Imperial Tobacco Group, PLC Amphora Cesare Borgia

I remember this blend! It did have an attractive tin, thats why I bought it too. It wasn't a bad smoke, nor was it an exceptional one either. I'd rather smoke Amphora Red anyday compared to this.

In France, tobacco has been a state monopoly since the time of the Sun King. The bureaucrats import whatever monsieur le ministre decides, and if he don't decide to import NIGHTCAP or ESCUDO, you are out of luck. When I lived there, I could not find ANY of my favourite English blends. As for French-made popular pipe blends of the Caporal and Saferlati sort, beloved by the poilus in the trenches of World War I, I have little doubt that many of France's 5,000,000 casualties in that "war to end all war" were caused by smoking such foul excrement.

[In all fairness, Jeanne Calment, 1875-1997, the oldest woman in the world at the time of her passing, smoked Caporal shag until age 120, in 1995, and her doctor said her abstinence was due to pride rather than health?she was too blind to light up herself, and hated asking others to do it for her.]

In desperation, I tried many things, including this blend. The étui-type tin, in a star-studded metallic calipso-blue finish, with Raphael's famous portrait of Pope Alexander IV's bastard, Cesare Borgia, on the cover (His Holiness' other love child was Cesare's deadly-beautiful sister Lucrezia Borgia, the famous poisoner) is very handsome. The tobacco, pungent in that Amphora way, was quite pleasant too: mild, but building to unexpected intensity. I am surprised to find that it had no latakia in it at all.

The fact that it is no longer in production is not, I'll say, any great loss. But it wasn't unpleasant, and I am delighted to have the sumptuous tin.

No longer in production (as far as I know), this was one D&E last attempts to revamp the Amphora brand, and became part of an Italian-Renaissance series, with blends named after famous Italian artists or, as it happens, characters.

This is the only Amphora I know of that came in a square tin, very eye- catching (similar, in fact, to many Larens' tobaccos). Nice and smooth, it was a middle of the road English, similar to Davidoff's Royalty or Sullivan & Powell's Gentleman's Mixture. The Turkish and Latakia in CB were used sparingly: enough to give it an English character, but never to the extent of any Dunhill Oriental (not even Early Morning). The predominant flavors were Amphora's typical use of Burleys and Virginias.

what can I say? I'm a sucker for a nice tin!!! This tin has got to be the nicest I have ever seen. Unfortunately the same cannot be said about the tobacco. I got this recently off of e-bay, and have no idea how old it is. I do know it has been out of production for some time. The contents are basically an oriental aromatic sans any Latakia. The flavor is predominantly fig pudding too me. That said the casing is unique and I've never tasted anything quite like it. It burns very cool as well. Alas, it just doesn't do it for me. But the tin will look very nice in my collection indeed!

Typical ribbon cut of light and dark browns with a tin aroma (beautiful tin!) of basic tobacco with a bit of some sort of topping. I couldn't place the flavoring, either in the tin nose or the taste but it was definitely there. There was also the faintest hint of a minor floral character. I found a tin on Ebay very cheap and I had also smoked a tin of this in the 1990's but couldn't recall what I thought about it... which usually means I wasn't impressed.

That lack of impression carried through to this tin. This was very basic burley and Virginia with a breath of Oriental but no latakia. Some blenders can make those ingredients sing. Here it only talks, and mostly in a monotone. The flavoring was mild but noticeable in each puff. The Oriental came and went and even when it was present, it simply added a slight punctuation of a floral taste, not too far removed from the lightest of Lakeland blends. The Virginia was non-descript in flavor, exhibiting neither the usual hay and grass, nor any citrus or breadiness. The burley was slightly sweet and slightly bitter by turns. This struck me as a Euro-aromatic and it was a success in the sense that the flavoring didn't overpower the tobacco, and a failure in that it utilized mostly characterless base tobaccos. It wasn't a bad smoke; it just wasn't anything to justify a second tin. Something to smoke but relatively boring - too much else out there that is readily available to worry about this one, whose passing is anything but a surprise.