Cornell & Diehl Shandygaff

Cornell & Diehl have created blends I loved, blends I sort of liked and blends I have not liked. With this one, they've created a blend I find characterless (although this supposedly is an Atlas blend they picked up).

A mostly mahogany brown mix of what appears to be pencil shavings and twigs, this has a heavy tobacco bag aroma with a very faint citrus note. Based on the definition of Shandygaff, I would guess it to be ginger but that very slight taste was more 7-up than Ginger Ale to my taste buds. It was very much to the rear. Up front was the "flavor" of non-descript burley with a perique overcoat. Whatever flavor this is supposed to have was garbled and confused. Mostly the effect was warm air with the full spectrum of nicotine.

Recommended for cigarette smokers looking to move to the pipe. Other than that, there's really no point to this one. One star ratings are usually for those blends I hate the taste of but this one earns one star for being a waste of time.

Cornell & Diehl - Shandygaff.

I've wanted to try this for ages, and I'm not ashamed to say the reason why was the funky name! As every time I checked the usual suspects for a sample size pouch just to try I'd been constantly met by 'out of stock', I threw caution to the wind and bought a bigger pouch from Cup O' Joes!

Unlike one of my favourite reviewers DK my blend is free from twigs and unappealing pieces, but like DK I don't rate it too highly.

At first light it isn't too bad a smoke, the Burley tastes richer than the subsequent smoke. The Perique doesn't require much work, at all, to notice, and unlike the rich Burley quality, the Perique holds its formidable stance throughout a bowl. I'm not a fan of the topping, although it's lightly added it's not pleasant. I find it has a slightly sharp, zesty, gingery flavour, but it tastes almost bitter, as well. Shandygaff burns fast, even when I'm deliberately gentle it's far too zealous.

The nicotine: medium. Room-note: tolerable.

Shandygaff? Not recommended:

One star.

I was given a nice size sample of this several days ago. I had a bowl on Sunday and have tried some more recently. The tin note out of the bag smelled to me like Burley. The ribbon appears to be slightly moist. I have had a few of the old Atlas Blends but what frustrates me is I cannot really find any information about this company on the web until I hit paydirt this evening. This is from an article from the “Western North Carolina Magazine” from 2008 about Craig Tarler, Cornell and Diehl, “It was a long way up for Tarler when he bought the business in 1990. Then called Amar Blends and located on Long Island, the company started in the 1880s as The Atlas Blending Co. in New York City. When Tarler took over the outfit, of which he was a patron, it had about 175 individual customers and was sold in 100 stores. He fit Amar Blends’ whole operation—some tobacco, scales, flavorings, and blend recipes—into his van and set up shop in the cellar of his Pennsylvania home. Tarler paid $17,500 for the lot of it, the same amount of his gross sales in the first year.” https://wncmagazine.com/feature/pipe_dreams. Now that the history lesson is out of the way, here comes the hard part, the rest of the review. I did not like it, there I said it. Even compensating for my diminished sense of smell and taste this was just not enjoyable. Kind of one dimensional, harsh, and kind of a bitterness to it. Maybe I was in a bad mood but I do not think it would have mattered. I did not even finish my samples; life is too short. But as always, I do appreciate the enjoyment of trying new blends. Can’t win them all. My third one star.

I agree with the flavors of ginger and old salty sea air and I would add cinnamon. Strange but true and plenty of ginger indeed. Way too much flavoring here for me ! It’s not a sticky aromatic or anything and i know tobaccos need a binder but I want to taste tobacco also ! I can taste some nutty sour/bitter white burleys and the Orientals which taste like Izmir leaf which have similar notes as the burleys with a little spice . The Perique i can barely detect . I usually smoke about a tins worth before I do a review but with this blend I will never make it that far along . Sorry but not for me . Although I am sure it has its fans . Maybe I will mix in some red Virginias that have some good age on them but I would hate to waste them . I say get 1 oz and make your own judgement.

Tin note: I struggle to detect anything worth mentioning. Smoke: nearly tasteless. Wisps of burley, and having tried Izmir Turkish plain, there's some comparison to that. Second hand smoke is not pleasant, has a cigarette character to it. Not really getting any perique. No sweetness detected. This is very bad, the first bowl in a while I chose to dump rather than finish.

I wanted to see what a pre Tarler/Reeves et al C&D blend would taste like. This would have been one of the blends Craig bought the rights to when he started C&D. This blend is an unusual combination of leaf and is categorized by Jeremy Reeves as underrated.

The same thing could be said of this blend when discussing things like black licorice or the Grateful Dead. There are a lot of people who probably would hate it, but the people who like it, REALLY like it. I love the dead, but I hated this blend. I have nothing against any of the constituent tobaccos, but this particular titration did not work for me. The first thing I noticed was an offensively sweet and cloying butterscotch/caramel sort of note. I actually wondered if I had gotten a mislabeled pouch of some other blend. Then I wondered if perhaps, though unlikely, it was a ghosted pipe. Nope. This pattern repeated each time I lit a bowl. This sweetness segued into some pleasant sweet curry/spicy notes. Then, almost on cue, all flavor disappears and my mouth is blasted with saltwater/baking soda flavored steam. If you are a fan of salt water taffy, this might be your bag. Definitely an unusual blend, Shandygaff is really in its own category. I can definitely see how this one is divisive, but that does not mean the reader shouldn’t try an ounce or two based on my vitriol. I was curious. I gave it a try in multiple pipes and with various preps. It is not for me.

While I have seen a whole lot of reviews by JimInks, I haven't seen too many one star reviews from him. Surely it can't be that bad, can it? Oh, it is that bad, lol. I neither get nor enjoy this tobacco. At all.

I ordered a one ounce sample based upon a YouTube video by smokingpipes.com where they were chatting with C&D's head Blender and they were reviewing a few different bulk blends they felt were underrated and people should try. Shandygaff was one of the blends discussed. The Head Blender was even smoking a bowl of it himself during their chat.

Well, I tried it. And it's pretty bad. No offense meant to anyone at C&D or who enjoys this blend, of course.

It does redeem itself, slightly, when rolled into a cigarette. For whatever reason that they do, Oriental tobaccos absolutely explode with intensity and flavor when smoked in cigarette form for me, so it got a little bit better as a cigarette, but this is certainly no Picayune cigarette, despite the similar Burley/Oriental/Perique profiles of the two. Not even close. Shandygaff is just so much more harsh and less refined.

Maybe you'll like it, but I sure didn't ...

It needs to be called “nastygaff”! I usually am patient when trying a new blend and will give it few bowl fulls before passing judgement, but I’ll make an exception here. I only made it through half a bowl before I dumped the bowl and threw the bag in the trash. And that half bowl ghosted my pipe! Took me about 3 bowls of good tobacco to get it out. I love several of C&D’s blends, but this one is a negative.