Mac Baren Amphora Black Cavendish Special Reserve

The best Amphora blend that was out there. Very dark leaves with a dark caramel flavour. Burns well, decent taste and room aroma. Cannot find it anymore. A pitty.

the smell of licorice is almost overwhelming when opening but at the same time delightful. My grandfather would come to my house on sunday and this is what he smoked. So perhaps that is why I am Drawn to this tobacco it brings back fond memories. This is a good smoke when higher quality tobacco is unavailable. The room note is great, one of the few my wife will let me smoke inside, and it is available just about anywhere.

This is a classic aromatic-cavendish blend. Rich and spicy, low nicotine and easy burning, sometimes heat the bowl or bites the tonge. This is a "social" tobacco, perfect for smoke in a friend`s meeting, the people around will love the aroma.

This tobacco from Amphora is a very well kept secret. I would add, a hidden treasure. Despite the fact that I retried it last year ( after quite a number of years) and found it too mild now for me, it was still a pleasure to smoke it.

Despite the unevenness in the blending - sometimes the tobacco in the pouch has a lot of Black cavendish and just a bit of golden and brown leaf,all rather of small cut, sometimes it's all long cut, the Black Cavendish being a minority- and despite the fact that I now smoke either Rattray's, G.L. Pease, McConnell, I find Amphora Black Cavendish is actually of half decent quality despite the fact that mostly, you will find it in drugstores or convenience stores rather than on serious tobacconists shelves.

This tobacco smells licorice like crazy, to the point that when I smoked it on a regular basis, I would take the pouch on a regular basis over the evening and fill my nose with the sweet, incredible smell of this blend. It was almost an obsession and my girlfriend of the time would not say anything, but look at me in a very weird way.

Here's the magic of this blend: it smells like licorice, people freak out over the room note - it is just fantastic, of course, I can't smell it like everybody that's not smoking a pipe, can, but the taste of the tobacco is not overwhelming in the aroma; it's actually more like tobacco than the flavouring.

The advantage is thus that Black Cavendish from Amphora doesn't really taste like the traditional aromatics, it smokes DRY despite the fact that it's an aromatic, and everybody LOVES the room note, even the worse, most radical or intolerant non-smokers will bend in front of Amphora Black Cavendish!

Hey, everybody's happy! If you do smoke the Big League's names like myself and do find Amphara Black Cavendish in a drugstore, grocery store, convenience store, you want to give it a try.

Due to the sudden impossibility to import my usual Virginia and Latakia blends from Cuppojoe's in NYC, I have to resort to those tobaccos readily available in Mexico City. The Amphora range is among those. I have already submitted a review of Amphora Regular, an old favourite when it was blended by D&E, but somewhat of a disappointment under Imperial Tobacco. Just to keep alive that endless search of a new blend, I recently opened a three-year-old pouch of Amphora Black I had stored somewhere in the upper shleves in my studio.

I must admit that even though this is obviously an aromatic, it does not resemble in any way a drug-store blend, nor does it taste like a Danish one. This is no vanilla-flavour concoction and it is not goopy or overridden with moisture. Dry black Cavndish, golden Virginia and some toasted Burley thrown in provide the base for a medium strength, floral like smoke, not at all bad, with enough tobacco flavour in the background to make you almost forget (and forgive) the fact that you are actually smoking an aromatic!

It burns rather cool and dry, and it does not infest the pipe with its floral-maple like aroma, provided you run a pipe cleaner through the stem and the shank once you've finished and the pipe is cool enough to be opened. I am not an aromatic fan, but this is not a bad change of pace if you suddenly crave a sweet taste.

Amphora black is a long lasting, not prone to bite, medium strength smoke. If you want a point of comparison, I believe this is slightly similar to Gawith's Grousemoor, but far less aggressive in terms of flavour and aroma, and with a more manly tobacco structure. All in all, a worthwhile experience.

The winey smell in the pouch almost reminds of sweet Marsala: quite unusual! It's not a bad cavendish oriented aromatic, but as usual it can taste a bit "empty". Typically easy to pack and light like the other Amphoras, it may burn too fast and scorch your tongue. The taste is OK at the beginning, but vanishes as the bowl progresses. It used to be a fine tobacco several years ago (sweet, dark and spicy), but today it's very bland and uninteresting.

2009 Update: a few years ago, Amphora renewed its product line. This tobacco is now called Black Cavendish Special Reserve. It hasn't changed much: wonderful sweet but natural pouch aroma, full of plums, dried figs, and a slighty alcoholic topping (rum?). Now it smokes rather cool and even, a truly low maintenance tobacco. Too bad that, while not exactly flat in flavour, it delivers very little of what the nose promised. It tastes like a very generic oriental+burley+virginia blend, not particularly sweet. Rather nutty, on the other hand, and not without body. Unremarkable, but not unpleasant. At least it tastes of tobacco, and it's not goopy. If you savour it slowly, it might even be quite pleasant. Slightly ashy aftertaste.

This is like smoking shredded tires and peppercorns. It will make your family disown you and your animals pray for your demise.

Avoid it, if possible, run quickly in the opposite direction, if not possible.

The Amphora Black is really Dark and Spicy as the pouch says. It packs easily but you must be careful because it tends to tounge bite if you puff too quick. The taste is nice and full if you like black cavendish, you'll enjoy Amphora Black. Non smokers aren't quite happy with the strong room aroma. Otherwise I enjoy smoking it from time to time, usualy when I don't have my favorite tobaccos at hand.

very good