Hearth & Home Frenchy's Sunza Bitches

This should be renamed Frenchy's Sunza Bite-ches. It is a real flamethrower that no amount of slow sipping can tame.

Best when freshly opened, it's something like a bourbon and vanilla flavored OTC blended with a fair amount of spicy perique and some VA, giving it a sweet and sour vibe. Bourbon/vanilla/perique/burley, pretty interesting. Dry-ish from the start, but not completely dry. Very cool chop cut I must admit, packs well. Best part of the smoke is the last third, where the elements finally meld, the burley gets a little nutty tasting, and there is a hint of buttery-ness.

Went completely flat in under a week, even when I dug into the bottom of the tin where the tobacco was less dry. Also there are more than a tolerable amount of chopped-up stems hiding in there, including some real monsters.

I bought the 8 oz. tin of this sonofabitching stuff and really wish I hadn't. Can't recommend it. Will try re-hydrating it (with bourbon of course) but seeing as it bit like a beast from the get-go my expectations are low. If by some miracle it turns out better will update with the result.

--UPDATE--

Rehydration brought back the flavor, especially the perique spice, but did nothing to mitigate the bite, unfortunately.

For first time i'm evaluate a blend with one star... this blend unfortunately is only beautiful in your cut... ...the tin is made with paper, this is sucks all the humidity of the tobacco, and the tin was rusty... I dont like this tobacco and I will not buy again...

I am just now trying this for the first time, just got the tin the other day. I opened the tin and was surprised to find it stuffed to the top with a seemingly dry tobacco blend that smelled of whiskey and perique. I packed my bowl and fired it up and whoa! this stuff is strong and a little harsh from the dryness. Maybe re-hydrating it a little would calm it down some but it does have a pretty serious Nic hit to it, it also burns really fast. I may have to cellar this one for a while. As of right now it doesn't have much flavor other than lots of perique, maybe too much. It just doesn't do much for me personally.

My tongue begs to differ, when it comes to the "not a hint of bite."

FSB is not as strong as rated. I hesitated between "mild to medium" and "medium" for a while before deciding on "medium."

When I opened the tin I was welcomed by a nice tin aroma of Bourbon which was very pleasant and not intrusive. When I saw the tobacco was very dry and it is mostly Golden VA with medium brown BU but not a lot of PER I knew this forecasted tongue bite.

Add that, the cut being very broad, I had to puff extra harder to get the tobacco going and keep it lit and that is definitively tongue bite.

The result? My tongue is currently destroyed. Raw and painful.

Might be a very good quality leaf but my God, it does not taste much and does my tongue ever hurt right now.

I had hoped that some aging would lead me to increase this by a star, but I'm going the other way here. Just a few months in a mason jar has all but ruined this stuff! There's almost no flavor here, just loads of nicotine and hot air. VERY disappointing .... Definitely smoke this fresh.

(Original review: 6-15-08): This is an in-your-face blend that reaches to the back of your throat and kicks hard. This is perhaps the loudest mixture I've ever tried, a riot of sweet-and-sour flavors that can overwhelm your tastebuds if not careful. This blend is all about the perique, with just enough sweet Virginia to make it palatable. The topping is definitely noticeable throughout the bowl but serves to enhance the natural tobacco flavors rather than obscure them. It reminds me somewhat of Redwood and has a comparable nicotine hit. I'm a perique junkie, but this stuff makes even Old Joe Krantz seem like a model of subtlety and complexity. This isn't a bad thing, mind you -- I've greatly enjoyed my sample and have laid down a half-pound or so to see how it ages. But not everyone will be able to appreciate or even tolerate this, I think. I'm rating this on a split scale: If you don't like perique, this is a 1. If (like me) you enjoy heavy amounts of perique, it's a 3. If it ages well, it may become a 4.

Burley and disappointment. This is the first perique blend I've ever tried, and for all the amazing flavors I've read about that you should get out of perique, it tastes about like my homegrown burley. Every now and then a subtle hint of lemony Virginia but I mean so subtle it's hardly worth mentioning. Yes I had to relight several times, to be expected from a big chunky cut like this and not a big deal. And yes, it bites a fair bit, but guess what: BURNING PLANT MATTER BITES. Not a big deal. Nicotine is medium level. My big disappointment was the lack of interesting flavors, especially when it smells so good in the jar. I will try humidifying, as another reviewer suggested.

Not good. I get a really odd, flat taste out of this. The cut is also odd and it doesn't burn very well. The topping is very light, and I wish it was stronger, because the leaf just isn't that good. I enjoy many of the H&H blends, but definitely not this one.

So now i know where Frenchy got his ornery-ness from! Frenchy was quite the character and a very nice guy that was super friendly. I had talked to him several times on forums oh 15 years ago up until about 2010? when he retired. Where the heck has he been all this time? Sold me many fantastic estate pipes through his website. Anyhoo, his tobacco bit me.... I could not smoke slow enough to not have Sunza rear up and hit me like a Mantis Prawn. Sometimes this happens to me when a certain Burley strain and alcohol type topping come together under flame (think Borkum Riff Bourbon) and i at that point wish i had an asbestos tongue mitten. I go to Germany on business several times a year and i am 100% certain Macbaren, Borkum, Flying Dutchman, anything European or Danish is made to be smoked with a 9mm filter. That's all the Europeans smoke out of, if you need to get flavor through a 9mm filter you need to douse it with toppings which absolutely fries my American tongue (kinda like my waltz with Montezuma's Revenge every-time i visit Mexico City and foolishly try some street vendors food). Next i will try Sunza Bitches in a Grabow or Cob with a filter, perhaps that's the trick...

This has a nice flavor, nice tin aroma, decent smoking aroma, and a good nic hit. But boy does it bite. It bites enough that I cannot recommend it. In addition, I don't like the way H&H cuts some of there tobacco. It doesn't pack right.