McClelland Dark Star
(3.21)
Years before tinning, this tobacco begins as bright yellow, sugary top grade Virginia and Carolina leaf. Through careful triple aging, pressing and stoving, it becomes rich, cool and dark. A seductively spicy aroma develops during the extended maturing process to complement the complex flavor of this concentrated, smooth broken flake, which is easily rubbed out to suit any occasion.
Notes: From McClelland: Occasionally we meet someone whose familiarity with a variety of tobaccos, sensitive palate, and desire for "that special tobacco" provide an inspiration for us. In seeking to satisfy a taste other than our own, we pleasantly surprise ourselves with beautiful results. This is what the Personal Reserve Series is all about. We developed this concept early on as a way to enhance our creative spirit. We are proud to offer these fine pipe tobacco blends, and hope you will enjoy them.
Details
| Brand | McClelland |
| Series | Personal Reserve |
| Blended By | McClelland Tobacco Company |
| Manufactured By | McClelland Tobacco Company |
| Blend Type | Straight Virginia |
| Contents | Virginia |
| Flavoring | |
| Cut | Broken Flake |
| Packaging | 50 grams tin, 100 grams tin |
| Country | United States |
| Production | No longer in production |
Profile
Strength
Medium
Extremely Mild -> Overwhelming
Flavoring
None Detected
None Detected -> Extra Strong
Room Note
Pleasant to Tolerable
Unnoticeable -> Overwhelming
Taste
Medium
Extremely Mild (Flat) -> Overwhelming
Average Rating
|
3.21 / 4
|
Reviews
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Displaying 1 - 10 of 14 Reviews
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Dec 17, 2017 | Medium to Strong | Mild to Medium | Medium to Full | Tolerable to Strong |
A pain in the arse blend to keep lit, a definite biter. Good/ sometimes great flavor. Get two torches and a striker and you might get through the tin. As for me I'm not reccomending this. As for me I wouldn't buy it again. As for me mclelland was my favorite blender due to the sheer fact that I didn't know any better. But hey, Rookies make mistakes. Mclelland blends are chemicals. After smoking dunhill, Germains, SG, and many more other quality blenders offerings you just won't be able to bear these blends.
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Nov 08, 2006 | Mild to Medium | Very Mild | Mild to Medium | Pleasant to Tolerable |
This is a rather tasty flake that is a total pain in the butt to keep lit. I've tried rubbing it out (with great difficulty), folding, etc., and it's just too much trouble to bother with. It is the slowest burning tobacco I have ever tried. If you smoke outdoors this might be a good quality, but the last time I smoked it I was puffing on it for 2 days.
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Sep 09, 2004 | Mild to Medium | None Detected | Medium | Tolerable |
A previous reviewer noted that when rubbed out DS resembles little coals. I think it resembles mouse droppings. Regardless, I had to ?fight? this tobacco, i.e., I found it very difficult to light and to keep lit, moist out of the tin or after having let it dry out for one, two and three days, gravity fed or packed. In short, DS has the poorest burning qualities of any tobacco I have smoked. This is certainly a good smoke but what pleasure I found with this tobacco was not worth the effort?..and matches. This tobacco demands your undivided attention. I like to effortlessly enjoy my tobaccos, not fight them.
I rate this tobacco 6.5 out of 10
I rate this tobacco 6.5 out of 10
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| May 29, 2017 | Strong | Medium | Full | Strong |
I found this blend to be impossible to rub out, difficult to pack & keep lit (even after days of drying), and a taste somewhere between a tire fire and an old wharf.
Pipe Used:
clay
Age When Smoked:
66
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| May 08, 2009 | Medium | Very Mild | Medium | Pleasant |
There are very few blends I will not recommend. Why? Well even if it's not to my own taste I ask myself, "Is it a good blend?". Many McClee's VA's are similar in taste, CCheer disappoints, Navy Cav is a fav...but this stuff is super high maintenance, as reviews state, almost impossible to actually smoke. My tin is from 1999...the crystals are minimal! Maybe a blend from 1974 might crystalize! The best you could do with this is mix it with a very bright and dry VA blend. The flavors are nice and dark, musty even...but still not remarkable in any way. I only hope my tin of Blackwoods Flake is better?
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Nov 12, 2008 | Medium | Mild | Mild to Medium | Pleasant to Tolerable |
Too wet........broken flake too hard to pack
to hard to keep lit.
Too much trouble all around. I don't want to have to "prep" my tobacco just so I can sit down and smoke it.
Save your money on this blend.
to hard to keep lit.
Too much trouble all around. I don't want to have to "prep" my tobacco just so I can sit down and smoke it.
Save your money on this blend.
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Jun 10, 2007 | Medium to Strong | None Detected | Full | Pleasant to Tolerable |
My first experiences with this tobacco were dreadful. In addition with the negative criticisms cited above, I found the tobacco lacked flavor. As is my routine, I smoke Virginia's in smaller pipes and did so with DS. This tobacco just does not work well in a small pipe. Packed properly in a good sized bowl provides me with one of my most enjoyable smokes.
The negative criticisms from some of the reviewers of this blend are three: too much moisture, difficulty lighting/keeping lit, and tongue bite.
Regarding moisture, McClelland blends, on the whole, have much more moisture than most. Should the tobacco be dried out? Not IMHO. If you do, you will lose the resins, and change the flavor dramatically.
As for lighting/keeping lit, a good rubbing between the palms, at least for the bottom and top of the bowl, will reduce the problem somewhat but not entirely. Using a few extra matches is a small price to pay for a fine smoke. From time to time, I top off and bottom fill bowl of DS with Esoterica Stonehaven. Doing so assurres a quick light and good clean burning to the bottom of the bowl. Notwithstanding, the experiences of many, this is one tobacco with which I have not experienced bite.
Update: 12/29/05. I compared 18 month aged Dark Star with 18 month aged 2035. While similar, it is my considered opinion that 2035 is a superior blend. It lights better, burns better and tastes more flavorful. While I won't toss out what I have left of Dark Star, I won't be purchasing any more.
Update: 6/10/07 Evaluating Dark star three years after my first review, convinces me even more that 2035 is far superior to Dark Star. Given the superiority of the former, and considering the price difference, I can no longer recommend Dark Star.
The negative criticisms from some of the reviewers of this blend are three: too much moisture, difficulty lighting/keeping lit, and tongue bite.
Regarding moisture, McClelland blends, on the whole, have much more moisture than most. Should the tobacco be dried out? Not IMHO. If you do, you will lose the resins, and change the flavor dramatically.
As for lighting/keeping lit, a good rubbing between the palms, at least for the bottom and top of the bowl, will reduce the problem somewhat but not entirely. Using a few extra matches is a small price to pay for a fine smoke. From time to time, I top off and bottom fill bowl of DS with Esoterica Stonehaven. Doing so assurres a quick light and good clean burning to the bottom of the bowl. Notwithstanding, the experiences of many, this is one tobacco with which I have not experienced bite.
Update: 12/29/05. I compared 18 month aged Dark Star with 18 month aged 2035. While similar, it is my considered opinion that 2035 is a superior blend. It lights better, burns better and tastes more flavorful. While I won't toss out what I have left of Dark Star, I won't be purchasing any more.
Update: 6/10/07 Evaluating Dark star three years after my first review, convinces me even more that 2035 is far superior to Dark Star. Given the superiority of the former, and considering the price difference, I can no longer recommend Dark Star.
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Nov 07, 2004 | Medium | None Detected | Medium | Tolerable |
Mr. Dottle, a couple reviews up above, said it with eloquence. Why bother? For me, Dark Star gets no star.
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Feb 09, 2003 | Medium | None Detected | Medium | Unnoticeable |
This is a very interesting tobacco, and the first of its kind that I've ever seen. In the tin it smells very strongly of vinegar and the black flakes look almost exactly like little slices of beef jerky! They look so much like beef jerky in fact that it's almost hard to stop myself from taking a bite out of one of them.
The flakes are extremely moist and difficult to crumble. They're so hard to crumble up that it almost doesn't seem like they're made of pressed leaves. The tobacco has been pressed and stoved to the point where its almost not recognizable as tobacco anymore. After trying to rub this stuff out for the first time I found myself wondering if this stuff would even burn at all.
Well, it does burn but not that well. My first impression of smoking this stuff was that of smoking vinegar. I tried letting the tobacco dry out a little bit before smoking to see if it would reduce this any but it seems to just be part of the tobacco. It seems like aging has converted almost all of the sugar in this into, well, whatever sugar in tobacco gets converted to. This stuff is almost all spice and no sweetness.
After letting the tobacco dry out for a few days I managed to get rid of enough of the vinegar to make out some sweetness. This unfortunately results in a very dry powdery tobacco that I find annoying to deal with. It still doesn't burn well and no matter how slowly I smoke it I can't get any desirable flavor out of it.
Maybe I've got a bad tin but I just can't understand why anyone thinks this stuff is so good. For a nice dark spicy sweet virginia I would much rather have some Patroit Flake than this overstoved gimmick of a tobacco.
The flakes are extremely moist and difficult to crumble. They're so hard to crumble up that it almost doesn't seem like they're made of pressed leaves. The tobacco has been pressed and stoved to the point where its almost not recognizable as tobacco anymore. After trying to rub this stuff out for the first time I found myself wondering if this stuff would even burn at all.
Well, it does burn but not that well. My first impression of smoking this stuff was that of smoking vinegar. I tried letting the tobacco dry out a little bit before smoking to see if it would reduce this any but it seems to just be part of the tobacco. It seems like aging has converted almost all of the sugar in this into, well, whatever sugar in tobacco gets converted to. This stuff is almost all spice and no sweetness.
After letting the tobacco dry out for a few days I managed to get rid of enough of the vinegar to make out some sweetness. This unfortunately results in a very dry powdery tobacco that I find annoying to deal with. It still doesn't burn well and no matter how slowly I smoke it I can't get any desirable flavor out of it.
Maybe I've got a bad tin but I just can't understand why anyone thinks this stuff is so good. For a nice dark spicy sweet virginia I would much rather have some Patroit Flake than this overstoved gimmick of a tobacco.
| Reviewed By | Date | Rating | Strength | Flavoring | Taste | Room Note |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
| Feb 25, 2001 | Medium | None Detected | Medium | Tolerable |
After the brief trip to the Grey Havens, we're now re-entering the land of tomato sauce. Opening the tin
gives me that immediate eyebrow-raising blast of "Tongue-bite in a Can" and I was tempted not to even try the stuff out of fear, but the
rave reviews of others got the best of me. After many smokes and forcing myself through half a tin, my reactions are mixed - like Grey
Havens, it has a rich and complex flavor that's great by itself but ruined by the smoking experience. Just getting through a bowl of this
tobacco required 110% of my concentration to avoid too-fast puffing, and it wanted to bite like a deranged badger. Weirdly, even on the
nights when I'd go through a bowl smoothly and feel fine, the next morning my tongue felt like I'd been licking a wire brush all night. I've
often wondered if it's simply some component of McClelland tobaccos to which I and many others are allergic, since this seems to be a
polarizing common experience - either folks love and revere the blend or they can't smoke it at all. Sadly I fall into the latter camp despite
enjoying the flavor.
gives me that immediate eyebrow-raising blast of "Tongue-bite in a Can" and I was tempted not to even try the stuff out of fear, but the
rave reviews of others got the best of me. After many smokes and forcing myself through half a tin, my reactions are mixed - like Grey
Havens, it has a rich and complex flavor that's great by itself but ruined by the smoking experience. Just getting through a bowl of this
tobacco required 110% of my concentration to avoid too-fast puffing, and it wanted to bite like a deranged badger. Weirdly, even on the
nights when I'd go through a bowl smoothly and feel fine, the next morning my tongue felt like I'd been licking a wire brush all night. I've
often wondered if it's simply some component of McClelland tobaccos to which I and many others are allergic, since this seems to be a
polarizing common experience - either folks love and revere the blend or they can't smoke it at all. Sadly I fall into the latter camp despite
enjoying the flavor.
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