Drew Estate Grand Central

very good flavor and taste from apricot and coconut. but only for aromatic lovers because the flavor is very strong. good for dessert for dinner.

Grand Central by Drew Estate has a nice strong aroma of fruit and coconut to me when I opened the tin. I packed a new cob pipe and let it sit about 20 minutes before the first light. The aroma continued throughout the length of the smoke. This is an enjoyable tobacco for me since I am a fan of Acid cigars. Cost wise the 50g tin was 7.95 at a B&M I like to visit here in NC.

I bought this blend as one of the blends to try while reviewing Drew Estate tobaccos. I like all types of blends including aromatics so I feel I can give it an honest review.

Upon opening the tin, I am greeted with a very powerful and pleasant aroma of apricots and coconut and maybe a little vanilla. It smells very sweet, very desert like and appeals to my sweet tooth. It is very moist but does not appear to contain a large amount of preservatives thus not too sticky. It was too moist to smoke right off but after a couple of days left open, it dried enough to be enjoyable. It is a multicolored blend, running from very light khaki to a dark almost black. It is a ribbon cut and packed tightly on the tin.

It packs easily in the pipe and is fairly easy to light, requiring only the initial light and after tamping, one relight. It has a great room note with to me a scent of toasted marshmallows and quite frankly that is also the flavor I get from it as well. As others have said, if smoked too fast it will give some tongue bite, but if savored slowly it has a very pleasant, rich, and mild flavor. It burns mice and slow down the bowl, requiring a relight now and then, but very enjoyable. It burns to a steel gray ash with very little dottle at the bottom of the bowl. This is surprising in an aromatic. I have to say, this is a very nice aromatic and is one most aromatic smokers should try and enjoy. Well done Drew Estates.

I've been pretty happy with the Drew Estate blends I've smoked, so far. The current blend, Grand Central, is a little bit of an exception and it involves the odorant applied to this mixture. When I opened the tin I didn't have to guess if it was an aromatic; it was in my face immediately. I was assailed by a very strong odor of citrusy fruit that completely hid the base tobacco aroma. If you crossed a peach with an orange, you would get something akin to the odor of my tin. To make matters worse, it had been applied way too densely and would be a better presentation at half that strength. Otherwise, Grand Central made a handsome and normal looking ribbon cut mixture with a fairly wide range of colors. Smoking it right away was out of the question and I aired out a sample overnight to smoke the next morning. This proved to not be enough time as the initial smoke was dominated by the added aroma all the way into the bottom third. Additional air out time reduced this effect until, finally, you could smoke the base tobacco to your satisfaction. What we have here, minus the alcoholic fruit/citrus aroma, is a quite descent VaBur that smokes straight forward in a satisfying and familiar way. More annoying than awful, the strong odorant just gets in the way of my smoking enjoyment. I used the aired out version in blending and that went well. So, I'm recommending Grand Central as a solid VaBur smoke at three stars, if you can find it under all that overzealously applied odor.

Upon opening the tin, one is greeted with a beautiful aromatic fragrance...not one drenched with casing, but natural high-end tobacco lightly enhanced.

Normally, when I smoke an aromatic, I am that guy that wants the extra flavor, and don’t find a need with lightly flavored tobaccos. Saying that, I found this one extremely pleasant to smoke. Yes, it is not heavily flavored, but the blend of tobacco is so well done...it was a pleasure.

Burns very well...no tongue bite. Room note is pleasant. My wife enjoys it.

Overall, I would recommend this. It makes me want to revisit Davidoffs Danish Mixture which I completely wrote off years ago because lack of casing.