Cornell & Diehl Burley Ribbon Cut

It works for me. I'd be thinking about mixing this burley blend with CD's Bright or Virginia Flake, but it is fine if you smoke it on its own. It has a nice roast sort of creamy coconut flavour profile and the leaf quality is good. Some reviewers seem to be saying it is boring, but I do not agree with this statement. Blending with change the flavour profile, but improvement is a highly subjective category that depends on one's personal taste and preferences. If you enjoy Old Joe Krantz or Haunted Bookshop, I do not see why you would not enjoy this blend as it comes. On the downside, I'd say it tends to develop a sharp edge if you puff hard and the room note is quite cigarettish, but without the addition of any casing, this is to be expected. Yes, it is a simple blend without the quirks and complexity of other blends, but it does the job. It is a little bit run-of-the-mill in its current state, but you can tweak and improve the ratios if you buy CD's proprietary white and dark burley making your own. Back in the time, this is what many people would have smoked in their cobs without making a fuss, so I can hardly disagree with it. If you like burley blends as I do, just give it a go. You can never go wrong on this price tag.

I really liked this Burley. TBH when I first smoked it by itself it wasn't any different than my recollection of smoking Semois, so for that I think it earns four stars, but also as a blending element, the use for which it is intended. It does everything that you would want a blending burley to do; primarily, adding nuttiness and body.

This is strong in nicotine and flavor. In addition to nuttiness, it is earthy and cigar-like to my tastes. I mostly added this to aromatics I had that I disliked due to the fact that they lacked any tobacco taste behind the topping. The addition of BCR to these blends, not only made these blends tolerable to my palate, but I actually found I enjoyed them. This is what a blending tobacco should do. I have had a lot of luck with C&D blending tobaccos having recently finished the Bright Virginia Ribbon shortly before finishing this one. They do a great job on blenders.

So four stars for checking all the boxes and delivering what should be expected in this type of tobacco.

I purchased a sample in order to see how it would work for blending. As suspected, it is a mix of dark and white Burley, which results in a nutty, woody flavor with an underlying sweetness and a slight tang of vegetative taste, like a faint hint of unripe crabapple or grass you chew while waiting for your Mom to pick you up from the public pool. I found myself smoking this straight because, as a Burley fan, I enjoy the raw flavor and find this mixture sweet enough, although it is light on nicotine and therefore probably not good as an all-day smoke. It burns slowly and thoroughly and provides a good base to any blend, and its background sweetness makes it embrace Virginias (and by extension, Perique) easily. However, I could just as easily see smoking it straight.