Dunhill Three Year Matured Virginia

Dunhill's Three Year Virginia is kind of a disappointment to me. THis is billed as an aromatic, and I guess to several reviewers it is, but not so to me. I had smoked about half a tin before reading the reviews here and had not picked up on it's aroma standing. Now, I can just perceive it as such now that I know.

The orientals do not sit well with me. They seem to give a bite to the blend w/o adding a lot of spiciness. This blend just seems harsh from the get-go.

Good thing that there are a lot of other Dunhill blends out there that turn my crank.

I have been smoking this tobacco for about a week now, I heard and read a lot of negativity about this and had to try it.

I sort of like the tobacco as it is not all that strong.

Being a connoisseur of the aromatic tobaccos I never did get any fruity aroma from the tobacco in the tin or while smoking it. Most likely not enough for me to sense if there were.

I have never been a big fan of the English Tobaccos but this one tastes and smokes very well, no tongue bit, no harshness just the flavor of the Virginia tobaccos.

This is another of the love/hate smokes that abound the world of the pipe. And yet again one of my all time favorites! I am not big on aromatics because of the lack of substance, But this one is IMO one of the dual purpose ones. It meets me nned for a kick and my wife LOVES the smell of the stuff. The tin is fruity smelling and I concur the blackcurrant scent. The taste is pure tobacco with a fair punch of good old nic. It burns clean and light ash to the heel and can be smoked all day if one chooses. It has not bit me yet even when smoked a a good pace but bite does seem to be possible if you try.

Dissapointment plus! Rather than going the way of a type of fruit in the description of this tobacco I'd prefer to go the way of perfumes. 3 year matured was to be a high point in my smoking career. the idea of a Dunhill pure matured virginia sent me into realms of fantasy only Tolkien could have devised. This made the let down so much greater. Immediately upon opening I knew something was wrong. Had my wife secretly emptied a full bottle of OPIUM scent into round flat tin? NO she wouldn't have, and there was that wonderful characteristic whhup as the air enters the tin for the first time. Poisonous stuff me thinks. My mouth was charred. My heart saddened as I tipped 25gms intot he flower bed! Expensive fertilizer.

This blend is not as bad as I have been lead to believe. It definitely has a fruit flavoring which to me is Raspberry. If it is smoked moist, the flavoring is all that I taste. I can take enough out of the tin for a bowlfull. I let this completely dry out until it is bone dry. I then pack a Meerschaum (I would not smoke this in a briar), and rehydrate it by blowing through the bowl until it has the proper moisture. Now I can taste the underlying tobacco with just a hint of the Raspberry. Yet, the room aroma leans towards the Raspberry. The base tobacco is quality, and probably would have been best left alone. For 35 years, when smoking a new blend, I ask my wife what it smells like. The answer is almost always "pipe tobacco". This time it was "fruit". After a heavy meal, smoking this without letting it dry out is like having dessert. The tobacco has a lot less calories than a Raspberry Tart. While this will not be a regular for me, it sure beats goopy aromatics and would be a step up for smokers of those blends.

Update. After a few more bowls, I think that the flavor is more like Black Currant than Raspberry.

Okay, my current production tin is two years old and as I popped it I was greeted by a strong whiff of the topping. I know exactly what it is -- it's blackcurrant! I loved it in French soap, but was bitterly disappointed by the Twinings Blackcurrant Tea which I found too cloying. I might revisit that, since I haven't tried it with honey, which makes a world of difference. But this is neither here nor there.

The tobacco was delightfully fresh; the moisture was just right, and the dark shreds of leaf were streaked with sugar crystals. I was able to scrape my first 2/3 bowlful from what had adhered to the paper disc without difficulty and pack it into the smooth Stanwell billiard I'd chosen for it. The charring light gave me the impression that the topping had indeed been increased a hundredfold from the original version, but was nevertheless essentialy the same blend. I also had the impression it would more closely resemble my 40-year old sample if it were dried out for some years and then rehydrated (which is what happened to my old sample). The main difference, I find, is that this current stuff is strong -- not the flavor, but the nicotine hit. By the time the top was charred and I was reaching for my tamper, the garage was starting to sway a little. Upon relighting, I decided that breath smoking was the way to go. From then on, it was much the same as the old stuff. I did notice that the sugar crystals gave the smoke a certain quality that I've only encountered with similarly aged C&D Blockade Runner, a sweet, musty, silky smoothness that brings on a temptation to puff harder and more often. But giving in to this is inviting tongue bite and a hot, wet smoke and as it was, the tobacco burned to a very clean, dry white ash.

In short, I was a bit disconcerted and apprehensive about the apparent heavy-handedness with the topping. But once I settled into the main smoke, I found it a faithful successor to the original. I wouldn't have either the original or the new production as an everyday or all-day smoke, but it is a great change of pace smoke, very pleasant. Too bad winter is just about gone, this would be great on frosty nights with a nice steaming mug of Darjeeling tea or apple cider.

Fruit Loops in a can. In fact, the only differences between Three Year Matured Virginia and that beloved Kellogg's cereal are: A) Three Year Matured Virginia burns slightly better than Fruit Loops, and B) Fruit Loops are less dishonestly named. (Seriously, what kind of drugs were the Dunhill folks on when they dreamed up this blend? "Matured" is in particular a misnomer: here's a pipe tobacco for the kid in all of us!)

The Virginia component is, I imagine, of good quality, but for the life of me I can't taste it beneath all the fruity toppings. This might be a good step up for the piper who's accustomed to those godawful "cherry cordial" drugstore blends. Other beware.

That much said, I will freely admit this _is_ a fun tobacco to fire up now and then in a corncob, when I feel like smoking a bowl of Frankenberries.

This blend is interesting because it is so uninteresting. My tin was about two years old when I first opened it, and maybe that was why I did not experience the fruit overload of previous reviewers. Some light raspberry flavor in the tin, very little in the smoke flavor. It wasn't a sweet raspberry. The real lack here is flavor of any kind. It is just smoky, somewhat ashy, as if all flavor had just been sucked out of the leaf. Cut in a cigarette shag format, it might be something a roll your own cigarette person would like, because though it isn't great, it is still a few steps above ciggies. Yawn! Another blend to add to the "trade for anything else" box.

Perhaps I am getting it all wrong, but to me this one is a close cousin of Peterson?s Sherlock Holmes, except that the latter has a dryer, more watery taste. TYM is certainly a Virginian tobacco but different in essence or spirit. It smells sweeter than most Virginias, yet the aroma does not entirely reflect in the taste. A slow burning product, it is very easy to pack and keep lit. I have tried this a number of times in the last year. I am not a fan of this blend but for some odd reason I keep going back to it. It may be because it is not a ?distracting? blend in the sense you can be smoking it whilst strumming a guitar or leafing thru a magazine without paying much attention to your pipe.

I think the great Eulenburg has nailed it when he refers to this tobacco as "cavendished à l' Anglaise", with a note of elderberries. It is a very subtle and mild smoke (quite surprising for a Dunhill), perhaps redesigned so to meet the flavouring demands/expectations of a would be new generation of pipe smokers?-something which seems apparent with all these new Dunhills in a rectangular tin: Aromatic, Mild and Ready Rubbed. I guess that many of us are used to Dunhill tobaccos as the equivalent of grand symphonies and concertos, and all of a sudden we are presented with these rather insubstantial impromptus that are closer to the Carpenters than to the more structured Brahms or Beethoven. Non the less, I would recommend it for someone new to the pipe smoking experience, or else as a bold change of pace within the Virginia smoking range.