Sutliff Tobacco Company Spinnaker

Mix of Cavendish and burley? Bag note: cherry? Smokes easily. I taste burley. I don't pick up any Virginia. Fruit, cherry I think. But it is mild. Some vanilla. Halfway through the bowl, the fruit pulls back and the vanilla comes out more. Then it dies back again. As I let the pipe go out, I think I get a faint hint of pineapple. After relight, it is hot and a little dry. As it settles back down, a little cherry comes back. Not much in the retrohale. A hint of the fruit. I get a very mild amount of numbness in my mouth. A little sweetness picks back up. The flavors are very timid. Overall, this is a mild smoke. The flavors are subtle. A good easy going smoke with flavors that are not overbearing.

Offers up a sweet and sour (tart) flavor, as advertised. Artificial black cherry flavor comes on strong, then fades back a bit as you get into the bowl. The cherry background becomes drier and more tart, as the Burley moves forward. 2 stars.

I saw Spinnaker as a second chance to smoke a cherry flavored blend in the Sutliff Private Stock series. The first was St. George's Blend; reputed to be a black cherry infused mixture, it didn't contain one surviving molecule of the flavor. Spinnaker was only a slightly different experience. Opening revealed a normal looking brown to blackish mixture. That was it. Nothing normal happened after that. I stuck my nose down close to the tin without any hesitation and paid the price. I breathed in and was shocked by a fetid and dense odor of spoiled citrus. Strong and overpowering to the point of being repelling, I walked into another room to breath in fresh air. I pulled a big wad of Spinnaker out and spread it over a sheet of paper. At twenty minutes the alcohol component had evaporated and the aroma had lost most of it's fetid odor. At forty five minutes it was just a dense citrus odor. An hour later it had the promise of being a pipe tobacco with a citrus flavor. The next morning it was definitely a pipe blend with a solid citrus odor that, just might, border on sour cherry? After lunch nothing had changed so I loaded up and lit up. Now for the surprise. I thought it smoked with a possible sour cherry odor. It was in there, after all! Unfortunately, there wasn't a whole lot else in the smoke and I agree totally with reviewer BryGuySC 2017-05-02 that Spinnaker has a very timid flavor and is an overall mild smoke. I didn't get much out of the blend until we went into the bottom half. Here the Burley finally decided to speak up, but, with a very subdued voice for a Burley. Blending with Spinnaker was a neutral experience and the citrus flavor was frequently noticeable. All in all, two stars.

Label: Sailing, as in all sports, has its own jargon, understood only by interested fans. If you have ever admired the beauty of a sailboat gracefully gliding with a brightly colored headsail, then you have seen a spinnaker. Open yourself up to a new and exciting experience by trying this delightful mixture of Sweet Burley and tart Back Cavendish.

Tin Aroma: Very strong cherry, according to my girlfriend it smelled like a cherry cough drop. It's hard to smell anything past the cherry, it's easily one of the strongest smelling tobaccos I've tried.

Taste: Cherry is the foremost flavor, covering up the other flavors. From the tin note, I was worried that it would be very artificial tasting, but it wasn't. I've had one other cherry aromatic (some no-name bulk), and Spinnaker was much less artificial tasting and more pleasant in general. The label description of sweet and tart is right on the money. Towards the end of the bowl, the cherry flavor subsides pretty dramatically letting the burley come through a bit. It was almost like smoking two different tobaccos.

Room Note: Fruity, though the cherry smell lessened towards the end of the bowl.

Thoughts: It didn't seem too wet in the tine, but the bottom of my bowl was soaked after I finished. My pipe gurgled a bit at the end also. It wouldn't have hurt had I let it dry a bit longer.

http://www.sutliff-tobacco.com/spinnaker.html