Cornell & Diehl Opening Night

Old Pipestud is singing with the choir on Opening Night. Truly an outstanding Virginia with an atypical sweet note that I found to be tantalizing!

This one, like most C&D blends, burns cool and dry right down to the last puff. It has been calmed by the blender and absolutely will not bite. Thumbs up all the way around - just one heck of a fine Virginia with enough strength to please the vets and cross the eyes of the newbies.

Part of what determine's a blends greatness for me is how quickly I finish a tin. I finished this one in record time, and ordered several more.

This may become my new reference blend in the straight virginia genre. Yes, it may just unseat FVF, Blackwoods Flake and a few other well-known favorites. And this appears to be somewhat of an unknown! How does such a thing happen???

This is an excellent smoke - sweet but not too sweet, spicy but not too spicy, and complex as any straight VA out there. Nice broken flake of dark brown goodness with a tin aroma that made me salivate. As do most excellent VA's, this improved as the bowl progressed and was a medium-bodied but rich and mouth-filling smoke. It was also easy to smoke - no tongue bite or other aberrations such as an overabundance of moisture. It smoked very cleanly and down to a fine gray ash. Can't wait to crack my next tin! If you enjoy straight virginia blends that provide the sweetness of lemon VA along with the richness and coolness of red VA, this is definitely one you should try.

This is just right in nearly every category. Sweet, sour, fruit, citrus, spice, tang, grass, body, nicotine....you name it, it's just right. A "Goldilocks" flake if there ever was one. An outstanding smoke. If I had to nit-pick anything it would be that it gets just a little too sour for my taste toward the end of the bowl. I have to really nit-pick to say that though. I can live with that. This is an easy 4 star flake. Lovely stuff.

Medium all around. Burns very well. Not even a hint of a bite.

Cornell & Diehl - Opening Night (Simply Elegant Series).

A flake which has been loosened enough to enable easy filling. It isn't a case of having to remove a flake and give it a vigorous rub, a bowl's worth can be simply 'pinched' from the tin. The blend's medium brown in colour and of a good hydration.

The smoke? At first it could be mistaken as just another Virginia, but as a bowl burns the flavours 'chop and change' a little. Throughout a pipe the tart red Virginia leads, but as well as this there's a toastiness, some hay, and a little sharpness. If I'm honest I don't find this as sweet as some other Virginias, there's a gentle sweetness, but it doesn't 'lead'. It interacts with the other flavours creating a more complex Virginia smoke. It burns superb, mid temperature, clean, without needing much maintenance. Bite? None.

Nicotine: a healthy amount for a Va. Room-note: pleasant.

Opening Night? An easy four stars:

Highly recommended.

A great virginia. Full flavor, spicy, no bite. I have tried about 50 virginias, but this one is by far the best. Opening Night and Penzance, my two desert island tobaccos.

I don't know why some reviewers proclaim it is essential to smoke an entire tin (or 3) in order to properly evaluate a tobacco. One bowl of Opening Night is all I needed to recognize an outstanding straight Virginia that is indeed Simply Elegant.

A tobacco of this caliber always makes me wonder how it would have been received by Union or Confederate troops had someone wandered into their field camp with a few pounds of the stuff. In other words, would (what I consider to be) a simply outstanding straight Virginia blend of the 21st century be considered the same by a seasoned piper of the mid-late 19th century(?) Opening Night has earned its place on the top shelf of my cellar (literally) right up there next to my McClelland Virginias.

UPDATE: June 4, 2019

I just discovered clay pipes, and what a difference they make -- all the difference in the world when it comes to straight Virginias. Smoking Opening Night out of a clay is like tasting the tobacco for the very first time. THIS is how Virginia's are to be enjoyed, in a clay pipe. All you get is the true taste of the tobacco, and nothing more. Cool, very dry smoke (no moisture at all). Started smoking pipes back in 2013, and have just now discovered I've been doing it all wrong when it comes to straight VAs.

It is Opening Night and the orchestra has been seated. This blend of virginias is a masterful combination for this genre. The Virginia provides the hue of natural sweetness without disrobing its earthiness and serves as the overture and is up to scale. There's a little pepper as accompaniment in the background that let's you know it's there. If you are looking to see what a straight up virginia is like out of a nice flake, this is a great show to see. Its consistency throughout is like a timely refrain from beginning to end letting you know there's a master conductor behind this one. So far, my favorite virginia. Has a little punch if you get jumping on it too hard and fast, keep it slow and savor this one. Enjoy the show! It's Simply Elegant and a fine one at that.

This is a fine Virginia. It is very easy to smoke. I do not find any faults with this flake. From the first light to the last draw it is very consistent. The flavor is exceptional. I am unable to make any comparisons as I feel this flake is at the pinnacle. I have rubbed it out and folded it and it delivers either way. I have tried many different flakes but for myself this is number one. You can't and will not go wrong with this superb VA.

I am not impressed with most of C&D's offerings. However, Opening Night was love at first puff. As a fan of C&D's Carolina Red flake and most other red Virginia blends in general, I began a journey of finding a readily available red Virginia flake that had a bit of that Mcclelland tang, and that deep red Virginia flavor. On a whim, I ordered a 2oz tin of Opening Night on a recent order. Upon opening the tin, the note was very similar to Carolina Red Flake, with a tangy, almost piney, IPA scent. In the smoke, Opening Night had both that tang and rich full flavor that only good red virginias can provide. The first half of the bowl is rich, full, and flavorful, while the last half of the bowl is candy sweet nirvana. I believe this to be the best tobacco C&D produces, and would also go as far to say that Opening Night rivals SG Full Virginia Flake and is vaguely reminiscent of the old Mcclelland's No. 27 matured virginia. I can only imagine that this flake will age beautifully and only get better with time. The tin I ripped through was only 6 months old and was already spectacular.