Mac Baren Virginia No. 1

A mild, sweet, aromatic straight virginia. It is topped with various sugars, PG, rum, licorice, and unknown flavoring as per the German BMEL website: https://service.bmel.de/tabakerzeugnisse/index2.php?detail_id=104932&site_key=153&stichw_suche=Arnold+Andr&zeilenzahl_zaehler=164&NextRow=50

I think it is all bright virginias and they are very good. Flavor is mild and some added sweetness from the casing/topping. You also taste some of the added flavors in the background throughout the bowl. The virginias are a little muddled by the added flavors, but it is still a pleasant, smooth, mild smoke with a touch of spice. Very mild nicotine.

Hay, Grass. I was searching for a no-nonesense, no pretence simple clean tobacco. Far away from the snobby other tobaccos. And this is it. It's like a Fender Stratocaster.

This is a very good Virginia tobacco. It loads well into a pipe. It lights well and burns smoothly. It has the sweet taste of a very good Virginia and is refreshing after smoking heavy Latakia blends.

Every time I smoke this I wonder why I do not try this more often. One of my favorites using the ole corn cob. It has a wonderful aroma and a nice sweet taste that mellows out to a pleasant grassy note. Slightly bites but not really enough to matter. My Nov 2012 lb bag says it was introduced in 1955 vice 1957 as stated in this web's description.

This was one of the first blends i smoked. One of them. I mean, it wasnt my very first bowl of borkhum riff original, and it wasnt one of the myriad aromatic house blends i picked up from the tobacconist when i asked for something "smoother than borkhum riff original" either. It wasnt even frog morton (mind=blown). So, come to think of it, i guess it wasnt one of the very first blends i smoked. What i mean to say is that i smoked this blend in my very early piping days, back before i knew my castellos from my caminettos (or comoys, for that matter). Before i had a pipe or three dedicated to my favorite blends, before i knew you should dedicate pipes to similar genres, or that there were genres of pipe tobacco. So i mean, a while ago. At that time, i thought that this was a cigarette like, hot, bitey catastrophe. Into a mason jar it went. Life went on. I kept smoking my latakia bombs and reading pretentious reviews of nightcap here. Suffice it to say, that if one is lucky, with time and experience comes growth. I learned to smoke so not to scorch myself. I learned that sometimes simple and inexpensive are not synonymous with crap. I learned to follow my interest and tastes where they led me. I tasted Carter Hall! Long story short, i picked up the jar again. So glad i did. I find it now to be fairly cool burning for a mac baren va product. Certainly it could bite if puffed, but i have not been bitten. It is very nearly my favorite straight virginia to date. A mild, hay like plum and spice experience. Perfect moisture content, very easy to stuff and light, very enticing odor in the jar. It is quite sweet, but i feel some of these reviews overstate its sweetness by a good deal. It is not cloyingly so, overall the spice note seems to balance the sweetness nicely. There is a sourish fresh piquancy that i adore, like the dryness in one's mouth from biting into a tart crab apple. Its not an over the top smoke, it is subtle, sweet, pleasant. A year of age makes it a thing of beauty, so much so that i have a pound aging presently. If you appreciate such a classic offering as Orlik Golden Sliced, i cannot imagine you would not be satisfied with this. I will hopefully never be without it.

Oh how we forget the good ole basics. This blend uses some really top quality Virginias in its blend. The tin opening reveals a beautiful palomino color hard cast Virginias. The aroma is that grassy earthy aroma. After a good rubbing the tobacco breaks down very easy. Light up was fine and as you would expect burn is quick and fairly hot as you would expect. Taste is that slightly sweet hay and grassy taste. This is like it was back in the good ole days before all these fancy aromatics and super blends. This is just a good ole basic Virginia blend that must be smoked slowly not to destroy the flavor not to mention a huge bite if you lose control of the smoke. You usually don't need a relight but that's OK 👌🏻 if ya do as it means you smoking nice a easy. The room note is outstanding with a light sweet smoky hay aroma that is very pleasing. This is how it was five decades ago when there were just simple straight forward blends. I truly enjoyed this smoke. Would it be in my rotation? No but it is worth a nice slow smoke from time to time.

A revised recipe or different components are used to make this blend from what I recall. It has been at least 10 years or so since I have smoked this Mac Baren/Sutliff offering. I agree with Pipestud it is topped with something but for me it doesn't diminish the quality of the Virginia's too badly. I give it a thumbs up and I think it's a pretty fair offering though a bit expensive. Yes there are better and more economically priced Va's available but I would smoke this one in a pinch Perhaps a few years down the road if it's still around I'll pick up another tin.

Experienced pipe smokers will recognize that the sizes of a pipe's bowl and packing methods, in their wide variety, deeply affect the smoker's ability to take pleasure from a blend of tobacco.

Most Mac Baren blends, and Virginia no. 1 is certainly no exception, are usually best smoked in medium to large-sized bowls, so as to allow for very loose packing of the blend. I believe that the overall impression that this and other blends from the same manufacturer produce tasteless, hot smoke comes from an inability of finding a suitable way of packing the pipe.

Because Mac Baren produces blends with an unusual diversity of cuts, often the inability to recognize the best packing method immediately condemns the blend for the smoker who is thus incapable of obtaining any gratification. This is a disgust I know first-hand, having wasted several ounces of their tobacco as a result of similarly poor experiences.

Virginia no. 1 has long been presented as a broken flake, perhaps too easily rubbed. The most pleasurable bowls I had with this blend were those where I did little rubbing. Depending on the size/height of the bowl, two to three generous portions off the tin or packet should suffice, with little or no pressure of the finger applied between layers. Perhaps a sprinkling of crumbs from the bottom of the packet on top may make it easier to light the bowl.

The packet version of the blend comes most of the time with the right degree of humidity, requiring little or no control of this factor upon opening it. When packed correctly, the blend offers a modest but pleasurable and sincere range of flavours; between hints of honey and hazelnuts for the first half, to a more grassy tone near the very end.

Very good VA. A touch of sweetness, particularly when sipped, with the spice most noticed on the retrohale. VA/brown notes more pronounced than Royal Yacht, which comes across as consistently sweeter, more full, and stronger. VA No. 1 burns clean and smooth through the bowl. 4-*.