals that it's made by planta. oh dear.

...and why in heaven's name did i buy a 100g tin?????

Mixture No. 7 arrives quite wet in the tin smelling of cheap red wine. The tobacco appears to be of good quality, and is cut like many blends made by Germain, with very thin ribbons. Once it is dried out, the fruit like aroma takes over. It burns somewhat hot and as one other reviewer pointed out, it develops a nasty taste which for me started about mid bowl. It is very rare that I will comment on a blend without smoking at least an ounce or two, but I needed to show mercy on my taste buds. I don't know if Planta is still blending this as my tin said “Manufactured by J.F. Germain (not for J.F. Germain) It is hard to believe that Mixture No. 7 is made by the same folks that make great blends like Stonehaven, Penzance and the newest version of Balkan Sobranie. Mixture No. 7 may be from a bygone era and for me, it should have stayed there.

Upon lighting, this promissed to be a nice sweet Va with some burley. But then about 5 minutes in, a strange aftertaste took over. Dunno if I can call it soapy or what, but was definitely distasteful to me. Just before the end of the smoke, the aftertaste dissapeared and it was a sweet Va. again. I tried this three times in different sized pipes and it happened every time. Very strange. I won't be trying this again.

Palatable enough blend from Germains.

I had a pouch as well and, yet again, Dan Pipe has sent me another dry tobacco. You could hear it crunching inside the packet if you squeezed it.

The freshly opened pouch gives off a typically Danish assortment of sweetness. Sweetshop boiled sweets come to mind, yet with a small sense of a beefier chemical. It doesn't actually taste of any fruit, which seems to be so common in aromatic tobaccos, but it did bring to mind the slight backdrop of Ashton's winding road, which was meant to be apricot if I remember rightly.

Being dryer than the sahara means a short smoke which tastes somewhat chemically unbalanced at first, but then dies down to a more conservative aromatic taste so similar to others blends of this kind. Ten to fifteen minutes puffing this and you're left with a dense white ash.

There a strange aftertaste too, and I found it coated my tongue with this strange mixture that was reminiscent of dark bourneville chocolate with a hint of candy floss.

I've had very similar blends to this before, you know those pouches that seem to last forever and you pick up once in a while for a sweet shop blast.

This is a cross between something from Cellini's and Ashton's Rainy Day or Guilty Pleasure, with a bit of Colts thrown in to for good measure. It's not totally ghastly. I've had far better than this (Larson's) and far far worse (Dan Pipe aromatic concoctions).

Try it if you like aromatics, but I suspect you won't find anything different to the usual crop. For those undaunted it's best to use meers or cobs with small to medium filling volumes.