Dunhill Light Flake

This is high quality, mature, well cured Virginias that you can actually taste and enjoy by the end of the bowl, once the soapy flavor recedes.

The again, there are many quality Virginias that you can enjoy right from the start, without waiting for a nasty topping to fade away.

If you like Lakeland blends, this thing might be for you. To me, it's just soapy tobacco.

A fair plain and simple virginia, just taste like tobacco.

Very basic Tobacco. Pure Virginia, unsweetened. Thats is it. Will not buy anymore.

After smoking a tin of Light Flake, I think this blend is a little light tasting for me, my experience was whether different from most of the reviews from here. It smokes hot and wet and overall not a very good smoking experience. Somewhat Recommended.

Update: It's gotten even more unremarkable, but I do still like it. Less of the Dunhill harshness experienced in the past, but also somewhat bland, no surprises here. Wessex's Golden VA is supposed to be a punchier version of LF, and there may well be more analogs of this blend that do it better.

10/16/05: [Review based on tins manufactured in 2004]

Somehow unremarkable and yet unique, Dunhill's Light Flake is clearly an untopped flake to sight, smell and touch, yet it presents some odd flavors that "are not casing but more than tobacco" which must result from the combination of these various select VAs.

Though it is supposed to be "light," I think this refers mostly to the actual color and distant citrus taste of this blend. DLF is not exactly patient with beginners or frequent puffers. It is, however, comprised of quality leaf, and consistently demonstrates the sharpness and sweetness expected of VA flakes, though of a certain 'citrus-blonde' shade of these.

New Version: Like smoking the old formula through a filter. People wanted a true "lite" to match the name and now we have it. I absolutely craved the old stuff. Now, I puff and puff trying to get the old taste back. Rats.

Old version comments: True love. Pure tobacco taste, smooth, versatile and the right amount of nicotine for me. It's my base tobacco and the one I'd call my 'desert isle/only-one-if-I-had-to' smoke. Also, my 'fastest thru the tin' winner. The one I crave most often when without. This and London Mixture produce 90% of my household smoke.

I first smoked cigars as a way off cigarettes, may I be forgiven. In the cigar shop I saw some pipes and was reminded of earlier youthful bouts with pipe smoking. On a bit of a lark I grabbed a Comoy and some tobacco the clerk pushed off on me. One thing led to another and when I tired of the goopy junk from his jar, I tried and became enamoured of this tobacco. I was already familiar with and trusted Dunhill via their cigars and this tin had the same colours on the handy-dandy pocket-sized tin as my cigars so I picked this one. Simple as that. Well, that was then and this is now, but I have always appreciated this tobacco. Mostly appreciation like you appreciate a first girlfriend; thats the tin I picked and we explored pipes together.

Now lo these severals of years later I have been trying to learn the art of tobacco reviewing. I was quite let down by some of my early reviews after reading quite a few more of the normal ones. My apologies to the readers of those sad efforts. One of the things I had been skipping was to note whether or not the tobacco smoked "to a fine white ash". I have been trying to figure out whether this one does or not. My problem is with the qualifiers I suppose. I have never seen any ash (tobacco or otherwise) that wasn't really really fine. And of course all the tobacco ash I have encountered so far seem to me to be light grey enough as to appear occaisonally close to white. The last thing I would dream of doing is to make someone embarassed, but I just wonder if the mottled dottle is from unsteady elderly hands sort of jiggling the unsmoked into the smoked. I have seen some of these pipesmokers who are, well, unsteady a bit.

Well, on to the tobacco. Oh boy!

Better get a pipe. I wondered at first what kind of pipe to use. One of the things you learn from reading the online content is that one pipe might better enhance a certain tobacco's qualities. I couldn't remember which sort of pipe seemed to be preferred for use with flakes, and I had not gotten my online notes out yet. I did remember that in these notes I made from online content it is suggested I might prefer to use my favourite old Ben Wade Freehand for about anything. I was fiercely impatient to get on with it, then it came to me - I had always meant to get a Ben Wade - but had never quite got around to doing it. So, I started to bust the flakes a bit and then I quit. I wanted to try that new thing where if you fold the flakes and stuff them right in the bowl that way instead of rubbing them out like God intended them be. Oh I almost forgot - I ended up using a big old Stanwell 183 that I got from my wife's brother-in-law. If you squint when you look at it you can just about pretend it is a Ben Wade. It really isn't a bad pipe at all - it just isn't one of my better ones, and some of the reviews go to great effort to mention things like plum and cinnamon and such and I wasn't sure if I wanted all that in one of my good pipes. The broken pieces look really dumb. Looks to me like trying to smoke dead tree leaves. Exactly like White Ash tree leaves, I dumped it out and rubbed the flakes smartly into a semblance of tobacco. Much better.

I don't recall how many char lights it took to get this lit. The way I sort it out is simply if it won't light and catch then that was a char light. When it does catch that is the real light. I know I got it lit and it seems like if lighting were much trouble I'd have surely put the stuff away because I have a lot of other tobacco that will easily catch and burn. Next I was thinking of trying DGT. I made a note to check my notes and see if the T is to D after you smoke some of it or before you smoke any of it. So I didn't D and just started smoking. The ash on the top layer started out mostly very light grey. I wanted to make a note of things like that, and of what I smelled and tasted in the tobacco. I was pretty worried about the plum. Surely to goodness no blender in their right mind would take good smoking tobacco and add some sort of stuff to it to make it taste of plums. I really don't like plums. I was probably only half-worried they really did it though because a lot of the reviews also mention that certain Virginias either have a tin aroma (or actually taste when smoking) of hay. I suppose they mean grass or wheat hay and not green leafy hay like alfalfa. Alfalfa has a really distinct smell when burning and is easy to tell, but I have never tasted anything remotely like hay in any of them and this is one ol boy has smoked some hay (and grape vine) in his day. Now, I have certainly tasted that soapy thing though. And soapy taste is something for which I absolutely have to award demerits. I once asked Peter Stokebye why some tobaccos taste like soap. I guess he thought I intended the query as if in referrence to his own tobacco, as he was the only blender present. He flatly stated he doubted if even one of HIS tobaccos might do it, and I quickly regretted bringing it up. I listened carefully the whole while I smoked and I heard no notes at all - not high or treble clef or anything. I did save my written notes though.

I give this tobacco two stars.

I have a new tin of LF as well as an older tin from the later 90's. I am smoking the new tin first, and as such, my review is based on it. I may reiterate later, after consuming the older batch. Based on the current offering, LF is rather monochromatic to me. I detect a slight citrus scent, not unlike a muted version of Royal Yacht. The flavor is simple, middle-of-the-road-with-nary-a-surprise virginia and little in the way of nicotene. I find it best when lit for a few minutes, then granted a few hours rest in a pipe, whereby the presentation darkens slightly and holds my attentions to a degree. The room note is akin to a cheap cigarette. Certainly an aimiable companion, however I prefer tobacco less pedigreed and more interesting.

This stuff is suspiciously fruity. I too suspect that some topping is used on the flake. I smoked this for the first time in an estate Becker that I had not smoked before and the unusual zest of this tobacco had me worried that the pipe was not properly cleaned before it came my way. By about mid bowl, however, the natural qualities of what is obviously impeccable Virginia leaf began peeking through and I realized it was simply a topping of some sort. I dected the same flavor during subsequent smokes in my other pipes as well. If Light Flake wasn't so sweet and "foofy", it would probably be one of my favorites. As it is however, I tend to smoke this on the occasions when I'm in the mood for something a bit sweeter than my Rattrays and a little less syrupy than black cavendish. One final note, Light Flake quite possibly has the best burning characteristics of any Virginia flake I've come across. It burns cool and clean all the way to the bottom with little or no relights needed. All in all, this is an incredibly well made flake, but the mischeivous topping detracts from the full potential of this tobacco.