Peterson My Mixture 965

Imagine you are in a log cabin on a cold day and it is time to poke the embers in the fireplace a few times until they glow again, capture that smell and you have what is mixture 965.

I'm likely in the minority, but I prefer a moister soft leaf tobacco, MM 965 is quite dry out of the tin and by the time I smoked my last bowl a few months later it was very dry and brittle. A dry charcoal blend that makes a little of that 'huck' in the back of your throat when smoked.

Gave me a sort of hypnotic numbing effect when smoked. Probably a good choice if you like the English robust no nonsense blends, but for those that prefer aromatic blends it can be a bit fierce.

Most fermenty "ketchupy" nose I've smelled. As for the taste - it's agreeable but forgettable. I'm tempted to throw in some Latakia to give it some juevos.

BIG! BOLD! FULL! ROUND! If you like to your tobacco to slap you around, this blend is for you. High in nicotine, high in taste.

Definitely not my thing.

Keep on pipin'

The latakia provides the majority of the flavor. The Macedonian never comes to the forefront and the Cavendish seems overly bland.

I purchased my tin about a year ago, had a few bowls , was unimpressed , and cellared it away. I just reopened the tin and was initially delighted with the new results. Good balance between the latakia and Orientals. I found a sour/sweet component and savory smoky Oriental taste. No bite easy to pack and light and it burned to a clean gray ash. I was really surprised at all the poor reviews, but maybe people are stuck on comparing this to the Murray blender rather than taking this for what was. I continued to smoke this off and on for the next few days but my interest slowly faded. The more I smoked this, the less I liked it, it was stuck in "no man's land" , it wasn't sweet, it wasn't a strong Latakia and the Orientals were stuck in the background. It was boring, and yes it does grate at the roof of my mouth. I don't think I have any reason to buy this again. I now see why all the poor reviews

Updated 2/4/12 I don't give out a lot of 1 star reviews since I usually only buy 3 &4 star reviews from this site, but I just threw out the remaining 1/2 a tin of this blend. This really is harsh without the flavor. There are some tobaccos that I will put up with some harshness if the flavour is there, but this doesn't have the flavor. Boring , flavourless, harsh, it gets the single star of "unsmokable"!

Updated 4/2/2014- I've been reevaluating some of my reviews and I may have been too harsh on this one. I purchased some McC "bulk Nine 2 Five", which is suppose to be a match for this Dunhill blend . Well, McC "Nine 2 Five was so good I had to reorder some bulk 965 ( do I have you confused yet ???) . The result of smoking the Dunhill Bulk 965 was good, wasn't as harsh as I remembered, but was not as good as the "Nine 2 Five". I believe there maybe some blending inconsistences in the 965 ( look at the reviews, 4's then 1"s &2"s ) , this batch was a 3 star . Average =2

I must tell you that I am greatly disappointed in the newly released line of Dunhill Pipe Tobacco by Orlick DK. I have tried all of them, going through many tins, and spending much money, and can really only recommend Early Morning Pipe and London Mixture out of the lot. The rest (e.g., MM 965, Nightcap, Standard Mixture, Royal Yacht etc.), for me, has been a real disappointment.

I am saying this in comparison to what is currently being put out by GL Pease, Cornell & Diehl, McClelland, Hearth and Home, Gawith Hoggarth & Co., Balkan Sasieni and Esoterica Tobacciana, to name but a few. I mean this Dunhill re-releases by Orlick do not even come close to what is offered by these other blenders. I am sorry, but this is what I think and it is important to put it out there.

There is a chemical taste whose presence is felt, at least to my palate, in nearly all of these Dunhill re-releases. I don't know what it is, but I could detect this in a blind taste test I am sure. Is it burley or is it a topping or casing or what, but whatever it is, I taste it in nearly all of the Dunhill re- releases.

Rather than reviewing all of the Dunhill re-releases individually, I am going to take the liberty of quoting a a recent review of Dunhill My Mixture by Maxim Engel of Pipes2smoke fame. This comments can be found on his website and in the recent email he sent out.

This website address is: http://www.pipes2smoke.com

My apologies to Maxim for not asking his permission first to quote him in full, but what he has to say encapsulates my feelings on the Dunhill line as released by Orlick to a "T". I can not improve on what Maxim Engel says. What he has done is to take a single Dunhill re-release, namely MM 965 and to compare this to the original and to the Murray Bros. issuance and finally to the present incarnation by Orlick. Many thanks to Maxim Engel and his wise words.

So here goes:

"Dunhill 965. I Finally had chance to try the new, new Orlick Dunhill. It is much improved over the 1st version 2 years ago. It is a very good tobacco albeit with a bit of bite I find and lacks a consistency of taste if I use different shaped pipes. In a Dunhill Group 4 Apple it was good – VG, in and Ashton Canadian it was thinner. I keep thinking I am tasting Burley or something akin to it when I smoke it. It certainly is a lot blonder in color than the Murray and earlier Dunhill version. By and large it is good tobacco but it lack the depth and breadth and fullness of taste that both the Murrays and Dunhill version had. It's good but not great. To me it has the difference that Davidoff's Scottish mixture has between the Made in UK early version and the later made in Denmark ones. Somehow crossing the small stretch of the North Sea they loose some English quality and become good English style Danish tobaccos. They are no longer English. To make sure I wasn't psychologically fooling myself. Last Sunday I smoked a bowl of Dunhill 965, around 25-30 years old. Then later in the day a bowl of Murray/Dunhill 965 about 15 years old. And later the new/new 965. Taking into account the Dunhill 965 (Royal Warrant) had a lot of age on it and the Murrays version a bit, less my observations were".

"Dunhill Royal Warrant 965 had breadth, depth, fullness of flavor and absolutely no bite. All the various ingredients melded beautifully and I only wish I had 500 tins stored away".

Murrays/Dunhill 965 – excellent but not quite as much depth. No bite but lots of subtle differences between it and the Dunhill version. Murrays a bit less strong in odor, maybe a bit more forward with the Latakia and the base Virginias were less there. Wish I had 250 tins stored away".

"Any smoker who has only had the new Orlick version of 965 should try to smoke a bowl of either the Murrays or Dunhill versions and see what great tobaccos are as distinct from good. Would I smoke it again, yes. 5 years of cellaring will improve it I am sure but it will never be a great English tobacco".

Again, my thanks to Maxim Engel. I only hope he doesn't mind this, but I have quoted him in full, taking nothing out of context.

I hope you have enjoyed reading his words as much as I have.

My favorite line is: "Somehow crossing the small stretch of the North Sea they loose some English quality and become good English style Danish tobaccos".

A priceless comment!

As of 11 March 2005, this is the most reviewed tobacco in this database with 91 reviews. Nightcap is a close second with 85. Surely there is some reason why so many have smoked this blend and felt compelled to comment. I think people try this because their grandfathers smoked it.

I smoked a few bowls of this six months ago, tired of it and went on to other boutique blends. While cleaning up some early 20th century english pipes, I remembered the tin and thought it fitting to reawaken the long neglected briar with an appropriate mixture.

Again, I found this to be a stalwart, though uninspiring blend. It took until a third down the bowl to identify any defining characteristics and they were unremarkable as well. I suppose it serves well as a benchmark to which most pipe smokers can relate, but there are so many others I prefer. I don't know the British equivalent to Sears and Roebuck, but this would be it: a point of departure. 965 is to English like Prince Albert is to burley.

965 is the English blend against which all others are measured. It is incredibly popular. To me, though, it is just plain middle-of-the-road. There is nothing bad about it, it smokes cool, it burns without difficulty, it is made with high-quality leaf. But it doesn't have anything that grabs you either. Its a house Cabernet, a Johnnie Walker Red, a cup of Maxwell House, a Beatles catalog tune. There are lots worse, but lots better too. Nightcap tips the scales with the Latakia (not my cup of tea, but it works for many), EMP with Orientals (yum!), but 965 just sort of goes along.

That said, if you haven't tried it, you HAVE to. It is a benchmark.

I am not sure what I am missing here. The cedar-smokiness of the Latakia in MM965 melds well with the sweetness of the Virginias and brown Cavendish. The Macedonian leaf is peppery rather than floral—as with other oriental varieties. In the two batches that I tried, I enjoyed some bowls while others tasted a little acrid.