Esoterica Tobacciana Penzance

This is my first review in this forum, tho I have been visiting here for a couple of years now. I have vastly enriched my smoking pleasure from the reviews I've read here. I am a huge fan of Balkan and English blends in particular, and have a few pipes dedicated to them. Acting on tips in this forum, I immediately transferred the contents of my new tin to a tightly sealed jar to keep it from drying out. I have smoked this weed in several of my pipes now, and in 43 years I have never found a tobacco that varied so much in taste and smoking pleasure from one pipe to another! Has anyone else experienced this with Penzance? "When she was good, she was very, very good and when she was bad she was horrid". I have found a couple of pipes that give me sublime pleasure from this tobacco, and will stick to them from now on. I actually dumped out half a pipeful from one of my favorite meerschaums, a 43-year old dublin which has experience with all kinds of tobaccos, but it couldn't give me any pleasure from Penzance. But it can be wonderfully satisfying in the right circumstances. I roll it out fairly fine, and pack it so there is just the slightest resistance to the draw. It then burns evenly and completely to a fine ash, often without any relight. In short, I heartily recommend Penzance. Just don't give up if the first pipeful puts you off -- try a different pipe until you hit the magic button.

So I was finally given a chance to try the blend that seems to be the most legendary of any.

My assessment?

It tastes exactly like Seattle Pipe Club's Plum Pudding. In fact, so similar, I actually had to double check that I hadn't accidentally misread the labelling on the bag of it I was given. I hadn't.

Don't get me wrong, it's a nice blend with a touch of that incense like flavour that is to typical of many oriental or Scottish blends. I'm also convinced it would age very well.

So, is it a good blend? Sure. Is it worth all the hype around it? Probably not. It's legend status is probably derived by its relative rarity, something we see in all areas of life. It's a kind of collector's mentality where we enjoy the idea of having "rare" things and we over-infate their relative merits accordingly. I think it's also because that's the common script around this blend, so it becomes easy to just join in and be part of "the club" that way.

So my recommendation? Don't stress over finding it. If you do find a tin or two at your local B&M or online, absolutely go ahead and pick it up, probably for aging purposes, but otherwise, try SPC Plum Pudding and if you like it, just order that as your regular staple and enjoy.

The grass isn't always greener and the rare is not always better than what is easy to get.

This is a nice Oriental blend. Full of character and smokey latakia. I do think the hype behind it has made this somewhat over rated......But just barely. The difficulty in obtaining this blend has elevated it to cult status. Again, it is very nice. If you can find it, try it, but please do not over pay. If you never can find it, I promise you have not missed out as there are many other blends equal to this.

3.7 stars

I got my hand on several tins of this stuff before it got overrated and sold out on every continent. It is a quality english mixture, with oily flakes that quickly crumble into fine pieces. I enjoyed a few tins, but I found the flavour a little too tarry and I am simply not a fan of this type of cut. I actually gave a tin to a friend, and sent back some tins to Richard in order to exchange them for other english blends I enjoy more. As far as Esoterica goes, I prefer "And so to bed".

Being fairly new to the English blends I found myself falling in love with Latakia and have found a few blends containing it that I really enjoy. However, with the idea that more is better I began my quest for what many believe to be the epitome of the Latakia blends and was quickly directed toward Penzance being described by many as the graile of Latakia.

Quickly discovering that there was none to be purchased, I began my search for a sample or partial tin that an owner might be willing to trade and was lucky enough to acquire a good amount by networking through many people.

After acquiring some Penzance, then came the wait...the anticipation...the wonderment of what I was about to experience. And finally it began to arrive.

Upon opening a tin I was greeted with the visual and aroma of a mysterious and exotic experience that surrounds this highly cherished and coveted prize. Delicatly thin slices neatly stacked on edge and tightly compact with an addition of fine crumbs piled on top before the closing of the lid. The tin aroma was undescribably pleasant. The tobacco, mostly dark, speckled and rich.

So delicate, it was impossible to remove a single flake without it breaking apart so I simply began removing crumbled sections of several flakes from one end of the tin and spread the the array of various pieces out on paper to dry overnight.

Next morning, I found my favorite bench in the park on a gorgeous Saturday fall morning. No wind at all made it perfect for my rendevous with Penzance.

That day, over the course of three hours in the park I had two bowls of Penzance spaced apart by an hour or so and in two different pipes and concluded the following:

First bowl was in a medium size GBD Billiard that has always been my dedicated English tobacco pipe. The second bowl was in my fairly large three quarter bent. I gravity fed larger chunks first and then topped these off with finer crumbs with one very light tamp. I found that drying the tobacco out overnight helped in the lighting and it only took two matches to start and keep the bowl going along with periodic and butterfly soft tamps which only required one additional relight to take it to the bottom of the bowl. I found this to be the case with both pipes.

I finally concluded at the end of my day with Penzance that there is truth to the saying that more is not necessarilly better. I believe that Penzance will one day be for me as it is with many of the conniseurs of the pipe. However, for me right now I found that my tolerance for Latakia is much lower than I had thought it to be. Even though I sipped slowly this tobacco experience, I found Penzance to still be too much on the strong side for my liking. So strong in fact that I had difficulty concentrating on discovering any of the other nuances or complexities of the blend. I felt the Latakia over powered these other qualities.

I do not plan on giving up on Penzance and perhaps it will one day be as exciting to me as it is to many others and I will in time and with experience understand why.

I still however very much recommend this blend.

The less available this becomes, the more people are going to seek it. Kinda like the forbidden-fruit.

I like this blend. As a matter of fact, if my fellow pipers stay on the ball, you can find this if you get on certain etailers email list. That is how I came upon a pound of this. But do not hesitate, because once they advise this is in stock it goes in a matter of minutes.

I really cannot add to the hundreds of reviews here, but this is a solid, complex blend that delivers the perfect strength and balance of what a great Enlish flake should. Only thing that I do not like about this flake is how small the pieces of tobacco are cut. Almost impossible not to suck up pieces upon light up.

Penzance: A tasty but not divine Balkan

The Virginia varietals are very sweet with some flavor notes of decaying grass and earthy-richness. They smell exactly like other Esoterica Virginias with whatever casing they use to process their leaf. The Latakia is quite nicely applied—offering an assertive cedar smokiness that melds well with the sweetness from the Virginias. The Turkish leaf adds a bit of complexity but not an over-abundance of floral or sour notes.

This is one blend/flake that I prefer smoking young without added age, as the flavors of the Latakia decrease dramatically after a few years.

Overall, Penzance is good, but G.L. Pease’s Quiet Nights is perfection.

I'm one of those people that have notifications set all around the web for when Penzance goes on sale. I probably have more of it squirled away than I could ever smoke, but perhaps my tastes of changed?

The presentation is sublime. A crumble cake / flake hybrid that just looks like a lot of time and thought was put in to it. Plume is present even on fresh tins.

Latakia and Orientals scream at you through the smoke. For me, it's almost tastebud overload. I think as my tastes have matured, I've been been moving towards virginias, and more subtle English blends. Subtle is not a word I'd describe Penzance as.

It's high quality stuff, but I just don't think it's worth the effort you have to put into aquiring it. Personally, I like Balkan Sobranie much better. In my hunt for Penzance, I also became obsessed with finding a similar alternative. As others have stated, Quiet Nights and Start of the East are the closest. They are by no means identical, but in my honest opinion, have the same flavor profile. I'd say the difference is similar to say - a 10 year vs. 20 year Scotch. Sure, one is better than the other, but the returns are diminishing. That being said, before dropping $50 on an ebay tin, or spending hours hunting it down on line, try Quiet Nights. If you really like it, you'll love Penzance. If it isn't for you, you may want to save your time/money.

After wanting to try this tobacco for a long time I finally had the opportunity last night when I went to a party and the host had a fantastic assortment of tobaccos for the party guests. There were several there that I had been dying to try, and Penzance was the choice for the evening.

I would normally not want to review a tobacco after only one bowl, but I do not know when I will get another chance to smoke this renowned flake. The main thing I took from this late night rendezvous was that I was surprised to learn that Penzance is not a latakia bomb, which for some reason I always thought it was. An easy smoking Virginia and oriental blend with latakia in the background. It was delicious but not what I was expecting. I can see why this blend is so popular as it has a little bit for everyone and in perfect balance. A great example of a complex blend that does not have to hit you over the head to get it's point across. It actually reminded me of Seattle Pipe Club Mississippi River without perique, perhaps made with higher quality leaf.