Mac Baren Rum & Maple

I first tried this blend years ago, when I could buy it at local drug store. I remember if you bought the big tin, it would smoke a bit sharp until it dried out a bit, which was a common phenomenon with the OTC blends

I find the taste and aroma to be delightful. It is exquisite with a cup of good coffee. It smokes quite dry as well.

An amazing aside: If you go to the excellent site pipepages.com, you will find that this blend once contained Syrian Latakia! This should give us all an idea of how these old blends may have changed over the years!

One of my favourites! When you open the package you get a sweet smelling tobacco. I and smell the rum and maybe a little bit of peach... Smooth smoke, it does not scratch your throat at all. No tongue bite either. I enjoyed this with a glass of sherry and was very impressed. This was perhaps one of the first tobaccos I tried, once again recommended by my local tobacconist.Easy to light and doesn't go out when you don't want it to and there is no bad aftertaste either!

This tobacco can be enjoyed every day or kept for Sunday afternoons (special occasions). I think this is a good edition to anyone's humidor!

Side Note : I have also mixed this tobacco with Jock (popular South African brand) and it is a wonderful mix!

Leaf: Ribbon cut, dark gold and brown, much more Burley than Va, moist in the tin and definitely wanting drying time. 10 seconds in the microwave wrapped in a paper towel dried a bowl out for me just fine. Smelled amazing when heated up too.

Tin Aroma: This was great, not really rum like...or maple like either. It did smell like a fruit cake or some sort of sweet Christmas pudding or similar, maybe a little maple which gave it the sweetness, but no rum that I could detect. The tobacco itself is nice and it definitely smells like quality leaf, I don’t typically smoke Aros so the topping aroma may seem more powerful to me than it actually is. It smelled like I could eat it out of the tin as a dessert, I may still try this in an effort to see if there is any actual flavor in there.

Taste: Sadly not a lot to say here, very little if any of the aroma comes over with the taste, the tobacco itself is fresh and has no nasty tastes or unexpected difference to the usual Codger blends with Bu or Va, The burley is nutty and bready, the Va’s are noticeable and fresh and grassy, but nothing shines here, it is a little sweet presumably from the maple topping, no rum that I could find. I cannot say there is anything wrong with this blend, there just isn’t anything particularly good about it. If it was flavored more strongly it could be great.

Smokability: Mine has been in the tin since Xmas day and is still wet despite being opened constantly for me to take bowls out, definitely benefits from some drying time. Not very nice when smoked wet, so avoid it as usual. When it’s dry it packs easy, lights easy, stays lit, and surprisingly doesn’t bite at all if you smoke sensibly. Very easy to smoke and a fine all day blend if you don’t want to get mentally invested in your smoke.

Summary: Nothing to write home about but nothing to complain about either. This blend is as middle of the road as it comes, which is a shame, if it was flavored more it would be great, if the tobacco taste was more pronounced, it would be great. As it is, both are pretty unremarkable. The room note and tin note are great though, no denying that. Easy all day smoke for mindless bowls while you plod around doing things or just need a quick smoke, short of that I can’t see a reason to smoke it. I’m not an aro smoker but I don’t think there is enough flavor here to appeal to you if you are, and there isn’t enough of anything else going for it to recommend it to anyone else. I am sure the number of bulk “Rum and Maples” out there from any number of companies would be as good as or better than this if you were inclined to have some.

I will happily finish this tin as the kind of OTC you use when you are in a jam, but look forward to getting back to better tobaccos.

WOULD RATE 1.5 STARS IF POSSIBLE

i like this tobacco but it was much to mild and did not have enough flavor. i did not get a hint of maple but it tasted nice enough and didn't bite so overall its very mediocre.

Despite being discontinued in the US, this blend is still available in a number of countries.

I was pleasantly surprised after buying a pouch on a whim. I tried this tobacco a long time ago in my first weeks of pipe smoking and found it extremely bitey, irrespective of how slowly I smoked. I also found it too lacking in sweetness. Today, as a somewhat more experienced piper, the bite has turned into a pleasant, tangy mouthfeel and the lack of sweetness has turned into a positive.

The smell in the pouch is of burley, raisins, oranges, sherry and earth. Despite its name, this is not a rum cased tobacco. Once lit, the taste is of tobacco mixed with a non-sweet, almost spicy or incensy maple. This is a very unique taste.

The room note is old fashioned and manly. The tobacco aroma mixes well with the spicy maple; the tobacco aroma doesn't disappear as with, for example, Dan's Blue Note or Peterson's Sunset Breeze. A lot of non-smokers like it despite the fact that Rum & Maple is not ashamed of being a tobacco.

A little tidbit: Rum & Maple is the trademark tobacco of Thabo Mbeki, former president of South Africa.

I got excited about trying this.I bought a can smoked the can, bought another. Slowed down long enough for the second purchase to actually notice that I didn't like the finish and the after taste

As I begin to graduate out of the Aromatics, sometimes I just need to take a step back to simpler times of the pipe when I was still just a newbie at the whole game. This reminds me of my first smoke, and I'm pretty sure it was.

The flavor begins with only hints of sweetness at the very beginning of the bowl, and as time goes on the casing burns off and the flavor becomes a nutty-dry flavor that while pleasant, is not what I'm looking for in a pipe any more. It didn't bite, but it didn't really appeal to me either.

*** Lane Limited ceased production of this blend, along with various others, in July 2008. Whatever you see left in stock is all there is. ***

Original Review: This blend packs and lights like most drug store tobaccos. It is sweet and the rum flavoring is very evident. It smokes "ok" but packs some horrid tongue bite. It may be suitable as a mixing component, but on it's own the sweetness of the flavoring used and resulting tongue bite is far too intense for me.

There is a reason that a tin still sits on the shelf at my local smoke shop even though it was discontinued several months ago.

Update:

I bought a tin of this that sat on the tobacco shop shelf for a long time hoping that it would serve well as a blending agent, knowing that smoking it by itself is a hot, bitey mess. In the end, I found this blend's true purpose. Mixing it with on to two parts Prince Albert provides a bite free and flavorful smoke that is very enjoyable. I suspect that any ribbon or rough cut burley may provide the same results, although I only tried it with PA. Upgraded to three stars for it's blending attributes.

Well Ive always loved this brand and im sad to here it has been discontinued. I find it packs very well in the pipe and stays lit all the way to the bottom. To me this mixture blends well with almost anything and is great by itself(it says something similar on the can)In my opinion you have to be a drugstore aficianado to apprecaite this blend. I always have some on hand amd find my self craving it a couple times a week.