Cornell & Diehl Bayou Night

I was inspired to try this tobacco after getting a smaple of Kajun Kake from C&D at the Chicago Pipe Show. I was really impressed with this tobacco, but at $30.00 for 8oz, I thought it was too epensive. After reviewing C&D tobaccos, I decided to try Bayou Night. I think this is the best tobacco I somked in the last 42 years! It is an amazing tobacco as other reviewers have descibed, with 50% perique. This is the best perique blend I have ever smoked. I have always liked perique, but in most blends found it too spicy. The perique in Bayou Night is smooth and fruity and burns very cool. The turkish, red VA, burley and latakia play very well in the background.

What I like most about this blend is the subtle flavor change in the tobbaco as the pipe is burns down. You can't really taste the latakia, but thats fine with me. One of the reasons I stayed away from English Blends is I don't really like alot of latakia. This is a great hybred of an English Blend.

Although not an all day smoke, it is great in the evening after work, especially with a vodka martini shaken, not stirred! I will definitly get this tobacco pressed next time I order. I think pressing will enhance the flaovors even better. Highly recommended!

11/7/06 UP DATE: I received my next order from C&D pressed about three weeks ago, and it is outstanding! The flavor is much deeper and fuller producing an excellent smoke. IMOP, C&D is one of the best tobacconist, and one of the few that you can have your blends pressed. It is worth the extra $3.00/lb. I will have all my blends from C&D pressed in the future.

Highly Recommended

"Fantastic" is how I would describe it. Very spicy like horseradish. So, so delicious. I had just cut up a large tree that fell over after some heavy rains. I loaded up my favorite Kirsten and after every long draw, I kept looking at the bowl and thinking, "man, I LOVE this $h!t." Mind you that I am a huge fan of C&D's Mississippi Mud as well. Bayou Night has a noticeably higher nicotine content, which for me is a good thing. Very relaxing, spicy, but well balanced mixture. I can taste every flavor from the various components and they harmonize beautifully. I can't recommend Bayou Night highly enough for the smoker that prefers stout, "manly" blends. Absolutely phenomenal. I purchased 4 oz from Smokingpipes.com who always has quick, impeccable service and I will be putting in for a pound next time around. Wow, what a treat this is.

There needs to be a name for this type of Perique-heavy English or Scottish mixture that carries with it a fertile strength and a nocturnal mien. Much like Dunhill's vaunted "Nightcap," Cornell & Diehl's "Bayou Night" boasts a heavy dose of Perique on a base of Virginias, accented by the mixture of Latakia and Orientals that provides harmony to those strong flavors, but C&D has also worked in some of their famous Burley magic to give this blend a solid, flavorful core of autumn flavors. The trickster Burley takes on a sweeter note and the evanescent nuttiness rises as the bowl declines, creating a smoky journey from vivid Latakia flavors through the peppery plum-raisin Perique and then coasting into a stygian cavern of rich Virginia-Burley power. The result is both delicious and calming, a contemplative smoke that might be too strong for an all-day burn but serves as the perfect coda to intense experience during the day. It also evokes a distinctly "swampy" feel, with its dark flavors slowly and erratically revealing other influences like objects hidden in the obscurity of dusk and clouds of mosquitoes rising from the stagnant, algae-choked black waters. Similar to C&D's "Engine 99," this takes English-style blends to new places, and does good by them.

Another one-note masterpiece that could only come from C&D. They do this kind of blend so well. We are conditioned to search for complexity in anything that one might be a connoisseur of, but a lot of C&D bends seem to make a good point of saying "Smoke this, it's real good, don't analyze it!" Well I guess I am anyway. I love blends with layers of complexity, but a lot of times I grab a C&D blend because it's simple and good. The blend itself is delicious to me. I concur with Zombie Gentleman about it's chocolate note which I think comes from C&D's granulated perique (I got some of their blender perique and it smelled of dry chocolate cake mix and wood ear mushrooms) and it also has a round base note of bitterness like french roast coffee, plus the expected black pepper and fig. This is very low rated and I think I know why. This particular blend didn't grab me at first and for a good reason, it hurt. I got a sample and felt that it was pretty moist, so naturally I dried it out a lot. It wrecked the roof of my mouth but good. A week later I tried it again, this time drying out more... much worst. I had it in a mason jar (it is so hard to throw away tobacco) and 4 or 6 months latter I had learned something about at least my body chemistry, blends with a lot of perique, like a newly found C&D favorite Kajun Kake, like to be moist. I thought back to that jar of Bayou Night and remember that it was fifty percent perique. I tried it again and packed a bowl fully moist and found it to be amazing cool smoking and bite-less. It is spicy at the mid-bowl mark but it wasn't damaging my mouth at all. It is now a blend that I grab when I want to be sure I don't get bit. Night and day difference. Try it again if this sound like you first experience, I'm glad I did!

EXCELLENT. I received this gratis from Messrs Davidoff?Park Avenue, don't you know?who sell it in delicious-smelling bulk.

I confess that I am not at all well-acquainted with the newer American blenders (I have only tried a couple of G.L. Pease's creations) and I found this, well, a bit of all right! (I see that R.C. Hacker quite likes it as well.)

The semi-sweet-dry-biscuit red Virginny which constitutes the backdrop to this blend is as smooth and soul-satisfying as any I have tried. The Latakia (Cypriot, I'll bet) gives a flinty depth, expertly muffled with buttery Burley. Turkish refines the finish and aroma, and a whole load of delicious, sulfurous Périque creates what is, for a Périque lover like me, a fireworks symphony!

A false move with a mélange of this sort could easily become a nightmare, but whoever is responsible for BAYOU NIGHT struck a perfect balance: this composition is a delight; stimulating, original, cool-burning, scrumptious. And peppery comme la meilleure cuisine Créole! Cayenne, les garçons!

If anyone knows the name of the artist who created this, [s]he ought to post it above: the man deserves to take a bow.

Until my recent encounter with GQ’s Askwith Kake with 30% Perique, I have never considered myself one that loves more than a condimental dose of the demon weed. Well, on the heels of that experience, Bayou Night had to be tried. This is one interesting smoke! The scent in the pouch lets one know right away that Perique is going to be a main player and there is almost a sweet note too. I think Gentlemen Zombie’s review really nails this one as I too taste almost a natural chocolate note in the pipe. The real key for me in this somewhat unique blend is the masterful use of the Turkish and stoved Red Virginias. They are in perfect proportion giving what could be a disastrous combination of components complete harmony. The Burley is there to be noticed too, providing some nut and earthiness. The Latakia’s presence adds a moderate amount of smokiness. Bayou Night is one of those blends that seems to bring something different to be found in each bowl as there is a lot of complex flavor going on here. With so much Perique and quite a bit of nicotine, I don’t think that this is a blend that will appeal to everyone, but for me, it is one very interesting smoke.

Cornell & Diehl - Bayou Night.

The name had me expecting a similar smoke to C+D Bayou Morning Flake, but this is much more of a heavy weight.

The ribbons are quite slight in build so there's no need to worry about any chunky broken flake parts that need more work. Moisture's perfect, so on with the smoking of it:

The Perique appears to have been used in a prodigious quantity, there's no qualms to me regarding which weed's the loudest. But, this doesn't mean that the others are virtually redundant; they meld together to form a VERY RICH base: there's a ripe sweetness from the red Virginia, strong cedar/smoky notes from the Latakia and some Burley nuttiness. To me, the smoke develops an even richer quality as the bowl burns down; the Perique allows even more of its counterparts to come through.

There's a healthy dose of nicotine to be had from Bayou Night and if I'm honest I don't find the room-note too bad.

The one word that jumps to mind when piping this, I'd guess partly due to the title of Bayou NIGHT, is 'Dark'.

I rate this highly:

Four stars.

This is the first Latakia and Perique blend I've smoked. It has stroke me as absolutely different from everything I've tried before from the stronger blends (Peterson's 3P and Irish Flake). Even though when I first opened my 8oz can I thought I've made a big mistake when buying so much, from the first smoke I found that this might be one of my favorite tobaccos. This is the kind of tobacco that you smoke for your self and not for those around you.

Update: Now it is 11 years in a row that I smoke this nearly once a day, second only to Royal Yacht as a blend I've kept with for my 25 year pipe smoking career. And Royal Yacht only wins out because it's been around longer.

Only one word of advice: keep this moist. Very moist. Just pack it looser if need be.

Update: I've now been smoking this for 10 years and it has become my No. 1. The main reason is the silky smoothness, dark chocolate taste and pleasing delivery of N. Goes great with espresso, in fact it tastes like a good espresso (the kind with chocolate notes).

DO NOT dry this out as you would a normal blend. That is the key to enjoying this. The high amount of Perique is meant to be very moist and stay that way.

This is a skewed English blend with some burley added but with the main plot twist that it's 50 percent "Perique" (not necessarily St James but it doesn't matter), in a kind of role reversal of the Nightcap formula. So, here, the latakia is the mysterious presence in the midst of a Mardi Gras of Perique. I taste the Latakia in the background and it contributes to the overall chocolate taste.

This is strong, piquant, rich and cool. It is unique. The big question I can't answer is "is it an English blend" ?