Cornell & Diehl Virginia Flake

Summary: the light Virginia flavors you want.

Combining bright and orange Virginias into a flake that is compressed, dried, and partially rubbed out, C&D "Virginia Flake" gives you all of the grassy, honey, hay, toast, grain, citrus, agave, wheat, and oat flavors that you expect from the lighter-colored forms of Virginia leaf. This results in one of the few honestly sweet blends that one encounters, but also, a blending component of pure excellence. Mix this 50-50 with C&D "Cube Cut Burley" and then dust with Latakia, Perique, or dark fired Kentucky Burley and you have a long-smoking, clean-burning, and flavorful all-day blend. The chunky rough cut ready rubbed makes this one burn more like flake, hence the name, which keeps it cooler burning than Virginia leaf by itself. I can never have too much of this in the cabinet.

Review in progress

I picked this blend up, along with other odds and ends in May, 2019, at smokingpipes.com’s brick and mortar store in Little River, SC. I happened to drop in during one of those unfortunate times when—much like the very moment of this writing—nearly all of the “marquee” blends were out of stock.

Anyway, I don’t recall exactly how I came to settle on this particular blend. But, once purchased (an ounce, bulk), it promptly went into my little Rubbermaid bin of pipe tobacco and I promptly forgot about it, along with everything else in the bin.

You see, I was in right smack in the middle of one of my lengthy smoking hiatuses. Luckily for me circa right now, I knew I’d end up breaking out the pipes again sooner or later.

Also luckily for me, aging pipe tobacco doesn’t require the same precision you need to have with, say, cigars. Nope, just throw the ziplock in the bin along with my other tobaccos and accessories, and let it age.

And dehydrate. Fortunately, I prefer it that way.

Anyway, on to my notes on C&D Virginia Flake. I’m not the kind of smoker who can pick out all the little nuances and notes of a bowl. I may never be. I truly hope to develop this skill. And, when/if I do, I’ll be sure to update my reviews.

But until then, here’s my thoughts on this one. It’s got an extremely pleasant taste: a little sweet, but not too much.

It burns very well for me, and the 19 month rest seems to have served it well. I have a brand new tin of SG Full Virginia Flake, and I can’t detect a great deal of difference between the two, flavor-wise. That perhaps speaks more about my amateur palate than anything else.

Be that as it may, I currently like it. A lot. I currently have a tin of the stuff en route to me from the same establishment. So I’ll continue my research into this blend, and continue to see how it stacks up to others in its class. I have the almost-gone tin of FVF (purchased just three days ago) and an as-yet sealed tin of Sutliff (Mac Baren) Crumble Kake to compare it to.

My opinion of it is likely to change, for better or worse. But in the meantime, I may like this stuff a little better than FVF.

So, 3 1/2 stars.

—- Update 01/06/21 I’m smoking a bowl of this fresh from an opened-yesterday tin. This isn’t my first bowl of the stuff. But the result has been the same, and different enough from my original review of an aged bulk sample of this, I felt the urge to update post haste.

What I’m smoking now is more savory, tangy and inline with other reviews that report similar results. Rich, to me. A little bit too much.

Sure, it starts out with some of that familiar to me sweetness. But it doesn’t hang around long past the initial light.

After this bowl, I’m going to let it hibernate a while in hopes that it will turn into the blend I liked. A lot.

Update 01/14/21 So it turns out my smoking cadence had gotten a little fast. That’s basically the entire reason for my vastly different experiences with this stuff.

Once I slowed things back down a bit, I rediscovered the bright, lightly sweet smoke I initially raved about.

Ah, the pitfalls of the “learning on the job” tobacco reviewer.

A straight virginia with no flavoring, propylene glycol or sugar added. Smells like oats/bread/hay in the tin and has a straight forward bready/oaty bright virginia flavor. Mild nicotine. Comes very dry, but that's fine because it still tastes great and you can always rehydrate.

Not really complex, but totally satisfying if you're wanting that pure virignia experience without the sweeteners and added flavors that literally all European blenders use on literally all of their virginias.

I had some of this land today and had a couple of pipes. I was fairly impressed it burns well, tastes quite good also. The thing that surprised me were the number of neg. reviews about it. Frankly, I'm glad I have it because it's a good all day smoke and excellent value for money. I will say it was a little drier that I expected, but then smoking pipes appear to always have drier than average bulk leaf. Highly recommended for a solid standby all day pipe.

These flakes seem to contain more bright than red leaf, so they show all of those traits you can expect from this profile, so much so, that at times it feels like I am eating fizzy sweets. They have this nice and citrusy sharp edge that does not seem to evolve that much as you progress with your smoke, whereas the earthy and hay like properties of the red leaf are more pushed into the background. I think the potential here is as a blending component, but it can be cellared it too because of the bright leaf it contains. These flakes would probably benefit from the addition of perique, red virginia, and white or dark burley. Also, I'd use this tobacco as a seasoning component in very small quantities, but please be my guess if you want to try out something else. I am yet to experiment with other tobacco leafs and profiles, so I might come back to this review in the near future, but this is all I can say for now.

Chips! Never had those before. I think this is the easiest tobacco to light that I've ever had; stroking a broad match over the top did me for the whole bowl. 'Light the blue touch paper and retire.' Came quite dry in the tin, and I did not rub it, just poured them in. Just a good quality, medium strength VA with a nice balance of weighty creaminess and tangy lemon. I think it's a little too touchy heat-wise to be used in an off-hand manner; you have to think what you're doing a bit with this one, and so I don't use it outdoors or when my mind is on other things, because I sometimes tend to overheat it a little then. But when sitting down with a book or a film, it's good stuff and good value. If new to pipes, I wouldn't recommend using it with either a new or a thin-walled pipe; you'll want some buffer against potential heat in case you overdo things. Good quality straight VA presented in an unusual form.

My buddy D gave me a 2 oz jar of this. Thanks D.

Taste very nice, but gets a little boring by itself. As a blender this is quite good. I mixed it with Wessex Burley Slices and got a real nice VaBur. 40% WBS and 60% VF. If you want to add sweet hay and citrus to something this does the job very well.

Mild to medium in body. Medium in taste. No added flavoring. Burns well.

If first appearance was indicative of the tobacco, this would not have ended well. I received in bulk dry nuggets of tobacco. Not flakes, but something similar to granola...think Raleigh on steroids. Packed crunchy...I did not rub out. Packed better on second light.

That being said, for someone like myself, that prefers Latakia and finds it difficult to find a flavorful straight Virginia, this one majorly caught me off guard. If rating vs. other Virginias, I would have rated the taste full...not just medium. This has a much more earthy flavor to it, like someone else reviewed, almost similar to Burley. Not much sweetness here except for the very beginning. I loved it. Smoked straight through. No tongue bite (I smoke like a chimney). Room note was OK...wife rates that.

In closing, if this tobacco presented and packed better, I would have four-starred it. As it is, those that shy away from straight Virginias because lack of taste, should take a run at this one. Very flavorful straight Virginia for an amazing price.

Unlike most reviewers of this blend, I find Cornell &Diehl's Virginia Flake to be long on nicotine and short on flavor (the aroma is equally mild). The flavor it does have falls in the 'earthy' category (e.g., moist hay, roasted chestnuts) and it has surprisingly little sweetness for a straight VA.

All that being said, I still like this tobacco very much for two reasons.

First, it is a great blending tobacco. If blended with a quality straight Perique (like McClelland's), its flavor opens up and it becomes a quite charming VaPer. I blend it 3 parts VF to 1 part P by weight, press it down and let it sit for a week or two. One can also use VF to tone down tobaccos that are a bit unbalanced in flavor (e.g., too much casing) or to 'stretch' pricey tobaccos (its mild but pleasant flavor mixes well with just about any tobacco, including aromatics).

The second reason I like it is that it makes a great RYO cigarette (it tastes like a Chesterfield).

Given its usefulness, C&D's VF is one of those relatively inexpensive tobaccos that I always want to have on hand.