Cornell & Diehl Virginia Flake

This broken flake comes as other well-known selections from C&D, with perfect moisture and easy and cool burning. As you progressed through the bowl, it soon picks up strength, easily reaching the "medium" level. It burns with nice white ash, and consistently so throughout the bowl. As such, the overall behavior of this Virginia (broken) Flake is quite good. However, it lacks taste and sweetness. You know you are smoking something there with some good strength and quality (like a glass os sparkling water), but it does not rise to the palate with noticeable features, save of a regular bready, hay, slightly citrus, and even "farmy" kind of tobacco with a tiny hint of sweetness. It does get a little bit better towards the end, but in general. It does not satisfy the overall taste experience for me. Likely, it is a good tobacco for blending, especially with burleys. It leaves a fairly good taste in the mouth after the smoke. This is not for me though, but maybe I will try blending something with it.

UPDATE: Ok, I did say I was thinking of using it as part of a blend. Well, inspired by a review here (DeathMetal.org (158) 2019-04-25), I decided to blend 50%-50% of this Virginia Flake with a (4-year-old) C&D Ribbon Burley, plus a "dust" of C&D granulated Perique. The result is a nice medium fruity & bready kind of VaBur, which is quite pleasing, but nothing fantastic for sure. Certainly, this blend makes this Virginia at least useful now, thus deserving an upgrade in the stars. I'll continue trying things with it. We'll see...

VA Flake came very broken but I could still tell that it was at one time a flake. The jar note after 6 months is hay but not much else that stands out. The smoke itself is a little earthy, with notes of hay out front and some citrus behind it. There is a dark fruit notes that soon follows with a little tang. These flavors will remain fairly consistent throughout the bowl but will deepen during the last 1/3. At about the 1/2 point I also get a woodsy note that reminds me a little of oak. There are times when the tangy note becomes a little sharp but this goes away quickly and only occasionally comes forward. The nic is just a little below the center of med. It does not get ashy or cigarette like at all but the room note does have that cigarette smell to it. The finish is fairly short and does not linger long. It does not bite but will nip if pushed hard. There is enough sugar here that it might age well. Worth a try if you are into VA's but for me there are better blends available. 2.5 stars personally but rounded down as I doubt that I will pick up any more any time soon.

I found Virginia Flake to be rather unusual in that there was only a very faint sweetness to it. The predominant flavor note to me was hay or dried grass.

The taste and aroma were very mild. Actually faint might be an even better description.

By itself, I suppose the blend would work for someone who wanted a very light tasting smoke. For me, the taste was too light and definitely not very enticing.

Virginia Flake probably shines as a blending component. And I suspect C&D use it in their Virginia Gentleman.

If I could, I'd give this 2 1/2 stars. As a blending component, I'd say it's a 3. As a go-it-alone smoke, I have to give it a 2. It's not terrible. But it's definitely not my bowl of tobacco.