G. L. Pease Union Square

Union Square, you are to me

what every blend aspires to be.

Vaper, burley, English too -

none of them compare to you.

In you I get just what I see,

a complex of simplicities!

Your golden honey-brightened hue

is matched by fig and fruit of stew.

Your silky, earthy notes of tea

are zested by the lemon tree.

The reds and yellows cured by flu

in time great riches will accrue:

one year in you is much as three

another blend would have to see,

and when I pop your seal at two,

delightful spices issue through.

But at year five, maturity

deepens your complexity;

that tart and tang when you were new

are softer, yet still in the roux.

Some cocoa now and chocolate sweet -

luxurious, if subtle treat!

Like sculptures of antiquity

in ten years time you still will be

as poised as maidens once I knew

(who now resemble rat and shrew).

Forever true and never mean,

Union Square, you are my Queen!

The wisest thing a man can do

is purchase not one tin but two!

Pease Pilgrimage Reviews (a tasting journey through every GLPease blend) Tin date: 05/17/09

This is a delicious, destined to become (or already is) a classic, and all you Virginia-neat fans out there need to stock up!

Aroma: Sweet, tangy, tart, fruity, delicious! Want to eat it out of the tin. There are a few pure Virginias that have a pineapple/tropical fruit aroma going on when the tin is first popped, and this is one of them. My tin has been opened (and jarred) since May 2009, I'm still dipping regularly out of the jar, and it still has that sweet delicious aroma.

Appearance: Not a neat and clean geometric flake like FVF, US is a busted-up flake with some good-sized chunks that need to be rubbed out. It's a bit darker in color than, say, OGS, but not as dark as FVF which I understand is stoved.

Pipe 1: Stanwell Vario Billiard Pipe 2: Meer Bent Billiard Pipe 3: Chubby Savinelli Author

Flavor: Classic straight Virginia, sweet, musty, pure and toasty. Very delicious. One needs to use good Virginia-smoking methods to coax the best flavors out of this – like any other pure Virginia – but the reward is a classic, delicious, rich and sweet smoke for times of gentle contemplation. I can't smoke this stuff while pre-occupied with other tasks. I need to concentrate and think of uplifting things while I sip this treasure.

Yesterday I smoked it back to back with FVF, my other go-to VA. Which is best? Sorry to disappoint but I can't say. It's one of those mood things. FVF is darker and richer, more low-end notes, more earthiness. Not as sweet. Not quite as forgiving but fuller in flavor. US is sweeter, toastier, a bit brighter and grassier, with a more approachable flavor. FVF is British, US is American. FVF is Tom Waits, US is James Taylor. I love ‘em both, enough to keep adding both to my stash in whatever quantities I can afford.

Union Square is boring, flat, and only propped up by Pease's reputation. It starts as hot air and ends with barely more satisfaction than the beginning. Pease isn't known for straight Virginias, and C&D is better known for handling Burleys and Perique than pure VA. Nothing about this blend plays to either the blender's strengths or the manufacturers.

I consider it a cut rate, uninspired copy of bulk McClelland 2010. I'd recommend any of McClelland's Mature Virginia tins over this. Folks who buy it hoping it will age into a beauty forget the first law of buying tobacco: never cellar a bad tobacco hoping it'll turn into a good one.

Also, the cigarette room note is impossible if you're not fond of how coffin nails smell.

Pease should stick to Latakia mixtures.

Despite my resolution not to open another tin while I still had so many open, this new offering from GLP simply wouldn't stop calling to me, and so I eventually gave in.

To say that I was hugely disappointed would be putting it mildly. The tin aroma was a cross between horse manure and wet sweetgrass, while the smoke tasted like wet hay - very much like what I experienced with PS Luxury Bullseye Flake. Up until this point, my only experience with "pure" Virginia was SG FVF which, along with SG BB, is one of my favorites. We all know that tastes vary from individual to individual, but the fact that this blend has received nothing but accolades from the pipe smoking community thus far has me puzzled to no end.

After the initial shock of the first part of the bowl, I set it down and returned to it the following day, hoping that DGT would perhaps change the experience for me towards the better. Well, change it did, but for the better? Only if I can count the by and large departure of the "wet hay" taste, which was replaced by very little taste of anything at all.

After having given this blend a chance (3 bowls) I will say that I experienced little if any bite from it, but that's about it. Additionally, after opening the tin, each pipeful in succession did become a bit more tolerable, so maybe the trick is to let oxygen do it's thing with this blend?

Again, I admit to being very puzzled. There could be one answer though which I'm leaning towards - that almost all tobaccos have at least casing, if not topping. If I understand the advertising from GLP for this blend, it has neither. It's entirely possible that I'm considerably more reliant on casings and toppings for my smoking enjoyment than I cared to admit?

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Follow-up:

WOW! This tobacco is so utterly strange. Granting that I am rather new to the pipe smoking experience, and that taste is subjective, I have to say that this is the first DGT only tobacco I've run across.

In a fit of frustration, I loaded a small bowl, toasted the heck out of it, and laid it aside. About six hours later, I picked up the pipe again and set fire to the tobacco. It caught and burned beautifully, producing the rich, sweet smoke that everyone's been raving about. How can a tobacco that tastes so crummy to me straight from the tin, taste so good toasted and delayed?

Regardless, I now understand what pipe smokers refer to when they speak of complexity as pertains to the taste of a given tobacco. I used my normal flake smoking technique, that is, sipping the smoke gently. There was no hint of bite, and the smoke produced sweet, nutty, and earthy flavors that vied with one another at first, but then settles down, each to claim a portion of the bowl. The sweetness came first, and then gave way to a hard to describe earthy flavor that was sort of spicy, but not perique spicy. The latter part of the bowl produced a nutty, smoky flavor with slight overtones of the previous two.

This tobacco leands itself to nasal exhalation very nicely, and I also enjoy filling my mouth with the smoke and just holding it there. The aftertaste is simply marvelous.

Again, I'm amazed at how a bit of "handling and preparation" in setting this tobacco up for DGT changes it's character and enjoyability. I do intend to experiment a bit with this blend. I'm going to toast a portion outside the pipe, perhaps in a skillet, on high heat and quickly. I'll post the result later.

I'm going to stock up on this, as it is now one of my absolute favorites. Go figure...

Overall I’m really impressed with this blend. Even with the youthful edge C&D production has until they get a few years under their belt, this is highly enjoyable. Sweet cream mixes with the red spice which, as is the usual with C&D reds, presents with a light cinnamon note which compliments the blend as a whole. There are hints of hay and a spritz of citrus that play around in the background, but primarily it’s the creamy cinnamon sugar. The repeatability of this blend is very high; I’ve been smoking essentially nothing else since I received my tin, multiple bowls a day. No fatigue to be found. A generally cool smoking blend which takes a light well and burns, without fail, to the heel.

As I said in the opening, this does have some edges to it which I expect will smooth out with a couple of years in the tin. However, even at just 7 months, I’m enjoying this a great deal. I’ll be adding many more tins of this to the cellar, both to smoke now and years in the future. Reasonably priced in the mid $11/2oz, you can get the price down some by buying the 8ozers. However, it’s a negligible difference to me and I prefer to have the ability to open a tin at a time and smoke through it while leaving the others to keep doing their thing.

This is a Highly Recommended blend, even with the edges it has. I feel confident that with a couple of years this will be a truly top shelf VA filled with enjoyment and contentment to smoke.

Why did it take me so long to try this? I guess having had a bad experience with odyssey.. then kind of lukewarm results with haddo's delight, i kind of did shy away from pease thinking it just wasn't my bag... big mistake. Instantly union square has become a favorite of mine.. and maybe the perfect spring/summer tobacco.. Many have compared it to fvf.. and with good reason.. although it has vastly different smoking mechanics.. something about it is very evocative of the gawith flake.. Maybe it's the creamy hay/fig/grass like quality.. combined with a caramelized pastry sweetness.. or something like that.. Must be sipped slowly.. which can be challenging when you are enjoying the enormous flavor.. My tin was only 4 months old and it had a little rough and tart spice to it that wasn't unpleasant at all.. I can only imagine what 5-10 years would do to this.. considering the availability of the gawith flakes, this would be an easy pick for stocking up on.

Right outside our lazy summer home, with winds a mile long the smell of this pure Virginia tobacco wafts through the air. I smoked a ton of Virginia flakes. This one gives you all you need. Pure tobacco taste. Perfect with morning cafe, or an Italian soda after lunch. Or really searching out the different lip smacking taste late night by the fire. I have two other pure Virginia blends that I put in my Nording freehand, make that three. I wasn't looking for another pure Va, I thought I had the two I would ever need. Im glad I found Union Square. This one will undoubtedly withstand the test of time.

Based on a tin with one year of age.

Appearance is pretty bright, very light brown to darker brown. They aren't really like full flakes. They're assembled the best way possible for them, and not pressed as firmly as the European flakes are. They're broken flakes, easy to rub out if you want. It comes on the dry side, but it's not really as dry as you think, and you realize that once you start crushing it up and rubbing it out. There is some moisture there. The tin note was kind of tangy and bready, and some light hint of dried fruit.

I've commented on how I like C&D Virginia flakes. They are rustic, and lean towards dry and earthier than the European productions. I would also liken it to something like terroir.

The beginning of the bowl starts of tangy, sometimes sharp, fermented fruit, and some floral hints. The second third gets more bready. Things start to caramelize. There are some spice notes like pepper, and some baking spices like cinnamon and nutmeg and some bitter notes occasionally (which I like). There is a dry woodiness that accompanies everything and makes this more interesting than its competitors. It's something I like about Interlude also. The flavor doesn't get as deep as Interlude though. It has the same earthiness and nuttiness though, which also adds to the intrigue and tastiness. The final third gives smokey woody notes, a dry vanilla, fig, and more baking spice notes. This never feels like an overly sweet blend. There is a lot of sweetness, but they are sweet flavors, and not the overly sweet sensation of sweetness. Again, it's not like the European productions of Virginia flakes.

The taste is somewhere around medium to full, and so is the body. This also produces more smoke than many Virginia flakes, but that might be due to the lack of moisture in the tobacco. The nicotine is mild to medium. It's there, but never overwhelms. This straight Virginia delivers on all fronts. You get many different flavors a Virginia is capable of delivering. But, it's not like many others on the market. It's on the drier and earthier end of the spectrum, balanced with sweetness. I would highly recommend this to the person that likes a blend that develops and evolves in the bowl, and any straight-Virginia smoker would find something to love here. Four stars.

I'm not sure who pointed out this blend as one I ought to explore after McClelland closed, but I'm glad they did. There is some of that good old McClelland sweet and sour interplay which I love, and good depth. Flakes are soft and easy to rub out but needs some drying time.

Edit: 4/13/2019: I just cracked a tin from 2016. The tin was swollen and opened with a swoosh, like a soda can. This is my first bowl after halting the fermentation process. It's good. Way better than fresh. Smoother. Creamier. Sweeter.

This is really a very very good straight Virginia and may be a good blend to try if you've been seeking to (at least part way) fill the void of the absence of McClelland Virginias. As another friend would have said, "It doesn't have any Perique and it doesn't need any."