Peter Stokkebye Luxury Bullseye Flake (No. 403)

I can see why people like this. In the bag, it smells like a combination of raisins, honey, fruit, and breakfast cereal. It has some form of sweet topping, and is soft like a sugar cookie. When you fire it up, the Virginia floats to the top with a treacle and grain flavor, then the Perique adds a very mild fruitiness, with the Cavendish rising among them to delivery a creamy fullness. It stays this way for the whole bowl, becoming more honey-like as the Virginias caramelize.

On the other hand, it is hard to like this. The Perique has been neutered, coming across mostly as a sugared raisin, and the Virginias have lost most of their taste except the natural light grain and hay flavor. Cavendish, a good friend when used well, might be a bit dominant here, as it looks like a quarter of the leaf by volume. The topping is cloying, with a faint sense of decay to it, and the resulting flavor is alarmingly one-dimensional.

Not surprisingly, people swear by this bulk blend and it is easy to see why. Like other Virginia blends, it is a sweet treat to suck on throughout the day. It is nicely balanced with no jagged edges to make it interesting. It is a great blend with which to practice your slow-smoking technique, and when rubbed out it burns easily. Alas, it is also boring, low in Nicotine, and too sugary for this smoker.

Comparing it to "Escudo" does not quite make sense. This blend softens the Virginias to a more white bread approach, where other blends intensify the grain flavor and have a more acidic feel instead. If we are to compare this to anything, like Orlik "Golden Sliced" or Newminster "Superior Round Slices," it would be breakfast cereal. Sweet, and you can smoke it all day long, but the lack of dimension might clobber you at some point with existential desolation.