Manifatture Sigaro Toscano Forte

Essentially pure Italian Kentucky (tiny traces of different tobaccos are present). Completly natural and unflavored, very strong, full and satisfying, it is an excellent tobacco. I like it very much. If you like Kentucky, this is for you. I smoke it straight, but it is also a perfect blending tobacco. In my system rating (from 0 to 10) my score is 8 and three stars.

There are different Forte kind in Italy, like Forte Gusto Pieno and Forte Taglio Fino, but basically they have a common smoked Kentucky blend. In the past, before industrial cigarettes our grandfathers use to smoke it like rolling tobacco whitout filters. today someone still does it. Forte is a strong genuine rough tobacco with no fine elegant flavours, based on a few persistent notes, like oak smoked wood,leather,walnuts and wet soil. It's a great blending tobacco too. Simple,cheap,effective.

I tried this good italian tobacco in 2012, it's a quite thin cut and low moisture natural italian various Kentucky mixture, roughly the same used to make typical italian famous cigars "Toscani". Bought in Italy, really cheap, and that's a plus. It smells earthy, woody, and a bit smoked, as correctly noted in other reviews.

Aroma: none

Taste: strong, but in a different way than, i.e., full bodied EM or cuban leaves mixtures; rich in nicotine

Room note: surprisingly not strong

Burning: quite fast, smoke not heavy, not dense

Best briars: ... no briars, it gives its best in corn cobs (really!)or magnesium silicate meerschaum; it's useful to "clean" a pipe from unwanted aromas, one only bowl burns away every reminiscence better than napalm!

Recommended, but moderation is necessary, it's a good, "macho", tobacco, I could smoke not more than two bowls in a day, at the third it can be mouth inflammatory, at the fourth sometimes the room begins to turn around you: if this tobacco is not strong enough for you, you can only try TNT, for your LAST bowl...

This blend is very similar to Comune. However, this one is a bit milder: same pure, raw taste of good tobacco, no flavors, no toppings, no aromas whatsoever. The result is that Forte, despite its name, can be smoked a bit more pleasantly than Comune. Not an every day smoke, yet a must-try blend.

Very good quality Kentucky: dry and unflavored. If you like Kentucky, so you will like Forte. If smoked slowly, so it doesn't bite. Very cheap in Italy.

Having passed through Italia and Comune, I couldn't do without trying Forte.

I cut this short since I underwrite most of the esteemed Beer's review. There is nothing subtle in a plain/robust Kentucky like this. Just a strong, earthy, Toscano-ish, masculine smoke. Something of the likes of the French Scaferlati (I still have two small cubes of that), old time (or grandfather's) stuff.

I would add that the quality of the tobacco has improved so much from the times ago when Comune and Forte (and Nazionale...) were packed in those small 20grms paper packs, and I may fully understand those pipsters devoting themselves to an "organic" tobacco like this.

Regarding me, after 10grms smoked straight in pipes of various sizes, always with pleasure, I have immediately started experimenting mixing with some Virginias. Very good results are coming from mixing three parts of Forte with one of HOTW.

Recommended... to myself obviously.

Forte is a very good tobacco. Kentucky is very pleasant. Try it!

In my family no one smoke the pipe, not even my ancestors apparently, but one of them, my father's grandpa, used to smoke Trinciato Forte. How? In cigarettes. Yeah you heard that, he used to roll his own ciggies without filter in a thick white rolling paper, and they were so big that they had a belly at the center. This tobacco was for cigarettes and pipe, and it was cut very thin, like the typical rolling tobaccos, until the 2010s. I used to smoke it and did not enjoy the change to the shag cut, because it was quite fun to smoke a fluffy leaf, and it was a different experience.
As I said with the Comune, you better pay attention with this old grumpy italian tobaccos, but if you know how to approach them, easy and friendly, without rush, they'll become good friends to you.