Gawith, Hoggarth & Co. Black & Brown

After reading reviews given here and on smokingpipes.com I am shocked at the experience I had with this blend as opposed to so many. I had about 2 ounces of it and gave it a good go, but the more I smoked it the more I lost interest and grew a distaste for it.

The pouch note was pleasant and had a vanilla like aroma. Very light. It did smoke slow and the production and quality of smoke out put was nice. However, whenever I smoked this particular tobacco if roughed up my tongue quite a bit. I tried packing it multiple ways, smoking slower, and it always left my tongue feeling like sandpaper. I have heard of particular casings causing negative reactions and I can only assume that this particular casing just didn't agree with me.

I didn't find this blend to burn hot, however I never went at it like a freight train. It did always leave a dry white ash and always burned evenly to the bottom.

The flavor was very mild from the beginning but as the smoke continued it morphed into a cigarette like quality which became overpowering. I've noticed in the reviews that some would suggest this to be a "tobacco" type flavor. However, even in smoking English, Burley/Virginias, and other aromatics, etc; I have never found that taste to be present unless I was smoking ash half way down the bowl of one of my larger pipes. Which at that point I would scrape some of that ash out to get back to the flavor of the blend. Or think of when your at the end of a smaller bowl and you start tasting ash. Even when I tried scraping out the ash it didn't seem to help. It is almost as if the blend itself is so light that the ash flavor overshadowed the notes of the actual blend.

The room note was pleasant. I usually smoke in my car on the way home and whenever I would get back into the car a little later it left that pleasing vanilla-esque type aroma.

For me though, somewhere between the delicious mild bag note and the left over room note, the enjoyable qualities of this blend were lost in translation when smoking. Maybe down the line I'd give it another go. Maybe let it sit for a month or two, but to be honest I found no qualities in this tobacco that would make me want to come back and put in the time to let it age. Especially when there are other blends that represent this style of blend better.