Cornell & Diehl Captain Bob's Blend

The tin aroma is so strong it will permeate your tobacco cabinet and, quite frankly, a whole room with the strong smell of sweet grape. It completely overpowers everything around it.

After lighting, all I got is über grape with no tobacco flavor at all. Just hot, hollow grape and no support underneath it. The perfect stereotype of a bad aromatic. For the sake of full disclosure, I am reviewing this after only one bowl, but there is no way I would smoke a second. Just an unpleasant experience all around.

On a positive note, it was not a wet, goopy mess like other over-flavored aromatics (e.g., C&D Green River Vanilla). It actually came out of the tin at a reasonable moisture level. Too bad it does not have a reasonable flavor to go along with it.

I smoked this in a cob and the ghosting was so bad that I ended up throwing it out. Thanks for taking one for the team, Little Cob. RIP.

I'm not going to spend a lot of time on this one -- a lot of people clearly like it, but I seriously disliked this blend. It burned hot, tasted a little too much like grape candy and bit way too hard. I appreciate the occasional aromatic and have a serious affection for good American-English blends, but this one fell far short in both categories. Try C&D's Epiphany if you want a 4-star blend of this type (IMO, of course).

Oh my is this bad. I see a lot of things listed under flavorings in the description above. What is not listed, but consistently referenced in the reviews, is grape soda. I would agree with this and the fact that it is the dominant topping. If it was the sole topping that could be detected, I may like this blend. The problem is that all of those other flavors listed in the descriptions kind of combine together to form an aroma best described as the smell of stinky feet.

This is similar to my experience with Mixture 79 which I described as someone spraying cologne over bad BO, but with M79, the topping slides back and a lovely nutty sweet burley base unravels for a fabulous finish. That does not happen with CBB. The topping is relentless, the tobacco underneath is indistinguishable relevant to its components. This one just never got better for me.

I ran this through my normal litany of testing of different pipes in hopes it may shine in a meer or cob as C&D Brigadier proved to do, but alas, no luck there either. The best thing I could say about the cob was the bowl was smaller than the meer or the briar, so the agony did not last as long.

I had thought of blending this with some of my blending tobacco, but decided it would be an unwise waste of blending tobacco, so I just mailed off the rest of it to some Forum mates; hopefully, there experience is better than mine.

First of all, let me say, this is the single worst pipe tobacco experience I've ever had! I should have gotten a clue with the pouch smell. I've heard others say they get a grape smell and I do too. However, there is more going on than just that... and... it isn't friendly smells (some of it smelled like my cats litter box). I was in hopes this would not translate into the taste, but it did and just went downhill from there. I can't even really explain the taste only to say it is terrible, does not even taste like pipe tobacco. More like shredded up tires. Then it went from bad to worse, the smell of the smoke just about made me vomit. I can't even begin to explain that and suffice it to say it was just plain rancid! Also, it will ghost your pipe like a mother in law coming back from the grave! This was just a total nightmare for me. If you are one that fared better, I'm happy for you. I usually like most all of C&D's offerings and feel they are one of the very finest pipe tobacco producers out there, but this one is a total nightmare as far as I'm concerned!

I'm sure Capt Bob's a great guy, but this blend simply isn't! This is the WORST tobacco blend I have ever smoked. It's just awful! It tastes terrible, doesn't even smell like tobacco, and it will ghost your pipe something awful, so be warned.

I think the reviewer who described this as grape Kool-Aid had it about right. So if you've always wanted to smoke purple Kool-Aid, then you'll love this.

A mild to medium strength mixture with a weird topping that just about stopped me in my tracks. Together the added flavor and choice of tobaccos create something that I found nearly unpalatable.

The blend is comprised of mottled reddish-brown ribbons, bits of broken flake, along with a smattering of latakia and perique. The tobacco has an average burn rate and the moisture content is about consisent with most C&D products. The flavor is slightly sweet with notes of woodsy latakia and spice from the perique coming through amidst a flavor that echoes the tin note’s Smucker’s on fresh horse manure aroma.

To my taste, a thoroughly corrupted version of an American style English blend and very much an aquired taste.