Mac Baren HH Mature Virginia

Full Flavor Virginia that is easy on the pallet. No known casings to this and room note is of tobacco leaning towards cigarettes. This great when you have been smoking aromatics and sweet tobaccos for a while. It has it's own mild sweet taste as Virginians tend too. I find it a real good change from the aromatics I generally smoke. It is good to clean the pipe of the casing residues from them also. The wife doesn't like it much though because of the smell is too close to a cigarette (which she smokes (She does go outside to smoke also). It is a nice change from the sweet aromatics and has no burn or bite.

Old Heinrich hit a home run with this blend.Came moist in my tin & took some air-drying to get the ribbon cut just right.Packs just right and once lit the sweetness greets you right away. After a few slow, steady, gentle puffs that smokey flavor starts to blend in along with a light citrus like taste I cannot put my finger on. Does not disappoint from first light down to the white ash .One of the better virginias I've smokedin my 45+ years of Briar Burning Bliss.

Wonderful stuff! A good change of pace to my Flakes. Well worth trying. I will buy more.

When I do smoke Virginias (which is not that often) I like them when their taste leans on the sweeter, dried fruit side rather than the grassy, oat-like side. HH Mature Virginia definitely fits my preferences in this regard. It also has a slight smokiness that I think of as being more associated with English blends - a nice touch indeed.

This blend does for Virginias what MB Navy Flake does for burley. They share a lot of similarities in taste and smoking qualities IMHO (both have that distinctive Mac Baren touch that people seem to either love or hate). Both quite mildly cased but not totally "natural" in their flavor

The only negative thing for me is that it does not change taste down the bowl at all really, making it bit of a boring smoke in anything other than a small-sized pipe. That resulted in a loss of one star for me. That said, if you like Mac Baren's other products I cannot see how you would be unhappy with this one.

This tobacco could be very good if well packed, however, it might disappoint some Virginia purists if usualy packed.

First, I'll describe the usual packing method (3 steps).

Indeed, there is a lack of smoothness, it is not sweet but spicy. This compared with a real straight Virginia (as Samuel Gawith's Full Virginia Flake).

However, it helped me to remove the taste a little too much pronounced at the bottom of the bowl for a 37 years dedicated to FVF pipe. I had applied three times the S/A treatment and I hesitated to use the harder oven + charcoal treatment. The taste doesn't been removed at all, despite this highly recommanded method, but it just needs three bowls of HH Mature Virginia (I'd allowed to depose a thin layer of ash by shaking the pipe after use) so that the taste had disappeared altogether.

So, I use this tobacco as a kind of renovator for Virginia's pipes which were too deeply flavoured by several years of dedicated use.

As said, it's a good tobacco, despite what I said below, about use it as a rejuvenating treatment. It is certainly not what I look for, in a pure straight Virginia (what it is not, according to the description of the composition, on the official website of Mac Barren: 22 tobaccos are blended, but only 15 Virginias are used in the blend. So,7 are Orientals and Burleys, at least, for those who are described), but it remains a pleasant tobacco, when you are a little nauseated by the sweetness of Straight Virginias and when you don't want to change for the taste of Latakia nor Turkish+Latakia.

The smell from the opened tin seems to promise a taste that you wish to remove from a pipe too much flavoured. But it is also very smoky. What is very surprising, because even a Latakia+Turkish (Samuel Gawith's Squadron Leader) was unable to remove the taste. I don't understand how the tobacco may serve this purpose, but it works.

So, if only smoked with an usual packing method (but read below), this tobacco deserves 2 stars, but the using as a treatment deserves 4 (highly recommanded). 😉

After this particular use, turn to the tasting, which will be much shorter.

IMO, this tobacco doesn't taste memorable if you pack the bowl in the most usual method. It is spicy and smoky and nothing is reminiscent of a "Mature Virginia". However, as it was said, if you use the Frank method of packing, the flavors promised by a named "Mature Virginia" tobacco really stand out and there is a sense of smoking a completely different product.

Do not use the Frank method would miss out on the qualities of this tobacco. There, it deserves a least 3 stars.

As has been said by the other reviewers, this tobacco doesn't bite and do virtually no heating, which can also be recommended to break-in a new pipe.

This nicely prepared ribbon cut had a good moisture content from the tin and packed, lit and smoked easily. Even with more aggressive puffing, it didn't act like a blow torch as some of the other MacBaren VA blends and smoked dry and cool without the need for relights. I didn't sense much taste development during the smoke and although sweet, found both the flavor and strength less than my preferred VA & VaPer flakes. However, if you're looking for a mild VA, this blend might work for you.

I tried this mixture at the Chicago Pipe & Tobacco show. Went to the Mac Baren display fist and loaded up. One light, tamp and relight and I spent the rest of the show smoking this very good tobacco. If you do not like straight Virginas you will not like this otherwise this is a solid smoke. Good taste, aroma and consistent from the first puff to the last. Yes you can say it is monochromatic but to me that is the sign of a good virginia. The price of $14 / tin was the only bad thing about it. If you have not tried Mac Baren or disliked thier tobaccos for other reasons I suggest you try the HH series.