McClelland Virginia Woods

I have to revise my review based upon a comparison between this tobacco and Grey Havens, and Deep Hollow.

Upon opening the tin one can see lots of red and medium brown ribbons mixed with a smattering of black ribbons. The smell is red virginia for sure, with a slight hint of the McClelland scent (vinegar), but ever so slight. I like the typical McClelland Va scent, but to each his own. The tobacco in the tin smells woodsy, sweet, earthy, with a hint of tang. There is a sweet scent to the blend that seems to allude to some kind of topping (maybe this is the 'other' tobacco mentioned in the tin description?).

Loads and lights beautifully. Keeps lit with minimal tamping. Moisture content from the tin is fine, though some would think it needs some dry time. I find either way works great.

The smoke is very creamy and sweet. The flavor is definitely red va., with it's tones of bread, natural sweetness, wood, and bits of tang and dark fruit here and there. The first time I smoked it there was a slight chemical taste that has to be some kind of topping. However, upon smoking it a few more times, and in comparison to the other blends listed above, it has greatly, if not completely, dissipated. It's good nevertheless. The smoke is enjoyable, cool, soft, and not in the least spicy or bitey. It reminds me slightly of other Red Va. blends such as Hal-o-the-wynd, but not as deep, a bit sweeter, and less round. The flavor is still rich in it's own right, but maybe a step down from some of the other blends mentioned.

As a comparison from the other Craftsbury blends listed above (Deep Hollow, Grey Havens), I would say this is the most natural of the three. This is a good blend and is quite enjoyable from beginning to end.

I have tried mixing this blend, as another reviewer has mentioned, with other 'dryer' blends, or blends that need a bit of a sweet pick-me-up. This works WONDERS!!! One combination in particular was a dry English blend that is on the verge of being salty. By mixing in a ratio of 1:3 (Virginia Woods:Dry English) I ended up with something that was slightly reminiscent of Frog Morton.

I know it is a matter of personal tastes and here's just my opinion about that blend. When opening the tin you smell only ketchup, vinegar and barbecue sauce... I was a bit confused but curious. The tobaccos is for sure of great quality. Packs well but needs few relights along the way. It really tastes what it smells; a tobacco taste completely overwhelmed by ketchup, vinegar and barbecue sauce. This is definitely not for me. 1 star.

Well, this will be a review of two Virginia Woods! Why you ask, well because I came into a can of this from 1998 and to be fair in reviewing it, i also bought a can of fresh VW. It has to be two because with 13 years of age on it, this blend matures into a sweet mana that will just melt onto your taste buds. Wonderful stuff it is. But in smoking a new tin, it is still a great, non biting, smooth and creamy Va smoke with a touch of the woodsy aroma claimed on the can. So many other reviews of this blend they are calling it an aromatic, but I don't get that at all. What i get is the ketchup/vinegar typical of this brand and maybe, just maybe a sweet topping I can't place, but no more than a lot of other VA tobaccos, with only a few exceptions, all of them are cased.

This tobacco has the MC aroma upon opening the tin, perhaps stronger than a lot of them. The tobacco is a wide ribbon cut in a reddish dark mix and it is somewhat moist. Even my tin of 13 year old is still moist. After letting it dry a few hours set out, I packed it into my pipe which it does easily, and lit it up. It took several tries to get it lit, but once lit it stayed that way only requiring one relight until the bottom of my pipe. It smokes nice and slow and smooth with no bite, and the taste is a sweet dark VA flavor with a pretty nice room note. It burns clean all the way down to a fine grey ash with almost no dottle at the bowls bottom. I find this to be a very pleasant smoke fresh, but aged, it really is fantastic. I am going to buy some more and put it into long term storage in my cellar. I highly recommend this aged, and still recommend it fresh as it's a very nice smoke.

**5/21/2015 - My girlfriend and I had tasted several different Virginia blends to add to C&D's Shandygaff to give it a little more sweetness (she prefers her blends much sweeter) and we settled on McClelland's Virginia Woods. While McClelland's has the best Virginia's on the market (IMHO), they have almost no nicotine, C&D has all the nicotine and great Burleys but their Virginia's are not as rich as MCC. So we tried several variants and settled on 4oz of Shandygaff mixed with 2oz of Virginia Woods. Man the VW elevates Shandy to a whole nother level! We both really love this mix and she has started labeling the Ball jars as "Summer Woods". We wish C&D and MCC would combine forces on a blend or two, C&D Burley with MCC Virginia making a Two Friends type deal. I think it would be a huge hit...**

5/1/2015 - I have been smoking Virginia Woods on and off for over ten years and after the first tin, I have searched high and low for aged tins. I will not purchase a fresh tin of VW. My current tin is dated 2006 so it has 9 years on it and is divine, sugar crystals are abundant and being all Virginia, the blend has mellowed and although lost some of its tanginess, the sweetness has increased tenfold. If this is not your thing place it in a ball jar and forget about it for 3+ years, as complex as an English blend what with the yellow, brown, orange and red leafs all doing their tasty jobs here. Add some 5 Bros or any other strong Burley to get some Nicotine since VW does not have much (if any). What a great name, its all Virginias and its also very "Woodsy", I plan on opening an aged tin every autumn as a pre-Christmas Cheer smoke since it goes amazingly well with falling leaves, fireplaces and cool fall air! 🙂

6/3/2014 - Just finished another 8 year old tin of Virginia Woods. This time most of the tin was mixed with Uhle's Blend #44. The mix of sweet Virginia Woods and Uhle's amazing Burley was simply divine. I highly recommend Virginia Woods as a blender for a personal Half & Half blend!!! One of the best mixtures I have created to date 🙂

Update a decade later. Today is 5/24/2014 and I opened another aged tin I had and it was delightful. This blend really needs 3 or more years to age to really develop. Now the interesting thing is I purchased some McClelland blending Perique and mixed a small pinch with a bowl worth of Virginia Woods, wow what a Virginia Perique blend!! This really shines when mixed with some spice as the Perique makes the sweetness of the Virginia explode! So two stars when new, three with 5 years of age or a pinch of Perique.

Had to change my rating, its 9/1/2004 and i do not have any aged tins left. The new tins are not as great and have much more moisture and along with that more tongue bite. I will smoke it if offered, but most likely will not purchase another.

Opening the tin of this beautifully-named blend, I detect a background note of something like burnt rubber, a note that is present during the actual smoking. I assume this to be some humectant or other, which will evaporate after a while. This review is based on that assumption. If the smell does NOT go away, I will lower the recommendation and throw the tobacco away. Many are the comments that have been made about McClelland's odious use of humectants. I feel it is high time the company did something about it.

I don't know that the other premium tobaccos are: I suspect some cavendish muffler. For a pure Virginia blend this bites very little, and one gets to enjoy the zip of the lemon Bright without the penalties: quite an accomplishment.

Otherwise this is more of the nutty Red grassiness kind of taste than the maple sugar kind of taste: very agreeable and sec, with an occasional, almost-Périque pungency.

If it weren't for the gaminess of the [glycol?] dingitude, this would be an excellent product. Get with it, McC. Leave that stuff for antifreeze, damn it!

I'm really not sure why this is classified as an aromatic. Seems entirely incorrect to me. It's a Virginia blend and as people like GL Pease note, pretty much every pipe tobacco on the market has some kind of topping or another, just not so much as to make it an aromatic proper.

This tastes exactly like what you'd expect it to taste like: a Virginia. It has the citrusy notes that one comes to expect from many Virginias.

There is nothing particularly exotic about this blend, in fact what I'd say of it is that it's what you want if you don't want something quite so Virginia strong as a say a Virginia Flake like F&T CVP or Gawith's FVF, Capstan Blue, etc. It's much milder, but in the same flavour family.

Now as for the description I often read that "it really does taste and smell like the woods" -- I don't know. I think that's overstated and somewhat psycho-somatic based upon the name of the blend. It tastes and smells like a mild Virginia is what it tastes and smells like, and only tastes or smells like the woods insofar as one might be able to stretch the imagination to see any pipe tobacco as falling into that category. (What does a woods taste like anyway? I grew up in and around the woods, and they generally smell damp; the not unpleasant scent of decomposing wood and leaf. Or they smell like pine if another kind of woods).

One thing I found interesting about this blend is that it actually became better as the bowl progressed, gaining its strongest flavour by the end of the bowl. The flavour is primarily that of a mild Virginia, though there is something else to it which is hard to describe. I'm not sure I'd describe it as "woodsy" per se, but it was pleasant.

Overall though, this is not a strong blend. This is for that time when you want something a little more "meat and potatoes" but that still has that citrusy profile that goes with Virginia leaf.

I don't see myself reaching for this alot, and I much prefer something like Frog Morton Cellar to this, but I likely won't give away the tin and it will be interesting to see how it ages.

McClelland can really mix some outstanding blends and this one is no exception. It is called an aromatic but I simply can't believe there is much in the way of flavoring in this blend. They don't say but there has to be a bit of Lat and perhaps some orientals albeit in small amounts. On opening the tin all you really get is the aroma of wonderful sweet and sour Virginias. Light up was easy but burns a bit on the hot side. Flavor at the start is sweet hay, straw and some earthy vinagery tones with a hint of peppery flavor. This continues throughout the smoke with the addition of some smoky flavor on and off through the bowl. Now this blend can certainly bite you if your not careful to sip this blend. Puffers beware! Burns really slow and you get creamy smoke throughout the bowl. Room aroma is smoky hay and not unpleasant at all. This is another outstanding blend. You can also mix about 15% of Scottish Woods with Virginia Woods to get an even more smoky flavor with the sweet hay. It is a really delicious mixture with tons of flavor. This is a very pleasing all day smoke.

A mix of Va and stoved Va with a peculiar, almost lakeland type flavouring. I don't know what these additives are, rose or geranium perhaps, maybe even something like hickory. It is subtle and discreet enough for it not to be an actual aromatic in my book, but potential purchasers should be aware this isn't a straight Va.

Burns well and produces a great deal of soft creamy smoke. I enjoyed it a lot and would personally rate it three stars, but would have reservations giving it an unqualified recommendation because of its additives, which I am sure will not please some people.

The tin says Virginia Woods is "... blended from Matured Red Virginias, Stoved Virginia, wide-cut Lemon Virginia and other premium tobaccos. One of the untimates in Matured Virginia blend smoking" Aside from quibbling as to whether there can be more than one ultimate in Matured Virginia blend smoking - at least in standard English, I like just about everything about this blend. The blend has a sweetness that goes beyond the Virginias, and I detect a hint of some sort of topping - something that smells a bit sweet. I suspect one of he other premium tobaccos is a black cav.

I started smoking it several years ago when I tried it and Deep Hollow at my local tobacconist. Deep Hollow bit my tongue; Virginia Woods does not. I devote 5 large pipes to it - two Canadians and three straight billiards, including the first pipe I purchased back in 1988. I smoke Virginia Woods when I want to savor the smoke, and it's always a welcome change-of-pace. This isn't al all-day smoke unless you're willing to smoke slowly. Like many Virginia blends, this can get a bit hot if you puff too quickly.