Samuel Gawith Golden Glow

This is one for the Virginia lovers: beautiful golden color, perfect level of moisture, heavenly scent in the tin, no tongue bite, great Virginia flavor. Great when fresh from a four-months-old tin, I plan to put a half dozen tins in the cellar to age for a few years while I enjoy the fresh stuff.

Another Samuel Gawith blend to review, awesome!

To this day, I've only had good experiences with SG tobaccos, and this one is not any different. Extremely high quality tobacco as always, and yes, it's quite moist out of the tin. I found that like with most SG tobaccos, letting it air for a few hours does the job nicely.

This one packs easily, burns cool, and does in no way make a mess in your pipe. It's a very well behaved leaf which burns all the way to the end with no problems and no relights. Flavor wise it's fresh, tangy and simply delightful. For me the strength is ideal as an every day smoke, and it's perfect for the spring/summer. But I could seriously smoke this all day as the flavor is consistent throughout the bowl, and because it's so easy to manage and maintain. Absolutely no tongue bite or harshness, even when you puff hard.

Absolutely fantastic smoke.

A vey decent and simple blend.once you crack the tin a grassy smell comes out.bright virginias come out in broken and semi broken flakes.the moisture level is a bit high.my advise is to let them dry 30 minutes.packs ok as it is and also you can rub it if you want and easier lighting.lights with some effort and several relights are needed.while burning the flavours are simple and very natural.the grass flavour is the main one,combining with hay ,some sweet citruses and rarelly some pepper notes.burns slow and cool.the nicotine level is low to medium.burns to total ash leaving some moisture at the end of the bowl.the room note is pleasant.no tongue bite for me.i can say this blend is ideal to burn a new pipe.definitelly an all day blend.all virginia lovers should try this in my opinion.definitelly recommended!

I just finished a tin of this and was, overall, happy with it. It wasn't the best Virginia made by SG by any means, but it is still a great tasting Virginia. This one is lighter than FVF to be certain, but has all the sweet hay and citrus you would expect to come with a Virginia of this complexion. The color is as golden as you would expect from both the name and the look of the tin.

If you find FVF or BBF to be a little too bold, this would be a good alternative. I, personally would rather smoke FVF or BBF. Overall, a good leaf.

This straight Virginia is very good, but too much moist. The raw tobacco has a very pleasant smell, sweet and fruity. Of course there is top dressing but I think there is also a little bit of casing. It is difficult to understand which kind of flavoring is used because the fruity smell is peculiar and not comparable to any single fruit. Anyway this is a very good tobacco and the flavoring agents are almost certainly natural ingredients. In my personal rating (from 1 to 10) my score is 8 and three stars.

A nice Virginia blend , but I can't help thinking there is some Perique in here. It does have a spice and some strength and it does come too moist to smoke. As I got down to the last 1/3 of the tin, the tobacco improved ( dried some).

This review will read as a chronicle of my stupidity. You see, I really killed this tobacco. It began with the arrival of a Virginia heavy order. Upon opening about four square Gawith tins (and a couple other brands with similar designs) to sample the contents, I promptly returned the lids to their containers. I'm not sure why I did this, knowing they're prone to air leakage. It's just...I become impetuous when I smoke, like a little kid playing with his new toys under the Christmas tree. Two weeks later all blends were bone dry, and I went about the task of radical rehydration. For each tin, I took a wet paper towel, folded up, stuck one in every receptacle and then wrapped the tins individually in plastic wrap. I returned in two weeks to revel in my industriousness.

The tobacco in every tin was sopping wet, and most were covered in mold. I cursed loudly. An entire tin of Scottish Flake was destroyed, with barely a couple flakes removed. I thought I could salvage Golden Glow, so I set the tobacco atop a sheet of paper, picking out every instance of mold I could see. I claimed victory, and left the tin open to dry a bit before transferring the contents to a mason jar. I returned in another week. To more mold. Well, I repeated the experiment and came again. To more mold. Having picked apart the spore laden leaf this time around, I decided to smoke a bowlful of the affected weed.

Noo, what about highly toxic, virulent mold spores?!! I just didn't care. It had to be done, for science. Relax, whatever brain damage I have was likely the cause of this incident, and not the result. The tobacco tasted like its unaffected half...

Pure, unadulterated, the scent and flavor characteristic of hay, of medium body and nicotine. Golden Glow has a natural disposition, far removed from Full Virginia Flake, with its dark press and molasses-like flavor. What you have here are the high notes, a huge change of pace from Golden Glow's more popular cousin. And the smoke is consistent, it doesn't waver or modulate from top to bottom of the bowl. You expect a bright Virginia would be sugary and bitey, both of which remain foreign to Golden Glow. And though I perceived a lacking of complexity, there is a richness that pervades the experience, particularly when paired with a high percentage of Perique. At 30%, Golden Glow really shines. It's a testament to Sam Gawith that the blending house can offer two radically different extremes of Virginia in the same line of tobaccos.

Because of my poor judgment, I've been paranoid about my remaining bits and ends of that dwindling, tragic sample of Golden Glow--checking it daily for new growth and consuming frantically what might soon spoil for good. Now here's some advice...once that tobacco gets a taste of mold, it won't disappear--even with great care taken to eradicate any sign of blight. It's like cancer. Delicious, tasty cancer.

I love this fruity and sweet va. Even more than fvf. Milder but do golden sweet. It's also the most moist blend I,ve ever smoked. Top va.

This isn't really a review, but a point of information for other readers. I heard from Samuel Gawith this morning (in answer to my enquiry) that this tobacco is exactly the same as their Medium Virginia Flake. The only difference is that this comes in a tin and MVF is sold loose. Perhaps people know this already?

All reviews of Golden Glow therefore apply to Medium Virginia Flake, and vice versa: unless, of course, people think that the tin makes a significant difference to the quality of the tobacco. The only difference that I can detect is that the tinned version is a bit more moist.