Esoterica Tobacciana Margate

This was the first latakia blend that I ever smoked. I purchased it in bulk from my local tobacco shop who is kind enough to break up the 8oz bags into smaller increments for their customers. My sample was a bit on the dry side but altogether smoked well.

This blend can be fiery and a little heady if I pushed it too hard, but its redeeming qualities are bundled tightly in its intricate illusory flavors. I say this because Margate has an undeniably dry flavor kick with very little sweetness to hang on to. Enjoying Margate is on par to enjoying a really dry & oaky red wine in that its flavors are presented in a much narrower spectrum. That said, most of these flavors are tough to pin down or compare to some of the obvious food related references that are often tied to sweeter mixtures. Perhaps it's best to say that this mixture just tastes like well blended, high quality no-frills tobacco.

If anything, Margate has made more of an impact on me through my sense of smell. Its pungent incense like aroma is a thing of beauty and keeps me coming back for more, where its flavor ebbs and flows between full round and spicy, to subdued and ethereal. The real magic with Margate is this dance it does with my olfactory senses. Perhaps I spent too many nights as a kid in front of the camp fire with my friends and family but if I could rate Margate's rich wood fire like aroma on a nostalgia scale of 1-10, it would easily rate a high 9 for me. There is something that I crave with this one yet flavor is only one component of the craving.

For me this mixture took some time to fully appreciate. Sometimes when something is so simple it's easy to overlook what it does well. And what Margate does is satisfies my desire for a rich dry latakia laced smoke.

Margate is another 1st class blend from the Esoterica line from the Germain family. The tin note is very similar to the current version of Balkan Sobranie (also made by Germain). This is an Oriental/Turkish forward blend that is in a bed of wonderful Virginia's and top shelf Cyprian Latakia. The VA sweetness with the woody, spicy and sour orientals supported by smokey and incense like Latakia is heavenly. The flavor of this tobacco is also the stuff of legend (this will be one of those blends that will be whispered about if it ever goes away like the old BS tobacco's). This is blend that will taste different in different pipes, it will vary with smoking cadence and even the shape of the bowl. It is complexity defined. I will say that this blend sings in meerschaum pipes. I have tried to nail this one down prior to reviewing, it is so good and it has such a range I wanted to make sure I had a good relationship with her so that I could review it effectively and maybe help someone with their introduction, it is an elusive blend and our hard earned cash deserves to be spent well.

So if you have a meer, smoke that one first. If you have deep wide bowled briar, I found them to be the best. If you have a bog oak / morta pipe that is also a temple for this blend. This blend smokes best dry (IMHO). The base of Virginia's is what I get first. Sweet, bready, hay loft old hay. Grassy flavors with earth and a hint of citrus (I am not sure if what I get is citrus from the VA or a hint of sour from the Orient). The Orientals are wonderful. I wish I knew what VA's were included but I am fairly sure there is yenidje and smyrna present in meaningful quantities. There is a "fizzy" or seltzer like taste I get on the retrohale and the nuances from the orientals come out even clearer in a morta or meer. They are spicy and woody: cedar, balsa wood and hickory come to mind. The latakia is a support condiment. It is sweet and smokey. The malty flavors get richer and richer as you smoke through the bowl. When dried you can smoke this to a white ash with 2 matches. Light on nicotine but big on flavor. The rarity of this blend makes it an occasional smoke but it could be a "desert island" blend, one to smoke often and forever. For those of you that also have a tin of Pembroke, this is Pembroke sans cognac. I have never had a blend of this caliber and complexity aided by a topping. Pembroke actually takes the flavor of this wonderful blend to another level, it actually makes it better. (a review for another...review). I wouldn't want to replace Margate with Pembroke but it is truly amazing what Germain did with adding a topping to a base blend: I highly recommend trying both.

Dark full flavored, balanced and earthy.. Esoterica does wonders with Latakia. Not as robust as Penzance and without the topping/ sweetness of ...And So To Bed.. and without the bite of Pelican which I find similar.. it's a nice happy medium. Margate is a refined possible all day smoking English with some beefiness to it.. if you can find enough of it.

This is amazing stuff! It you are looking for that signature old world English taste, this is it! Leathery, nutty, well balanced, smooth and full flavoured. The tobacco is of very high quality and is a fine ribbon cut which I prefer. I like this one more than penzance. Shame that it isn't very easy to find.

Another great experience!

I know how difficult it is to get your hands on Esoterica blends, and I know how expensive they are if you try to buy them from those who try to make a business of their own, buying lots of tins then selling them at high prices. So many probably ask themselves: “Is it worth giving that money on eBay or should I still wait my chance to buy it when it’s available on official stores?” I hope my review will answer your question.

So, lets get to it!

First experience:

1st Tin note:

Well.... * sniffs * ... oh God, this is a strong, strong smell! * sniffs * ... smells a bit like the American version of Nightcap, it has that strange sting, mostly like an oriental but not leathery, more like vinegar mostly. * sniffs * The latakia doesn’t smell very strong.

I think it’s quite an old tin because the wrapper has a lot of nicotine on it, but even so the tobacco is quite moist.

There’s some black leaf in it which is the oriental and latakia, it also has a lot of yellow to dark yellow virginia. They seem to be very well balanced. The cut is not really a shag, it’s a peeble cut I think, something between very small ribbon and tiny bits.

The first match was horrible and that was my mistake because I didn’t puff correctly, but the second smoke was good. It lights up very well, it really reminds me of Frog Morton.

Few puffs later: Yeah, this definitely tastes like Frog Morton, it has that strange taste of barbeque sauce, vinegar, Warchestershire Sauce. It’s not very smoky either. It’s a good and pleasant smoke, but it’s definitely not full bodied, it’s actually a blend that you have to sip slowly, like an old wine, and enjoy it, because it’s complex, it’s not a straightforward latakia bomb or something simple, it’s actually complex in a very interesting and pleasant way. It burns very, very well.

I’ve let it cool down for like 5 minutes or 10 minutes at most and after I lit it the strange taste of vinegar went away. It’s a very buttery (like butter) and silky, smooth and a little leathery and a little smoky. It’s interesting because it has many aromas but none of them are pronounced, they dance together beautifully.

It’s actually quite sweet, it’s not what you would expect from an english. I don’t sense that smoky characteristic, or the leathery characteristic or the spicy characteristic. It’s hard to describe exactly because it’s crazy how many flavors and aromas are in this, which makes it a very good, interesting and complex smoke.

Middle experience:

Yes, it has that taste of Frog Morton on the Log at the first two lights but after that it gets very silky and buttery. It’s sweet and smoky. Definitely some very good latakia. It’s not super smoky, but it has that latakia sweetness. It’s not the sweetness of the virginia which has some citrus notes.

A few puffs later: Boy this is good! I’m just trying to think of a tobacco that I could compare it with but nothing comes to my mind. There could be... it has something from all the great blends like Early Morning Pipe, My Mixture 965 and a bit from Frog Morton at the beginning, but this is unique from all I’ve smoked so far, this is quite different, in a good way. It’s complex, it’s delicious!

As you smoke, the smokiness gets more pronounced. There is the leathery taste as well but both tastes are much much better and smoother and delicate than in other blends. The room note is overwhelming in a very good way, I mean this is powerful! It really smells powerful but also very good in my opinion. It’s... WOW! It’s like an incense of some very secret plant that you would imagine being used in the ancient temples in secret mystery schools.

One more thing I’ve noticed is that no matter how much you puff, how much and how strong you puff, this one doesn’t get hot at all. Not even the pipe doesn’t get too hot. It’s clear that the virginia used here is not in a big amount, at least that’s my opinion, even though the blend smokes great.

I think this is the perfect blend for a very cold winter night when you sit by the fireplace and you light up your pipe and you drink some cognac or brandy or whatever fine drink.

It is very powerful in terms of smell. So it will absolutely fill the room with its amazing smell. It delivers a very thick smoke both in the air and in your mouth. It fills your mouth with soft smoke, like a cloud. Even when you retrohale you feel a very smooth sensation of the smoke, it doesn’t feel any spice.

After you go halfway the bowl the aromas that I mentioned, like vinegar or whatever, they go away and they start to deliver natural aromas of a very fine tobacco and very well cured and very well blended.

The latakia is rich in flavor but it’s not that super smoky latakia, it’s more like a sweet soft latakia with a bit of smokiness.

I’m now super interested in Penzance which is actually what I’ve been after for a long time, but since I couldn’t get my hands on Penzance I’m very very very happy that I managed to get my hands on Margate.

I don’t usually finish a review before I smoke at least one full tin, or even two tins, but in this case I will only smoke about half of the tin and the rest I will leave it for the winter because this is in my opinion the perfect winter blend, like I said, imagining sitting in front of the fireplace where the smell of the burning logs are getting together with the smell of this fine blend, and the winter and the silent nights of winter, because this should be enjoyed at night, in silence, maybe along with a classic book and a fine drink.

Another good thing for me is that nicotine wise this is not mellow, because I like and I need nicotine and this one delivers enough nicotine so that I don’t have to light up those horrible cigarettes.

This goes on my favorites list!

It is very easy to see why Esoterica tobacco is so highly prized. While the aroma directly from the bag is pretty much the same as any other English blend I've smelled, the taste is far superior. The tobacco is shag cut and easy to pack, and could do with a few minutes of drying before you start smoking.

The typical salty, peated flavor from the Latakia is at just the right level for my liking. I also get notes of toast, baking spice, earth, and a slight hint of pepper. The flavors meld so well together that it is almost difficult to separate them.

Margate burns very well and only required a few relights. The fine shag cut seems to keep the tobacco burning for much longer than more coarsely cut tobacco, which leads to a very long, enjoyable smoke. Margate can easily be smoked at any time of day and the mild to medium flavor won't overpower most other non-aromatic blends.

"Happy mortal he who knows the pleasure that a pipe bestows."

Before I weigh-in on Margate, can I just say how glad I am that the finer, retro, off-the-grid charms, recondite rituals and artisanal pleasures associated with pipes and pipe tobacco remain such an obscure, undiscovered, underground undertaking that only we, the fortunate members of such a seemingly secret society, are currently enjoying(?)

I walked into to my local B&M tobacconist (Mission Pipe Shop in San José, CA) to pick some 6mm filters for a $53 Rossi Rubino I recently bought (without noticing it was filtered – my one and only filtered pipe). While there, I was also going to grab a tin or two of Margate that has been collecting dust on their shelves for the past two years (at least, since the last time I was there to pick up a pound each of Stonehaven and Penzance). Sure enough, when I walked in, there were half-a-dozen tins of Margate on the shelf, as well as some Dunbar and Pembroke. I picked up two tins of Margate, a tin of Dunbar, and then helped myself to their last 8-ounce bag of Penzance ($51, for 8-ounces of Penzance).

Can you imagine? In downtown San Jose – in the middle of Silicon Valley – I nonchalantly amble into my local pipe shop and casually pick up some Esoterica off the shelf, including an 8-ounce bag of Penzance (for $51). If pipe smoking ever hit fad status the way man-buns, vaping and Juuling had, can you imagine the calamitous effects it would have on the rest of us? The demand would so far outstrip the existing supply for everything pipe-related that the price of everything pipe-related would skyrocket to such astronomical levels as to utterly destroy this precious pastime for all but the obscenely wealthy.

The Margate is good . . .

Funny that people compare Quiet Nights to Penzance, but no one compares Penzance to Quiet Nights (I never made the connection myself, either way). While Margate and Penzance are clearly and closely related (one can both see and taste the resemblance), quite curiously, Quiet Nights is what came to my mind as I pondered over Margate. Margate has a spicy, smokey , incense-like perfume coupled with marvelous essence of Latakia flavoring, and a petite piquancy by way the Orientals and Turkish. Needs some dry time, as it also needs to be sipped. Methinks a wee more Virginia would have perhaps improved the overall experience, but with that said, Margate is both well-balanced and well-blended, a very fine English indeed. 4-stars.

Finally managed to get my hands on some of these due to the generosity of a friend visiting the States. This was the second smoke out of a brand new Savinelli and man! What a great smoke! My tastes have recently gravitated to oriental heavy English blends and this just fits that bill perfectly. Out of the tin rich, moldy, deep like freshly ground coffee with some sweetness added. A fine ribbon cut that needs a fair amount of drying time though, but once done packs sweetly into the bowl. First light is where the action begins and immediately the that first indicator of an oriental for me comes racing to the fore: a sweet, rose like flavour that pleasantly fills your mouth quickly followed by the rich chocolaty/coffee/woodfire taste of quality latakia. Heavenly. Normally I keep myself busy while smoking a pipe...reading, watching a video, whatever...but this held all of my attention. Right to the end where many other tobaccos tend to fade, that floral sweetness and smoky richness stayed. Absolutely delicious. Two downsides though: during the bowl it did seem as if the pipe got exceptionally hot every now and again. Even putting it down only alleviated it for a short time. This is probably due to the pipe being new, but cannot recall it getting this hot during its first smoke. And then towards the end of the bowl my tongue was definitely taking a bit of strain. Not so much proper tongue bite as with some Virginias, but almost a gradual drying out like when you've had a couple of bites too many of spicy food. But not enough to deter from four starts for me, definitely a top notch tobacco.

A fantastic, traditional, old style English blend, indeed. Evokes good old memories. Very balanced and skilfully selected Orientals, kind of warm, creamy, full body aroma, no beak pecking spiciness. Scrumptious Latakia. Rich palette of flavours. Natural tobacco sweetness accompanies you throughout the smoke. A gorgeous blend for all lovers of the old style English mixtures that have gradually disappeared from the market. Thanks to Esoterica, MARGATE fills the gap. It’s on my favourites list now.