Cornell & Diehl Pirate Kake

(3.29)
A smooth, robust blend with lots (75%!) of exceptional latakia accompanied by Turkish and burley, Pirate Cake by Cornell & Diehl is a latakia lover's treasure.

Details

Brand Cornell & Diehl
Series Sea Scoundrels
Blended By Craig Tarler
Manufactured By Cornell & Diehl
Blend Type English
Contents Burley, Latakia, Oriental/Turkish
Flavoring
Cut Krumble Kake
Packaging 2 ounce tin, bulk
Country United States
Production Currently available

Profile

Strength
Medium
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild -> Overwhelming
Flavoring
None Detected
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
None Detected -> Extra Strong
Room Note
Strong
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Unnoticeable -> Overwhelming
Taste
Full
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild (Flat) -> Overwhelming

Average Rating

3.29 / 4
112

68

31

9

Reviews

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Displaying 1 - 11 of 220 Reviews
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Aug 17, 2021 Mild to Medium None Detected Medium to Full Very Strong
Finally another Latakia forward mixture without any Virginia. It’s not easy to get over here so I’m glad I got some friends overseas who are willing to help out.

Cold smell is very smoky - woodfire and leather dominant. Look is rather dark and one can see the 75% Latakia in this one. It crumbles apart easily and after some drying it packs very well and is burning even and steady.

Other than many expect, Latakia is a very low in nicotine and tongue friendly tobacco which is very strong in taste, though. Pirate Kake starts very spicy with pine smoke and leather flavors and supports only a minimum of sweetness. Not much ups and downs and very few acidity. Once you puff it very slow it will reveal beautiful oriental spices - peppery cardamom and pine needles - never overpowered and with a nice complexity. The character turning more dark and spicy in the second half so a sweet drink (coffee, tea) goes great with it.

Very well blended leaf of good quality. Maybe not an all day smoke but a great choice if you’re searching for a characterful, spicy but not too strong mixture.
Pipe Used: Stanwell Featherweight 9mm
Age When Smoked: Some time in jar
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 22, 2017 Medium to Strong None Detected Medium to Full Tolerable to Strong
The rich smoky, leathery, earthy, woody, incense-like, sweet Cyprian Latakia is the star component, comprising 70% of the blend. What keeps this from being a total lat-bomb is the dry, mildly buttery sweet, woody, earthy, herbal, moderately spicy and floral, sour Turkish, which is noticeable in every puff. The cavendish cut burley provides a little nuttiness, toast, wood and earth in the background. The nic-hit is medium. The strength level is just shy of the center of medium to full. The taste is a couple of steps past that. Won’t bite or get harsh, though there are a couple rough edges here and there. Burns clean, mostly cool and a little slow with a very consistent, mildly sweet and very savory flavor from start to finish. Leaves little moisture in the bowl, and requires some relights. Has a pleasant, lingering after taste and strong room note. Not an all day smoke, but it is repeatable.

-JimInks
98 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Nov 06, 2012 Medium to Strong Extremely Mild Full Pleasant to Tolerable
So, as an amateur pipe smoker, I have discovered with the help of this blend (and a few others) that I am apparently a Latakia-phile. I can't get enough of the really robust and smokey aroma, the delicious full leathery, peaty taste. I am a lover of strong peaty scotches, and this right here reminds me of the taste of a full strength Ardbeg. The aftertaste is also delightful as the smoke and peat keep going after the pipe is done. Not an overwhelming nicotine bite either, which I like since I smoke nothing outside of pipes and have a low tolerance for nicotine. Highly recommended if you like coffee with your pipes.
72 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
May 07, 2012 Medium Extremely Mild Full Tolerable to Strong
Pirate Kake is like a car accident that you can't take your taste buds away from. It rubs out easily and packs with ease too. I like Latakia, but I wouldn't consider myself one that likes it to totally dominate the blend. But it really is a good tasting tobacco. Did I say there was a lot of Latakia in this blend?? It's easy to rub out and smokes coolly. There is also an underlying sweetness to the blend too, especially when sipped slowly. I was expecting it to be one dimensional, but while not complex, it's not boring either. If you like well done, heavy Latakia blends, Pirate Kake fits the bill to a “T”. If you are not a fan of a lot of Latakia, take a pass. Highly Recommended!
58 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Oct 21, 2013 Medium to Strong None Detected Full Tolerable to Strong
HO-LEEE SMOKES, BATMAN!!! Put your big boy pants on for this one. Latakia heaven.

UPDATE: 12/3/2013 Not just a lat bomb. The oriental component is actually very noticeable. Not quite balanced, but nearly so. Stouter than most of those "late evening" blends and a great way to end the day.
Pipe Used: MM General
PurchasedFrom: smokingpipes.com
Age When Smoked: 1 month
44 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 29, 2011 Mild None Detected Full Very Strong
I suppose that there are people out there for whom there can never be too much Latakia or Perique or Basma, or whatever other condiment we can name. There are also people who like French fries with their ketchup and sushi with their wasabi. To each his own. For me, however, Pirate Kake is nothing short of a ridiculous, unbalanced mess. There is a sort of vague sweetness somewhere in the background, but smoking this is sort of like falling face-first into the moist remains of the campfire you doused the night before while sucking on a charcoal lozenge. Not pleasant.

The little black clump of tobacco you get in the tin is relatively easy to work with, but that's small redemption for the Latakia overload that follows a crumble, a load, and a light. If this were my pirate ration, I'd have tossed myself overboard before the thieving and pillaging even started.
38 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Jul 10, 2014 Medium None Detected Very Full Tolerable to Strong
Pressed plug, quite compressed, so I'm not sure I'd call it a kake, but still not as dense and fine as a traditional English plug. The dark and light leaf are easily distinguishable by sight.

This has a very fresh tin aroma, almost perfume like. I agree with earlier reviewers who think this is Syrian latakia. The terpene smell so indicative of Cyprian latakia is almost not there. Still very smoky.

Takes a light well and burns with few relights. The smokiness is front and centre throughout. On the tongue this tobacco is sweet and fresh. An after dinner smoke for me.

Edit 27/9/14. I'm upping this to 4 stars and it's made it into my favourites as well. The satisfaction this baccy gives me is immense. On reflection I doubt the Lat is Syrian either, I was probably confused by the other Orientals.
Pipe Used: Lepeltier
29 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Aug 14, 2014 Medium None Detected Full Tolerable
Compared to other Latakia-rich mixtures, I found Pirate Kake to be a flavorful yet monochromatic smoke. This blend is a perfect example of how tobacco mixtures can be full flavored but still fall flat due to lack of nuance & slight to moderate shifts in complexity.

I enjoy latakia immensely. So much so, that I feel it’s only fair to profess that Pirate Kake has a number of admirable attributes that fellow latakiaphiles will most certainly applaud. For instance, there’s plenty, and I mean “plenty” of dark lush tasting latakia leaf here. It burns surprisingly well for a big latakia mixture and it smokes so cool you’ll wonder if your pipe is even lit. Pirate Kake is very smooth and it produces copious amounts of fragrant smoke with consistent flavor. These traits usually go a long way towards making for an excellent tobacco mixture, but Pirate Kake just doesn’t quite do it for me.

In my opinion, Pirate Kake is missing the added character, or that little bit of something extra that's needed to elevate it to the status of other top-shelf blends in its class. Pirate Kake does have a rich smoky flavor, but it lacks the compelling subtleties of blends like Odyssey, Penzance and Lagonda. It does have a slight spiciness to it, but it's missing the punchiness of Ten Russians, the depth of Bill Bailey’s Balkan, and the spicy sweet subtleties of Plum Pudding. When put up against any of these blends, even C&D's Star of the East, Pirate Kake just isn't as interesting.

This C&D offering does at the very least beg one question. How much latakia is too much? Frankly, I am not sure, but I do know that somewhere this one crosses the line.
Pipe Used: various briar
Age When Smoked: 1 year
22 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 28, 2014 Medium None Detected Medium to Full Strong
A nice Latakia bomb. The mixture is creamy, dry, woodsy and with a lot of peat accents. As an interval, you get some sweetness and more often some sourness, all this in a good way. It's highly recommended for Latakia fanatics or smokers who like their mixtures on the monochromatic side, without too many taste changes during their smoke.

Virginia lover
22 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Aug 29, 2004 Very Strong None Detected Very Full Very Strong
A friend sent me a large sample of Pirate Kake a few months ago. It looked so strong and foreboding in the pouch that I refrained from whittlin' a chunk for quite some time. My Boy Scout knife was recently located but I really didn't need it. This powerful, Latakia laden stuff breaks up easily.

Pirate Kake is distantly similar in taste to CAO's Old Ironsides, but the Latakia content here is much more overwhelming. I really tried to like the taste, but not being a regular consumer of Latakia, I found that exotic leaf to be simply "over the top" in this instance.

The best way to describe the taste is by saying that if someone stuffed a salty piece of old leather in a pipe and set fire to it, you'd be smoking something akin to Pirate Kake. This blend burns slowly and is exceptionally cool. Remember to use a pipe reserved for Latakia blends, too.
21 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Jun 18, 2014 Medium None Detected Medium to Full Tolerable to Strong
As a former cigar smoker this was right up my ally. The generous amount of smokey Latakia (75%) combined with the sweetness of the Turkish and hit of nicotine from the burley really agreed with my taste buds. On opening the tin the aroma reminded me of a warm spring night next to the campfire. Once rubbed out and let to dry for about an hour there was no issues keeping the bowl lit. Taste was consistent. A beautifully smokey taste with a sweet background and almost barn sawdust background note that burnt down to the bottom with a beautiful creamy mouthfeel. Once again C&D is probably my favourite Tobacco company as the blends are spot on and the quality of tobaccos they use seem to be carefully selected and properly kept as far as humidity before blending.

**update** July 2014** I decided to change the blend type of this tobacco to other primarily because I don't believe it is an English blend due to its high amount of Latakia. Personally in the world of pipe tobacco there should be a blend known as Latakia based, with the "spice tobaccos" added in, which quite a few blends would fall under.

**update** December 2014** same batch as previous yet the past months of ageing seem to have mellowed out the baccy. Mouthfeel seems a bit more mellow or creamier if you will, while I find less of a spicy tongue bight. Of coarse still a Latakia powerhouse yet smoother on the palate as it gains age. I have smoked through 6oz and have 4 left so we shal see how PK fairs in the next 6 months. All in all what a great smoke...
Pipe Used: Brigham voyageur
PurchasedFrom: Smokingpipes.com
Age When Smoked: Fresh to 6 months depending on updates considered
19 people found this review helpful.
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