Dunhill London Mixture

Just what the world needs - another review of an often reviewed now unavailable Dunhill blend! 🙂

I received this in a large trade some months ago and I was not all that excited to try it. My long-ago memory of it was that it was a decent, if uninspiring blend. This was the newer Orlik manufacture. Overcoming biases is not easy but I really enjoyed this tin. It has a nice, lightly smoky flavor, with the orientals taking center stage during the first 1/3 bowl. The lightly sweet virginias then add a different angle on sweet from the orientals... kind of a light fruit sweetness to the orientals nut sweetness. The latakia wisely stays to the rear until the final 1/3 bowl, where it takes on a more prominent role, although still decently muted and used as a spice. This blend was almost like three different ones throughout the smoke, and it was most enjoyable when I was in the right mood.

I rate this one just behind 965, and well ahead of Standard Medium, Nightcap and Early Morning. Skillful blending and a light but steady hand on the latakia make this a winner!

The quintessential English Blend, together with My Mixture 965. This is a tobacco that I would choose if I could smoke only one blend for the rest of my life.

The reasons? Well, it is a perfect mix. Very full, rather strong, but never aggressive: I like strong tastes, but while I love Nightcap, I think that the London Mixture is much more suited for all-day smoking. It never tickles the throat or bites the tongue, regardless of how you smoke it. Just a bit in the nose, maybe, but it's an otherwise well-rounded mixture.

What shocks me is that this doesn't come at the expense of taste: this is one of the tastiest tobaccos I have ever tried. Every mouthful of smoke gives you an almost culinary sense of fullness, as if you were eating some delightful "lasagne". It really makes you crave for more and more, never tiring: I find it perfect as appetizer, or after dinner, or in every other moment of the day. This is a tobacco that simply makes you love the taste of... tobacco! That burnt-wood, exotic taste that I have always been looking for in a tobacco...

I am a guy who loves to try different tobaccos to change tastes, but I feel that London Mixture is a blend that MUST always be present in my collection, because it never grows tiresome. And it should serve as a warning to all "aromatic fans": don't try and go looking for taste in those boring and syrupy cherry-vanilla-fruit tobaccos... There's twice the taste in London Mixture than in ANY aromatic, and it is a TRUE taste, the taste of real tobacco...

I also tend to recommend it to beginners: in my opinion, it is a much better choice than the usual drugstore tobaccos, or than the ultra-classic Early Morning Pipe. I began smoking a pipe with EMP, and I was a bit disappointed. And don't fear that it might me TOO tasty: it never goes over the top, and it is much more straightforward (which doesn't mean it lacks in subtlety) than my other beloved: Nightcap. Nightcap is even fuller and tastier, but it might be TOO spicy and "grand" for someone.

Packs easily, burns well (leaving a dry light grey ash), doesn't require a great smoking technique, tastes great. What else could you want?

A recommendation if you like this tobacco: it is very similar to Dunhill My Mixture 965, but in my opinion it is a bit sweeter and "licorice" tasting. You may want to try both.

Curious note: Many say that this kind of English blend (heavy on Latakia) can be unplesant to wives around you. To my surprise, this is a tobacco that my wife LOVES to smell when I smoke it! She hates aromatics, or "sweet" tobaccos: she prefers the room note of english blends, especially London Mixture! Her sister, too, once asked me if she could try to take a puff out of my pipe when I was smoking this tobacco! She, too, loved the smell of it (and she isn't even a cigarette smoker)! So it seems to be only a matter of taste... It has a strong room note, but someone may like it very much (and my cigarette smoking friends LOVE it).

UPDATES 2004-2007: Like the other Dunhills, also London Mixture has suffered from a noticeable decline in quality... Among all of their blends, it still has remained the only one which is barely smokeable (well, maybe also Standard Mixture Medium is tolerable), though. While recent tins are very disappointing, with some aging they can at least be smoked with some satisfaction. So, the old version deserves a "Highly recommended" rating, while the new one only a "Somewhat recommended". The rating I chose is an average of the two... which is already better than Nightcap, a blend which has fallen into real disgrace: it used to be great, now it definitely sucks.

2011 UPDATE: Trying a recent production tin... the latest Orlik incarnation. Well, quite an ordinary modern medium EM. Smooth, easily smokable, pleasant, good tasting, but a little bit flat, monochromatic, unexciting and lacking the trademark Dunhill character and quirkiness of old, those funky complex leathery aromas.... Not offensive, though... and that's already an improvement compared to previous "modern" incarnations! There is better stuff around, but this isn't a bad blend. Rating for this version is "Recommended". Now I am curious to try the other new "Dunhill" blends to see if they too have improved compared to the awful stuff of the past 5-6 years.

This is a very tasty medium Balkan blend with a narrow, medium length ribbon cut. There is enough latakia to make a subtle presence known, and it contributes to a soft "mouth feel." The orientals are sweet and slightly sour. The foundation is a solid smooth, sweet Virginia. It is all very nicely balanced and the latakia and orientals complement each other instead of competing or drowning out. I don't detect any topping at all.

For me this is a solid 3+. I have been smoking this off and on for a couple of weeks, and may come back to bump it up to a 4 when the 4 oz sample is gone.

If this type of blend is one you like, you will want to try this.

I was pleased to find 'London Mixture' in the tobacconist that i vist in our local town in Basildon Essex.i bought a 50g tin there and then and im quite pleased that i did,this is a nice tobacco to relax with but it did sting the tongue for the first 4 bowels.but once this settled down its a nice smoke,i like english tobaccos and this is a good one. nice tin aroma and once the old pipe gets going its just wonderful,im finding that Dunhill pipe tobaccos are quite nice and i will be buying LM again and again in the future..enjoy!! ps..another good thing with this tobacco is theres not very much wetness in the bowel,and i fined that a very good thing.

This is a smooth tasting, light flavoured blend. If you like Virginia tobaccos this is a blend to consider. It's latakia content gives a light hint of Oriental flavour that you don't of course get with pure Virginia. It's Turkish component only builds in flavour towards the end of the bowl, it's only slight at the beginning. This tobacco tastes better with a good moisture content so add a little when you get it. It's room note isn't bad but it wont get cheers either. The scent of the blend out of the tin is quite nice but does not carry to the room note or reflect on the flavour much. It is an even tasting blend that does away with creaminess and replaces with stark clean lightness. Not a heavy English blend at all so a good place to start. Give it a try about mid day, it is easy going down so you can go right through a tin of it with out realizing it.

The tin note foretells the oriental content that comprises this tobacco. It has spicy and fruity notes against this acrid or fermented backdrop that is so characteristic in many blends, but this is no tobacco for Latakia junkies though. The Orientals play an important role here in the forefront whereas the Latakia leaf would be lurking more in the background, and I am finding it light on Virginia tobacco as well. There is this subdued sweetness that makes me wonder every now and then, but I have no doubt in my mind this coming from the Orientals. The moist content seems to be about right, but I advise to leave the tin open for a couple of days or so before smoking it. My tin is probably less than one year old, but I can tell this mixture will benefit from cellaring or aging time. I am finding this mixture quite similar to Robert McConnell's The Original Oriental in many fronts. However, there seems to be even less Latakia here. Also, it seems to evolve quite nicely as you progress with your smoke. If you want to explore oriental tobacco without being overpowered by the Latakia side of the argument, this is probably one of the blends you may as well want to try.

Another fine mixture from Dunhill. Picked this up on a whim and was not disappointed. A very nice blend that has some quality tobaccos in it. It lights and stays lit very easily. It burns down to a nice ash at the bottom of the bowl. The taste and room note are spot on for a blend such as this. Recommended definitely.

I had just finished up a tin of Dunhill Early Morning Pipe, and wanted to explore more of the Dunhill catalog before they were unavailable (or before someone else decided to take on the name, and re-blend them) - so, I settled in on London Mixture. Let me preface this review with this: I love Balkans. In my opinion, any Balkan lover will love this blend.

First off, I will compare this blend to Early Morning Pipe, but keep in mind, London Mixture is not as mild and light, so when I mention each component tobacco, I mean from a taste perspective, not strength. You can taste much more of the component tobaccos in London Mixture than you can in EMP, even with London Mixture settling in somewhere between mild and medium in terms of strength. This blend, like a Balkan would suggest, stands Oriental forward and offers that woody, sour, savory element that is very reminiscent of the orientals that take front seat in Early Morning Pipe, but the Orientals in London Mixture also deliver a bit of spice that is absent in EMP. The Virginias are also present much in the same way as EMP - gives it a nice grassy, sweet(ish) base with perhaps some tanginess. The Latakia is what differentiates this blend from its lighter kin. There is much more Latakia in this blend, bringing the overall profile together in a way that offers much more depth - bringing out earthiness, fresh leather, and is something reminiscent of an old, used library.

This tobacco hits every category with a straight medium. The nicotine level is there, but not enough to take your feet out from underneath you - it is very pleasant. I particularly enjoy this tobacco on colder days with the threat of winter quickly approaching, forcing me to nestle deeper into my jacket and cherish the warmth of the pipe bowl in my hand a bit more than normal. Akin to a solid porter, this tobacco is perfect for the Autumn and Winter months. So, grab a jacket, light up a bowl, and watch as the leaves burn fiery orange, blowing scattered with the wind; or - as a fresh coat of snow silently falls in the early hours of winter, quieting everything down just enough for you to drift off for a bit, only to return an hour later and realize that all is well.

Current tin 2018. No doubt about the quality here; very high. But for me, one of the 'oriental' leaves is too much, and imparts a high dry tang which I don't care for. To compensate, this is one of the very few baccies in which I have any sense of that wonderful old 'Turkish' taste that no one seems to offer any longer - that distinctive taste of the hand-made Turkish cigarettes you used to be able to get in any good tobacconist in London. Funny, but in every smoke of this blend where I have made notes, I start fairly unimpressed and tell myself not to buy it again, but always seem to change my mind when I get to the last half of the bowl. That's when everything really starts to work, for me, and that hint of old Turkish comes through again. The very end of the bowl is heaven on a stick. A firmly 'medium' smoke all round, and of sufficient high quality to recommend giving it a try.