Peretti Black Virginia

Imagine you are used to coffee that is from slightly above average beans, but exquisitely prepared with beautiful cream, and exactly the right amount of sugar and nutmeg. That is like the Newminster No. 47 and Peter Stokkebye 47 that are my previous mainstay and go-to for cavendish. By comparison, this custom-blend is like having a latte that is expertly made AND brewed from exquisitely mellow and flavorful beans, but comes served with barely enough sugar to notice. It is beautiful, but a change of pace from your typical flavored aromatic. I didn't set it out to dry, I wanted to test it straight away as is. It was slightly more damp than my usual cavendish, but all the same, the somewhat rough cut charred absolutely beautifully. It needs relights more often than the ribbon cavendish I have, (but they don't need any relight). It burned cool. The ash burns finely and beautifully, so when you do have to relight, take some time to spoon out a bit of the ash, let the bowl go cold, and the flavor will thank you.

The smoke is velvety thick and beautiful, especially on first light. The flavor is best in somewhat longer than normal draws, and a good robust char will give you the real flavor here. The casing I could only taste in the first few moments. The room note, however is SO astoundingly lovely. I couldn't imagine anyone complaining about it indoors. You detect the vanilla there, and it is astoundingly good.

The only thing preventing me from giving this a TOTALLY glowing review is that I wish the flavoring were cased a bit more heavily. You can't really taste it, (though I am using a 9mm charcoal filter) even though the pouch note vanilla is actually more pronounced than the sweet smell on the two blends I mentioned above.

Keeping on the coffee analogy, this is not an espresso. If you want some strong kick and flavor, go for a dunhill. This has barely any noticeable nicotine early on in the bowl, which I actually really like about it. The bottom of the bowl as usual packs a tighter punch if you are into that.

The subtle flavor of the leaf is astounding. The cavendish blends I mentioned above about halfway through go slightly acrid and get a sharp almost chemical "cheap cigar" taste, and it is not at all as bad as I'm making it sound, but the shift happens. -- With this one, you get a very mellow "good cigar" taste as the bowl develops, and it never goes sharp on you. There is no bite. There is not even the ghost of bite.

Your mileage may vary if you order it, but this is VERY highly recommended. I got it out of the store tin, and it may well have some of that lovely subtle flavor from aging in there for a while. Who's to say?

The layers of flavor in this are really beautiful. If it had a bit of a sweeter flavoring, I'd call this absolutely perfect. As it stands, I'm going to stock up on it anyway.

Update: I raised this to full stars after trying a few bowls. I don't know if my palette adjusted, or if I got a better pinch of the tobacco after it being sealed in my glass jar for about a week, but the casing flavor was more noticeable, and subtle and perfect. It fact that wonderful room note was so good that on my first evening in my new home here in Italy, I had a pipe of it at a cafe. The owner came by and asked if my meal was ok then he remarked that he really enjoyed the smell of the pipe! He was of course being welcoming to a new foreign customer, but his comment was genuine. This is my new favorite blend. All around, it delivers in the ways I want, so glad I found it.