Peterson My Mixture 965

--update-- After that first (very very very old) tin I found at the local tobacconist, I never found another anywhere. I smoked alot of different tobacco's but always longed for the 965 taste. I finally found a shop in Germany that sold 965 tins over the internet! I ordered one and am smoking my first pipefull of this "orlik" made version. I opened the tin, expecting the familiar and lovely smell of 965....it was not there... It now smells more like Red Rapparee but not as nice. It looks "totally" different than the "old" 965. I have always kept a pipefull of old 965 as a comparison so I can see the difference. The orlik version is much lighter and is young looking, not as "aged". It does seem to contain several different sorts of tobacco leaf, yellow, light brown, dark brown, grey and black. The old version did not contain yellow leaf (young virginia?). It's really moist in the tin, but packs well. Lighting was easy and the first draw gave me the familiar 965 experience. After that first draw it was over. No creamy smoke, no "spark", no "holy smoke this is good!" feeling. Just a solid good tobacco with latakia. Orlik has made a VERY good English, I LOVE it.....but it's NOT 965. I will however be buying more of this....maybe to let it age. I am smoking it now, and I am enjoying the experience! That's what counts, not the label on the tin. Fun trivia : the old tin was painted cream with a painted logo, the new thin is a "generic" gold coloured tin with a Dunhill sticker on top. Well done Orlik.....goodbye Dunhill 965....

--original review-- I love this tobacco! I bought a really old tin and it's just amazing. Not familiar with latakia blends, when I first opened the tin I thought "this tobacco is off!" but I gave it a try. Such an experience! Sort of nutty tasting and leaves a creamy feeling in the mouth that no other tobacco has done. The smell can be a bit "over the top" for non smokers so I would suggest to leave this one at home. I can't buy it anywhere anymore, the shops don't stock it. I found a sort of replacement in mixture medium but that does not give the same satisfaction... I have to be in the mood for this one, it's not my everyday smoke as it where.

This is an important blend. It really sets a standard for full English blends. It is more complex than most reviewers give it credit for. Latakia rarely tastes better than this, and Dunhill (Person now) exercised fantastic control with it. I consider this a deluxe English blend. A real luxury. It is an immensely satisfying smoke, with a noticeable nicotine level and a true full body. It produces lots of heavy smoke, even when puffed very lightly. It stays lit well and the tin note absolutely smells like a musty old leather jacket. What smoker of proper English could turn down a bowl of this stuff? I think 965 is as English as it gets. Bringing to mind herringbone jackets and walking sticks. It's not as light as Squadron Leader. It's not as murky as Nightcap. It's boring name makes no promises, and that's why it always surprises you with its premium quality, and richness. It's one of those blends that makes you think "how did I forget about this?".

If abused, it could probably burn you. It has the normal Dunhill cut, which I've always been convinced contributes to their flavor. It smokes best in a large bore briar. This is a big smoke in every way. It's probably not an all day. But it will usually be the highlight of the day.

An extremely offensive and repulsive colorful close up photograph of a giant neck tumor attached as sticker at the tin I acquired several years ago in Madrid, did not deterred me from enjoying one of the best pipe tobaccos I ever tried since I discovered it at the Guatemalan duty free airport shop about fifty years ago and that enthroned me to the glorious reigns of the ever intriguing Latakia realms.

The perfect blend for me. Four stars.

Many experts here have described and sang the wondrous feature of this great old timer.

So much for the sadistic / fascist social health enforcers!

This is very good. It is not latakia heavy, and is a good combination of slightly spicy and a little smoky. The Virginia adds some sweet and some hay. It has some more body than many oriental/Va blends, and the brown cavendish provides some fullness and enhances the sweet.

This is one of those blends that grows on you and does not have much "wow" factor. It is tasty and balanced. I could smoke a lot of this but won't given the price point. I can easily understand this has fans. I prefer the "zestier" quality of London Mixture in terms of taste, but this one is a little stronger and "rounder."

It is a solid three on the scale.

This is the benchmark blend for English tobaccos. (Here in the US we use English tobacco in reference to a mixture with clearly apparent oriental/latakia content.) As the benchmark, MM965 is not automatically the best one has smoked (for me that would be GLPease Renaissance), but it provides the mean against which others are judged. Some insist an English mixture with cavendish should be called a Scottish mixture. MM965 does have cavendish, unflavored Virginia cavendish, which provides a slightly sweet base. The oriental/latakia component comes in at the medium to strong level--just under medium if ranking only the latakia. The mixture lights easily and burns well, and does not bite so long as the puffing cadence remains reasonable. In over a half century of pipe smoking, I have gone through the Dunhill production, the Murray version, and now the Scandinavian Tobacco Group. I have not experienced notable changes in taste and quality, although when I first smoked MM965 it almost certainly had Syrian rather than Cyprian latakia. There will be slight variations in taste for aged tins, and MM965 does age well. The full room note is delicious for latakia lovers and universally hated by significant others.

A classic blend, so it seems: so many accolades, and now a Hall of Famer... I just had to try this blend.

It started off poorly, dry and hot like a sunstroked meadow, and it was downhill from there.

There were a few draws that somehow slipped into my mouth that were sorta smooth and pleasant and almost made it seem like tobacco, but most of the time, from my very first puff on, it's been a savagely hot, unpleasant experience. All the notes I was getting from this thing were nothing more than painful noise: any subtle undertones were, for me, smothered by overtones of smoldering rubber or plastic.

I've tried several bowls of this stuff, and this blend is just not for me. I honestly don't know how it's for anybody. Indeed I dislike this blend so much I don't think I'm going to try any other Dunhills, because obviously they're doing something very wrong by my standards. This blend just proves how variable and subjective a thing is taste, because I actively hate this blend. I'm amazed it's in the Hall of Fame (at least for all the wrong reasons 🙂 ).

I seem to be on a radically different page than every other smoker on this one. Since I don't like mysteries in my personal life I will continue to try it once in a great while just to see if I can divine how almost everyone else can possibly enjoy this straw.

UPDATE 10/15/10: I tried it several more times since I wrote my original review, and my experience with it never improved. Indeed I don't know when I've ever hated a blend as much as this one. I gave the tin to another smoker who loves 965 and he said it was fine. Go figure. I don't get it. And yet, having just read denversixstring's review of 10/01/2010 I wonder if that accounts for my experience of this blend since his experience of it ("Horrible. Flat. Nearly tasteless. Hot.") coincides with mine. Maybe he and I were just victims of an errant batch. I don't know. But once bitten, twice shy -- I steer clear of anything with the name Dunhill on it.

Dunhill My Mixture 965: Tin note of smoky spices and mildly sweet. Tobacco is brown, dark brown, tan and black ribbon cut. Moisture content is good. Burns moderate with few relights. The strength is medium and nic is mild. No flavoring detected. Taste is medium and mostly consistent, with notes of smoky, leather, toasted bread, woody, spices, earth, floral, dry, herbal, mild vinegar, mildly savory, spicy, musty hay, lemon zest, fermented sour vegetation, sour, a stewed sweet and tangy citrus fruit background note, and a peppery retro. Latakia is leading with Oriental/Turkish and Virginias supporting. Cavendish is supporting from afar. Room note is pleasant to tolerable, and aftertaste is great.

Another one of the old Dunhill mixtures for me today. This is a blend I had several years ago as one of my first English blends I tried. I had bought a tin of this, a tin of Old Dublin and if I remember correctly I bought a tin of WhiteKnight and Blackhouse after that. I remember not being overwhelmingly impressed with English mixtures when I first tried them, but it was smoking through the tins of WhiteKnight and Blackhouse that I earned an appreciation for what a good English blend do.

The tin is nice and old fashioned, it looks as though the tin art hasn't changed in the last 40-50 years, though I could be wrong. When I open the tin I see a nice medium ribbon with a few stems here and there. When I smell the tobacco in the tin I get whiffs of Brown Cavendish nuttiness, Macedonian sweetness and herbalness and a light and alluring Latakia smokiness. The smell is, in a word, captivating. This comes dry enough to pack and light right away. Like all my new tins I like to jar this right away.

When I light up I taste the smokiness of burning leaves in the autumn. The flavor is very harmonious. The brown Cavendish is not as sickly sweet as its Black Cavendish cousin can be. It gives a distinct nutty flavor and makes for a very nice base. The Macedonian leaf is very interesting to me, it adds most of the sweetness, but it gives a nice herbal backdrop to the blend. The Latakia pops in here and there, and it is present throughout. It gives some leather, earth, and creamy smoke.

The taste is a medium, I'm not overwhelmed by any means, but it is substantial. The Nicotine is a medium too. The room note is pretty typical of an English blend: nice and subtly smokey. I could smoke this at any time of the day, and it really is quite repeatable. Even though I was unsure about this blend when I smoked it a few years ago, I really like it now. I think this is a fine blend that really pairs well with my tea.

I love the smell when I open the tin and often linger on that before packing a bowl. Been smoking a lot of this lately, because unlike many of the tobaccos I've tried in the year I've been smoking a pipe, that tin note actually carries through to the taste of the smoke itself. So here's my unsophisticated take on this tobacco: when I smoke this, I feel that this is what pipe tobacco is supposed to taste like. I'm not saying it's the only tobacco that tastes like that -- I just mean that I have an almost nostalgic feeling about it. It tastes the way I imagine my grandfather's tobacco must have tasted (though the memory of him smoking his pipe goes back almost 50 years). It's earthy and complex and reminds me of fishing at my granddad's cabin, the smell of the country, the musty smell of his old Ngaio Marsh paperbacks, and of his pipes neatly lined up in his pipe rack.

It's also mild enough (with no bite whatsoever) that I can smoke it at any time of the day from first thing to last smoke of the night. Tastes just as good to me with a cup of coffee in the morning or a whiskey in the evening or while walking the dog on a cold day. Recommended.