Esoterica Tobacciana Penzance

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

For me, both a little sweet and oddly salty, with a creamy texture. I like my campfire latakia and Penzance isn't a big campfire bomb, but has enough to keep that toasty woodsy flavor. One of the best tobaccos I've tried in my mere two years of pipe smoking.

Update - 11 Nov 2015: Meh. A disappointing sequel after a few weeks. The good stuff takes too long to kick in, it's almost insipid. I am not impressed with this tobacco and deem it's not worth chasing it, or paying stupid prices for it. I will stick with Gaslight, the Dunhills and my other classics and will not bother with Penzance no more. Not worth it, chaps. Original review - 21 Oct 2015: Because of its limited availibility, I have chased Penzance for almost 5 years. In the meanwhile, I had chased around for some Wessex's Dark Flake, Hamborger Veermaster and Germain's Balkan Sobranie. Having been disappointed by these, I had decided to stop chasing Penzance, out of concern of ending up also disapointed by it. It's when I stopped chasing it that I was offered an opportunity - ironic, isn't it?- and decided to seize it. Penzance is a very dark Mottled Flake - I suppose it's the British equivalent to Crumble Kake- that is all about the Latakia. From what I can appreciate in the tin, Latakia rules. I cannot say I perceive the Virginias or Oriental because all I can smell is Latakia. The tobacco breaks easily for packing: a finger stirring it suffices in order to gather a pipeful. Very easy and practical, I must say. As the tobacco is very dark, it requires some effort to light properly and des burn slowly. At first, not much happens, as latakia is not a multi-flavour leaf. But progressively, the Latakia starts affirming itself, in a creamy, smoky and just a bit sweet way. I can barely make out, on my tastebuds, the Virginias an Orientals. There are some hay and spicy notes, by very attenuated, just to bring a little extra to the Latakia. As the pipeful progresses, the Latakia makes itself richer and richer while keeping its creaminess, smokiness and slight sweetness; and the Virginias and Oriental affirm themselves a bit more. At mid-point and until the end, Penzance is a very smooth but still stout smoke that is medium in strength in the nicotine department. Germain's latakia, like their Oriental (I'm thinking about their Special Latakia Flake) has a personnality and taste like no other. It is, simply put, sublime, and is what makes Penzance unique. I am extremely glad, for a change, to have been able to get one of the most seeked after tobaccos on the market. I will not start chasing after it again, but, if given the opportunity to get more, I shall not hesitate and will purchase more. Penzance is a great Latakia, distinctive and comparable to no other. It's akin to Special Latakia Flake, but with a greater latakia presence.

This is the king of all latakia blends! Sweet, smooth, soft on the tongue. It is so full of flavour that it demands your attention all the time. Nuances change and change again as you progress down the bowl. This is such a well balanced tobacco that none of the ingredients pushes itself to the front. It's a melody of flavours pouring out.

It is good... a panacea for tobacco hunger. The essential oils that give the blend its sheen will dry fast. Try to avoid keeping that tin or bag open for too long. I suspect that much of the velvety, almost oily mouth feel is due to the very oily composition of the blend.

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".

This wonderful crumble cake typically comes moist. This is just fine with me since drying is not a problem and overly wet is better than overly dry. With that said, I have found that many, including myself, enjoy English blends on the dryer side, so after letting this dry for about 8 hours it loaded very easily, lit well and smoked superbly. I very much enjoyed the moderate to heavy volume of cool smoke and the taste/aroma was wonderful. The blended components joined very well with each other and this is and has been my favorite blend for some time. Though it is hard to find sometimes, I am fortunate that I know of a local B&M which often has the 8oz bags in stock. The little 2oz tins are great too for holding a few bowls worth to carry around on oneself, though they seem considerably harder to find. Highly Recommended.

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.

When I first tried this one, it was far far too much for me. My wife told me that I smelled like I had just lit, and smoked, 100 cigarettes at once. I didn't like it very much, then, due to the fact that my few encounters with tobacco had been of the Walgreens variety...I'll say no more on that. To me, at the time, it tasted like smoke...just smoke with a smoky aroma.

I started to "get" it around the last two bowlfuls of that tin...and I missed it. How I missed it.

A few years down the road, and a more than a few tins of different tobaccos later, I encountered a local shop that regularly stocked Penzance. Having tried more than a few different tobaccos since, and knowing how rare it was to find Penzance, I decided to pick up a tin.

A few months later I smoked it. I tasted a wonderful blend! I could detect all the flavors. ALL THE FLAVORS! I lack some of the vocabulary necessary to properly describe it, not because I'm that enamored with this tobacco (which I am) but because I simply am unable to make the words happen...it tastes earthy compared to some other similar blends that I have tried. A balanced earthy, SOMETIMES suprisingly sweet, solid balkan. I almost feel that the word "solid" does this blend the most justice.

This is indeed one of the best tobaccos I have smoked to date. If it ever runs out, I will miss it sorely but I will probably move on. I do recommend this to every pipe-smoker to try at least once...the whole tin. And then every pipe-smoker should go out and find some more, because it really is that good.