Cult Blood Red Moon

If you are a pipe smoker in America, the ghost of cherry aromatic tobacco haunts every aspect of the hobby. You cannot escape cherry flavored aromatics. You probably smoked one shortly after you took up smoking a pipe. A cherry aromatic may well have been the first tobacco you ever smoked. I know almost no regular pipe smokers who kept smoking a cherry tobacco after that first encounter, but we've all smoked one at least once.

I cannot say why there is this link in the mind of tobacco companies between pipe tobacco and cherries. It almost never works. Still, though, blenders keep trying. They put out a cherry blend. We all laugh. We smoke one bowl or, at most, one tin. We complain about our pipes being ghosted and our tongues being burned. We say "never again," and then we wait until the next weird cherry blend comes out.

Cult Blood Red Moon decided that it was going to be the ultimate cherry aromatic. It was supposed to be the cherry aromatic that nobody wanted but that, contradictory as it seems, everybody was looking for.

Don't look for tobacco. This doesn't even want to be tobacco. In the tin, Blood Red Moon consists of little shreds of sticky sweetness. It smells as gooey as it feels. Close your eyes and sniff and you won't know if you're smelling bonbons, cough drops, or tobacco, but you will know you're smelling something cherry.

Once you load the pipe it might take three to four lights to finally get it burning. Puff as fast as you like because it will not become hot or harsh. For just a moment, with each puff, you will get a short, sharp blast of synthetic cherry/chocolate that instantly evaporates and leaves you tasting and feeling nothing. The only other thing I have ever tasted that was like unto Blood Red Moon was a red Tootsie Pop. Fake cherry candy shell. Fake chocolate center.

There is what might as well be zero nicotine strength. Any actual tobacco had been cooked and sauced right out of this oh so postmodern, gutless, homogenized aromatic. It's so inoffensive its's almost offensive. I was perversely impressed by how much this didn't taste like tobacco. Whatever tobacco is there has been hidden very, very well. Don't worry, though. It's as forgettable as it is inoffensive. The only thing that might help you remember it after you smoke it is the syrupy smelling ghost that will linger for a week or so in the bowl of every pipe you smoked it in.

Go ahead. Smoke it if you think you want to feel like a kid for a while, but there's a reason you can't go home again.