Cornell & Diehl Crooner

Im a Burley man. Im a Bing man. and now Im a Crooner man. This stuff is good. It's a little difficult to smoke because it burns so damn slow but it is worth the effort for sure. Something worth mentioning is that the pouch note is the best smell I have ever experienced in anything. I took the pouch out of my tobacco cabinet and put it on the bookshelf just to make my pipe corner smell amazing. I swear C and D needs to make a cologne out of this stuff.

It wouldn't hurt to mix in a little burley ribbon cut to speed up the burn.

I'm not often a fan of big Burley blends because they are usually reminiscent of cigarettes. The Burley in Crooner is high quality. The deer tongue is quite evident although not as conspicuous as in C&D's New Market even though it is more visually present in Crooner. This is, honestly, the first full Burley blend that I can say that I actually like. You have to smoke it slow or it will develop cigarette-like characteristics, but if you go easy, the Burley is nutty, with cocoa overtones that are complemented by the vanilla notes of the deer tongue. Smellwise, this stuff won't make you many friends but when it comes to friends, my goal is quality over quantity.

This has an interesting smell, affected by the deertongue. It smells to me like interesting cigarettes (in a pack not being burned).

The taste is primarily of burley, with a very faint vanilla. The vanilla taste is of actual vanilla, not artificial vanilla flavor. There is a hint of caramel very occasionally, and the nic hit can be high if smoke in large quantities.

I'd like to try this with more deertongue to see how much I enjoy that in a blend.

You can view my video review of this blend here:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=oWlaeqPR-GM

Cube cut burley and a bit of herbal deer Young’s with a top dressing of bourbon. My first go with this one left me thinking that I had made a mistake in the purchase. Jarred it up and left it for 2 years. Age has improved it greatly! Has a unique flavor and is in line with some of the old standard blends of years past. Jar aroma put me in mind of Edgeworth ready rubbed. Taste reminded me of nothing I had ever smoked. Overall good smoke for the burley fan. Best loaded by gravity feed and not to the top of the bowl as it puffs up greatly on initial light. A light tamp and retire does the trick go me. Burn rate is moderate. Flavor throughout the experience is consistent and pleasurable. No bite for me either. Like most burley blends of this type the nicotine is medium and ample enough to keep me in the game. Overall a 3 for this piper!

I think this a rather awesome blend that is completely out of the ordinary. I bought it just to taste the famous "deer tongue", because it is always good to find out what good new things life may give us, or not. This is certainly a good one.

Relaxed smoke, with a rather medium to full taste that may keep the hardcore lovers of burley out of the equation because of the rather strange flavour from the deer tongue.

What it is like? Well it is like an excellent burley blend with distant hints of liquor, perhaps whisky and rather round body, a bit robust and nutty as usual, very senior like style BUT the deer tongue adds a rather opaque note that may make it strange to a novice or an over sensitive smoker. It may be a combination of molasses (very present in the pack) but vague in the smoke, a hint of natural vanilla with strong floral note that impacts deeply the whole experience and may get more defined by the last third of the bowl.

Overall it is very uncomplicated smoke, rather monochromatic which makes it more appealing for a conversation or a careless momentum, happy smoke if you want, not circumspect yet definitively very adult in terms of flavour as the burley even if robust gets a rounded by the not sweet, not sour but undetermined sensation given by deer tongue.

I recommed for the adventurous heart and maybe for the lovers of burley that want to experience something different at least once.

This is definitely an interesting blend. Simple, but that's always welcome. Crooner, at first puff, strikes you with the deer tongue. It's just something that I have never had before, and it was the first thing that I noticed. Vanilla-like? Maybe, but I would describe it more herbal or vegetal. Someone described deer tongue as minty. Minty? Sure, I can see where you would get that. But it's reminiscent the actual mint herb, than actually "minty." After several puffs, it seems to settle down and meld into the cube cut burley, which is, to my tastes, absolutely top-notch.

I do like burley and have liked and loved several of the C&D blends that contain it, especially Bob Runowski's recreations of old Golden Age tobaccos. This is no different. It's richly flavored and quite strong. You do have to be careful with it, however, as the cubes can pop out of your pipe during the burn and scorch your arm or destroy your clothes. The burley is fantastic, though. I'd be hard pressed to find better.

All in all, I enjoyed Crooner a great deal. It's something a little different and completely satisfies. My wife said that the room note (Porch note, really) reminded her of flea powder, so tread lightly. This one won't gain you any friends in that respect, but it's definitely worth a try. I will re-order it when I run out, more than likely. Now, I want to order some of C&D's straight cube cut burley and see how it strikes me.

Happy am I to be finished with the four ounces of crooner I bought nearly four years ago. My thoughts on this blend is that it is disgusting. My only joy from possessing this was from the reactions of the several people to whom I sent small samples over time. All of whom, despised it as I did.

To me this smells like burning hair on light up. If you get a nice slow tempo, you may get a hint of vanilla, with perhaps a mint undertone. When you have finished the bowl, you will have a mustache note of burnt plastic to follow you around.

Yes, it is that disgusting, but there are a few souls who like it. I have told you the bad, so I guess I will go into the good. It is primarily a cube cut, which is always a pleasurable cut to me. They burn nice and are a no brainer to pack. It is more of a pour it in the bowl til it is full and go to town.

The cube cut portion is burley and the burley is made by C&D. C&D does burley well and if you get all the green flakes out of it, I am sure that this would be a nice nutty smoke. Also, the burley is heavily packed with Vitamin N, so if the deer tongue doesn't make you heave, perhaps the nicotine overdose may.

I had one good bowl of this over the four years. I believe it just happened by luck that I had a bowl with very little of the green flakes (by the way, the green flakes are the deertongue), and it was with this bowl that I did get the vanilla type taste that some people rave about.

My thoughts on this blend is that it just has too much of the deer tongue in it. Unfortunately this is my only experience with Deer tongue, so I can not validate this belief. I am giving this two stars as I somewhat recommend it for someone if they want to know what Deer tongue tastes like. To that person, I would recommend ordering the smallest quantity possible. Better yet, find someone like me to send you a sample or go to a pipe show and ask Chris Tarler to give you a small sample.

When I do get around to trying another blend with deer tongue, this will drop to one star if I find I like the latter better than Crooner.

I purchased an ounce of this to try out deer tongue as a tobacco additive. This was only my first bowl of Crooner but it won't be my last. After smoking two cigars last night, I started smoking a bowl of this. So, my palate was somewhat tainted to start with. Looking at the bag, I could see the green flecks of deer tongue but I couldn't smell them standing out above the rest of the blend. Upon the initial light, the taste was not unpleasant but was alienating: I was detecting the non-tobacco ingredient, deer tongue. Not sure how to describe the taste but it was not a typical bowl of tobacco taste, but still not unpleasant. I puffed on it for about 5 minutes and put it down, letting it go out. Considering that my taste was addled after smoking the two cigars, I decided to give it another shot the next day. This afternoon I fired up the same bowl of tobacco and was met with a very pleasant smoke! It was full of full-bodied burley taste; the deer tongue had taken the back seat, but still had a spicy influence. The smoke reminded me of Edgeworth Ready Rubbed with a little something extra. Detected a moderate nicotine effect, but not overpowering. The pipe was hard to put down; it kept getting better the more I smoked it. Impressive in that it smoked so cool. Not a hint of a bite; I even stirred it up near the end, re-tamped, relit and it still didn't bite.

A few notes after finishing an ounce of this blend. I have smoked it in a Captain Black billiard, a Charatan second dublin, a Sunrise featherweight apple and a Lepeltier clay. The cut on this blend is fairly fine cube cut; I wonder if it's not cut too fine. It is kind of hard to keep going after about 10-15 minutes smoke time; I've experienced that with several of these pipes with this blend.

I have been wanting to try out this deer tongue for a while so i ordered 1oz of Crooner. Many have said that you either love it or hate it. I will have to say that's not true. I'm indifferent. It was not the horrible thing I have heard it described by many. It does have an odd tin aroma, sort of a vanilla/mint. Crooner is a strong burley blend, which I like. I think the deer tongue burns off about 3/4 way through the bowl, leaving a nice cube cut burley blend. There is a slight ghosting, but nothing a couple of bowls of an aromatic or strong latakia should not take care of.

Changing this to 3 stars. It's becoming addictive.