Ashton Winding Road

It smells alright, but that's where the good parts end.

Bites something fierce.

It might be good in a Scentsy. One of the few I couldn't actually finish.

Not for me, not should it be for anyone else, I figure.

Update 10/09/2009:

I gave this blend every chance but I eventually had to dump about half the tin in the trash. I'm pretty sure that whatever they use to case this tobacco is causing the problem. Even after severely drying this blend out, it still is harsh, burns super hot and bites the tongue severely. Sorry, I can not recommend this blend at all.

Original review:

This is the first tinned tobacco that I purchased because it was one of only two tins available at a local cigar shop -- the other also Ashton. I held off on reviewing until I had several other tobaccos under my belt and I have just finished smoking my fourth bowl of this blend.

I like the concept of this blend, a fruity aromatic English. The tin aroma is wonderful and you can definitely smell the lovely mild apricot casing. The problem, however, at least for me, is that this is one of those blends that bites the crap out of my tongue. It seems that without the tongue-zap, this would be a nice mild smoke but the bite starts almost immediately. The first time I smoked this it was fresh out of the just-opened tin, and by the end of the bowl my tongue felt like I had just downed a too-hot cup of cheap coffee.

To be fair, I attempted what many others suggest when dealing with a blend that bites. I packed the bowl and let it sit for a couple of hours to dry a little. This helped a little and the bite was not as pronounced which allowed for a little more of the very mild English flavor as well as the apricot sweetness to come through, but both still fell flat. I could find no obvious caramel flavorings. From midway through the bowl to the last quarter it was actually very good but hard to discern through my fried tongue and by the last quarter of the bowl I felt like I was smoking dried wood. I feel that aging and drying should be used to make a really good blend great but never to compensate for a problem of this magnitude. I may give it one more try after drying the whole tin out for a day or two, but the fact of the matter is that, even without the bite, this may just be a mediocre smoke anyway. I didn't notice any other complaints of tongue-bite in the reviews so maybe my tin may is an anomaly, a victim of inconsistency. As a point of reference, I also experience tonuge bit in MacBaren's Virginia No. 1 but not nearly as much.

I had no trouble keeping this lit and it burns very nicely but SUPER hot. Even smoking it slowly, at one point I could barley hold the pipe, even by the thick top edges of my bent Dublin. Not much in the way of nicotine.

This was one of my first tinned blends. Prior to this, my piping experience was OTC aromatic blends from the local cigarette chain.

In short, I did not enjoy Winding Road. At first, I decided it was my newbie inability to smoke a pipe, but months later I find that I cannot smoke this tobacco without intense tongue bite (in reality, it's more like mouth bite.) I still haven't encountered a blend that wants to burn as hot as this tobacco. Worse yet, the flavor quickly becomes caustic and ashy despite my best attempts at packing, drying, or gentle smoking.

The tin note is pretty good--grassy, sweet Virginia topped with some fruity/citrusy qualities. If I could get that flavor to come through when smoking this blend, I would keep trying to figure this one out. As it stands, however, the juice isn't worth the squeeze, especially when there are so many options readily available to us in the digital age.

Update, 10/4/2022

I believe in second chances, so here I am, smoking this…tobacco?…again, a few months wiser in the art of the pipe, the blend having the same amount of time to rest. After all, I thought, I recently re-approached my very first Smoker Friendly aromatic and found it very good! Maybe the Ashton, I thought to myself, is better than I gave it credit!

Nah, I still don’t like it. Tastes like I pumped grandma’s hand soap into a flat, half-empty bottle of Pepsi Mango, shook it up, and used it as a mouth wash. Zero tobacco flavor—maybe I can tease out a little cavendish sweetness under it all, or maybe it’s my imagination. Harsh, fast burning. Still goes from soapy fruit to ashtray with a single, too hasty puff. I considered bumping my review to two stars because it is, technically speaking, smokable, but I’m instead going to dump my pipe out, bin my jar of this nasty, sticky stuff, and brush my teeth. Yikes.

I bought this cos I'd seen it had 4 stars and the tobacco shop I was in seemed to have a vendettat against VaPer and tobacco-ey tobaccos. Damn! Anyway, I suppose I should've checked out how many reviews there were. First things first, there's nothing nasty about this blend. It's perfectly decent and the tin aroma,which had me worried, didn't keep its promise of gooey, sweetened nonsense. This is ok tobacco, but really very mild and there's not a lot happening. Maybe I've jaded my palate with the stronger blends, but this seems insipid. This is a lot like a better quality gold block and obviously a lot better than the supermarket brands which unsult us on a daily basis, but just not tasty enough. Addendum:- After trying Consumate Gentleman (a stupid name if you ask me) I decided I'd need to salvage my Winding Road, so I thoroughly mixed-in about the same amount of well-rubbed Peterson's Irish Flake as there is Latakia. This improved things quite a bit, without changing the character too much. It's been given backbone and a multi-layered taste, but is still not stronger than 4/10, whereas previously I'd've given it 1.5-2/10. This might be a way to save it from lying forgotten at the bottom of your tobacco cupboard, if you've had a similar reaction to myself.

Nice tin note but the flavors didn't match that so well. I tasted the Virginias but the aromatic casing and the perique were so far back into the mix that it just didn't work for me.

I took a chance on a tin of this a month ago. Based on the description of the blend, and some expectation in regard to the brand, I hoped for a better smoking experience than what occured. The aroma upon opening was almost non-existant. The first bowl burned hot and almost bitter. Thinking that maybe it was too moist, I waited to let some dry out a little bit before smoking a second bowl. The result was no better, and it burned even hotter. There is almost no flavor or aroma to this blend. I'll finish the tin and chalk it up to the fool me once category. Too bad, it does have a nice name...but my opinion is " Road to Nowhere"...

I think the information on this is wrong - I don't believe it's blended by McClelland - it's definetely a European blender. Sadly, Bill Ashton Taylor (RIP) is no with us, but it's good to see that those left behind are continuing with his pipemaking business and I wish them success.

Anyway, if bill was still around, I would have no compunction in telling him that this stuff is absolute crap!

I'm not sure I fully understand what the the goal was here? there is a gap between aromatics and what we consider to be traditional English blends: so what we have here is a quasi-English ribbon cut, English-looking - aromatic!! that simply doesn't work.

The citrus additive (purported to be an apricot aroma) transforms the smoke into a very bitter, tongue tingling after-taste that burns quickly and very hot. My very large, thick bowled bent Dunhill felt like the end of a 'Thermic-lance' within a minute or so of lighting-up - and I do not regard my 35 years of pipe-smoking to be entirely inexperienced.

Sadly, this one neither qualifies as a good traditional English blend or a good aromatic - avoid like the plague!

This is supposed to be a "bridge" from aromatic to English. As a lover of full English blends with a little something "extra" added, I was intrigued. Unfortunatley, this dissapointed. It is neither an English or an aromatic. It's flavor is flat and it burned hot and quick. The preservative (I don't know exactly what it is called) seemed to be the dominant flavor. Keep in mind that Aston's Artisan's Blend is one of my favorite smokes so I'm not sure what went wrong with this one. I've only smoked one bowl and I'm sure I'll try another one eventually (I'm invested in the tin you see), but I wouldn't recommend this. Perhaps my tastes will change, but I doubt it.

S- Pretty strong. I was taken aback by the buzz I experienced

FL- Supposedly caramel and apricot, quite a pungent tin aroma.

RN- Smells like stale cigarettes, not to be smoked indoors.

T- Tastes like shithouse tobacco

R- No don't buy this; Save the 10$ or 12$ you would burn on this and buy something else!