Benjamin Hartwell Chesdin Mixture

My review of Chesdin Mixture is based on a tin that has a number of years of age on it so that should be kept in mind. I will echo those that compare this to Frog Morton. It smells very similar to Frog Morton on the Town in the tin. Like many McClelland blends it is quite moist and takes a while to dry down to my favorite humidity content. Once lit, it tastes like a sibling to FMOTT, albeit a not as good. It is a little stronger and a little less refined than Froggy. Where it really breaks down is as each bowl smoked progresses toward the bottom third of the bowl the flavor turns nasty. Chesdin becomes somewhat bitter and “ashey” in the bottom third.. I enjoy an occasional bowl of FMOTT as it was my very first “Englishish” blend, but there would be no reason to purchase Chesdin when I can have the real deal.

The Lat dominates. It's smooth and woody and mildly smoky. The Virginias add a little grass. It very definitely has sweetened Black Cav which adds more sweetness and flavor than the Virginias do. The toasty note from it is obvious from one third of the bowl to the finish. While this is pleasant, it's also very ordinary and lacks any pizazz. 2 stars.

Mild to medium in body. Medium in taste. Added sweetness is mild. Burns well if you dry it a while and further rub out the chunks.

I agree that Chesdin Mixture is very similar to Frog Morton but somewhat sweeter which is interesting since Altadis manufactured these Benjamin Hartwell blends but I would bet my hat that McClelland actually produced them. As with all McClelland blends, the tobacco is very high quality with the whole sweet / smoky English hybrid thing done very well. I absolutely love the tin art, the little background stories that accompany the BH blends and the fact that they employ top shelf leaf, also the fact that the series encompasses an aromatic, Virginia and English type blend ensures that one could be content with having a tin of each for their morning, day and nighttime smoke. I just prefer the other two BH blends and while this is a nice blend, its just not my thing.

Disappointing for the cost.

Just kind of blends in with a load of other middle of the road English blends for me.

Nice lat, nice aroma, lit well, smoked decently, but for the cost and the fanfare that goes with it, I expected to have my hair blown back.

Refined, maybe just needs some age.

I like this small series from Altadis. I think the packaging is nice, the little anecdotes attached to the tins are nice, and the tobacco is not too bad. Surprisingly enough my favorite blend from the Hartwell series is the aromatic in the line, evening stroll.

Chesdin mixture is a real middle of the road latakia based blend. The flavor there is solid and good but it is certainly not wow you good. It doesn't list it on the tin but I would suspect there is some black cavendish involved here? Black cavendish is not always a bad thing in the english world, as demonstrated by the great MM 965. It definitely makes a lot of sense to me that this blend is produced by Altadis. It has a lot of the characteristics of the other Altadis blends. This stuff is really moist, probably a high PG content. Drying this out is a little bit of a futile effort and you really just have to smoke it as is. It really comes off as a blend that was designed to sit in the bulk bins of small B&M's.

My main complaint with this blend is the cut. I hate the way this tobacco is presented. There are these big chunky folded mishmash of leaves here. This type of blend is so hard to pack well, especially in pipes that are of a smaller size. It is also really difficult to get this style of cut lit well. The cut and the moisture come together to make this blend a bear to get going and keep going. Once you are rolling it is not a bad blend.

I bought it in March 2010, but the tin had a seal underneath for 2- 2004. With the first puff I felt tongue bite, but I shouldn't judge hastily as it didn't only disappear as I continued, but also a gentle sweetness appeared that I particularly liked. What bothers me is that the tobacco remains highly humid, no matter how long you let it dry out. It is something that really puzzles me. It does not have the intense smell and taste of Latakia, because probably Virginia prevails. So we can say it not what Latakia smokers seek. Possibly it has a certain very vague aroma added to it. Perhaps.

This is a blend of very quality tobacco, smell is great upon opening a tin, it burns well and has enough strenght. Only it lacks in taste.

My rate: 3.0

Recognizing that this blend is listed here as blended by Sutliff, I agree with reviewers Noorrmm 2005-05-20, Emeritus Account 2006-12-28, Steel Cowboy 2012-04-08, Young Piper 2015-11-30 and all of the others who compared it to Frog Morton; this is a McClelland tinning (as Howard Cosell would have put it) "all-the-way". On opening my tin, I was confronted with an English blend that was damp, dark and sweetly fragrant; just like all of the other McClelland English blends I have opened over the years. How damp was it? I plunked a wad of Chesdin Mixture on the counter top at three o'clock in the afternoon and checked on it at six, nine and midnight. At that point I just gave up and let it sit out all night long until the next morning. It was barely ready to pack and light and I forced the issue by lighting it up. Now, the tin presentation might lead one to believe that we have a stout mixture here: dark in color, some Latakia odor and fairly fragrant - but, not so. I found Chesdin Mixture to be a rather light English that, while not offensive or anything, didn't live up to the tin appearance and failed to satisfy my English cravings. I never lit a second bowl straight out of the tin. I tried blending with it as an English base tobacco but that didn't work too well due to it's lack of strength and everything I mixed it with dominated it in flavor. I can only somewhat recommend Chesdin Mixture to the experienced English smoker and agree with reviewer Jimlnks 2014-03-26 that it might be best for the beginning English smoker - two stars.

I purchased a tin of this about 6 months ago and it sat in my cabinet until last week. I finally, curious as to what it might be, cracked the tin and loaded a pipe for the drive into work. First reaction: an incredibly exquisite Latakia based blend. Second opinion, later into the bowl: is that all there is? The Virginias seemed AWOL.

Yes, it reminded very much of Frogmorton (which I gave a 4 star -actually a 3.5), but it was still somewhat different. It seemed to share the same Latakia, seemed very, very close, but still different. The following day, a day 0ff from work with ample leisure time to experiment, I compared my open tins of the Frog and CM. Tin aroma was very close but the CM, my sample at least, seemed sweeter. Appearance was identical. Was I imagining a difference in the pipe? I loaded up one of my favorite Custombilt bulldogs and puffed away on the CM. Same experience as the day before. Two hours later (resting my palate some) I loaded another, identical pipe - both newly cleaned- and smoked the Frog. Very similar as my memory guessed BUT a discernible difference nonetheless. The Va components came through with the Frog where I tasted little if none in the CM. Edge to the Frog - more depth of favor. I could smoke Frogmorton everyday (but not all day) whereas I couldn't see my smoking CM except occasionally. Was the difference I tasted only a variance in two tins of the same blend. Obviously we're dealing with an agricultural product with all its variabilities. So, is CM the Frog? I've no idea. Based on my very subjective sampling I must knock a star off my frog rating for CM...down to three. Then comes PRICE. CM is the most expensive blend I own and I can't justify its price (perhaps from a double layer of markup being a contracted blend). Down another star.