Benjamin Hartwell Evening Stroll

I'm a pretty omniverous smoker who prefers English/Balkan style blends, but among aromatic tobaccos this is a winner. The room note and aroma from the tin makes you think this is an over-cased OTC blend, but the taste is mild and cool - no bite (I smoke slowly anyway), and the room note makes you a tolerable companion with this blend.

As aromatics go, and American-styled in particular, this lives up to it's billing. It's fairly refined, complex enough to hold your interest, and has just enough Virgina taste to even appeal to a Va/Per lover (my close second in tobacco preferences...). This won't change your mind about aromatic blends, but if you've dabbled in them you;ll like it, if you're an aromatic smoke you'll love it.

The description on this one lives up to every letter. The jar note is mouthwatering with waves of vanilla, spice, and baked sweets hitting you full on as soon as the lid is removed. The moisture of the blend is damp bordering on wet and some extra dry time is certainly in order. As such, the blend is a little slow to light and requires frequent relighting. The flavor from the first draw is wonderful with that vanilla note immediately coming out on top. Further back on the palate hints of spices are present and I detect perhaps a faint cinnamon along with nutmeg with a sweet almost fruity finish. My olfactory senses are alive like a child in grandma’s kitchen with freshly baking cookies and other treats. The room note is very pleasing. I imagine even non-smokers would fight for a spot near you as you enjoy this blend. (A plus when smoking outdoors) The burn is a little uneven as the blend is so moist and slight gurgling is present with a deep draw of the stem. As before stated, frequent relighting is necessary if you’ve neglected a good dry time but the smoke is very enjoyable nonetheless. I find that the blend is slow burning (due to moisture no doubt) and the large bowl has lasted, to my enjoyment, well over an hour. A fair amount of moisture is present in the bowl requiring the ash and small amount of remaining tobacco to be scraped out. A fair amount of cleaning must be done before putting the pipe away; an always time consuming but necessary chore. With a little extra drying time this would be an exceptional aromatic blend to enjoy all day. You’ll almost certainly make a few new friends with this delectable aroma burning in your bowl.

I reviewed this back in 2010. It was okay for an aromatic smelled okay tasted okay.You should buy this blend just to try it at least once. The can artwork was kind of neat it had me wondering about the possibilities of the blend. Vanilla.

Aromatics do not make up a large part of my normal rotation. I only have enough patience and sweet tooth for about one bowl a month so, when I smoke one, I want it to be premium. This is a quality smoke. The tin smell is a little disconcerting as it is a lot like a putting your face into a strawberry sundae. It is heavily cased so it does burn hot but, with care not to overpuff it really does taste great. Vanilla and carimel dominate with little hints of cherry(in agood way! Mid-bowl I got the distinct ntaste of waffles with maple syrup that carried on to the ashes diminishing into a pleasant toasty vanilla flavor. Not really much to say about tobacco flavor but the smoke is well behaved enough and the flavorings are natural and pleasant enough for myself to call this an enjoyable change of pace.

This is definitely some sweet weed, and trying to bring the sweetheart around to my bad habits that's the single most important thing at the moment. It'll make your room smell like some amazing confectionery. However, even as a novice smoker I realize it's not the most exciting blend to taste. The casing is nice, of course, but the underlying blend is fairly weak tea. I've also noticed a kind of bad egg taste if I have to relight, a feature unique to this tin in my limited experience. But it burns into fine white ash right down to the bottom most of the time, and it's pretty hard to get it to bite.

No bite, acceptable taste, wonderful smell- given my priorities, I'm fine with Evening Stroll.

Pretty good for an aromatic. Spicy vanilla is my idea of how this tastes. I might order a small tin for the holidays this fall. Smoke it slow though or it will goop.

This is truly an example of what I would point to as an aromatic. As I opened the bag up, I received a waft of vanilla/caramel. Right out of the bag this blend was pretty moist, however that is just fine with me, as in my experience I get a better taste when an aromatic is still somewhat moist. The beautiful thing was that even though the tobacco was moist it still burned very easily.

On the downside it did create a fair amount of gurgling in my pipe, but that was fairly easily correctable. Taste wise this blend again really typifies aromatics which is a blessing and curse. I could see smoking this blend as a wandering around all day smoke, but I don?t ever really see myself going out of my way to pick it up as it?s a lot like many other blends I could get (other then the fact that it burns better then many of those). All in all If it was readily available, this would make a good "go to" blend.

I thought that Evening Stroll was a very good smoke. It has a nice roomnote as well as taste. When the tin is cracked open, you can smell the vanilla right from the start. Its a good smoke to have in the fall. Crack open a tin of this on a cool Autumn Nite. Its a perfect nightcap to any evening and I highly recommend it. I will have this in my stock at all times....MZMN

As someone who rarely smokes aromatics these days, I am always sure to keep a tin of this on hand. This has to be the best aromatic IMO. The casing smells overwhelming in the tin but blends beautifully with the tobac.It has a pleasant room note that just about everybody likes. As you smoke through the bowl, the casing settles down and the leaf comes through wonderfully. For those of you who are a little daring you may even want to add a pinch of McClelland's blending latakia. I found that it mixes well.This blend stands on its own though and is usually what I recommend beginners to start with. Lastly, this blend smokes cool for an aromatic. you really have to puff hard to get it to burn your tongue.