Peretti Crown

An excellent light to medium English. My admiration for this blend has grown over the months and I do believe a bit of age has been beneficial. Smooth, flavorful with a compelling spicy note, "Crown" is an excellent all-day choice that makes for a particularly good morning smoke. Truly a relaxing, easy-going English that rewards the smoker with a well balanced, flavorful and undemanding smoking experience.

Crown seemed to ship drastically less humidified than the other dozen or so blends I ordered.

Small, choppy ribbons all of equal size. Some bright, mostly medium brown, and just a few specks of ultra dark brown make up this blend. Packed fairly easy, minimal expansion upon lighting.

The story with Crown is this:

Another middle of the road blend that isn't impressive. Smokes rather airy, with very bright vegetal notes. Lacks depth and complexity, rather tasteless. I've tried this in several pipes, in the morning with coffee and the evening with a scotch or bourbon. If you're a cigarette smoker, you may enjoy this. No tongue bite to speak of, and burns fairly even.

My first review of a tobacco, I’m a pretty novice smoker and haven’t been comfortable offering up my thoughts when most the tobaccos I like are so thoroughly reviewed. This seems to be the exception. I recently found myself at Paretti’s for an afternoon and tried a lot of different blends while there. I purchased small samples of 333 and Omega, but went with a large tin of the crown. One of the other reviewers touched on what I think has resulted in the relatively low overall score, I think it’s being unfairly compared. Much like wine ratings tend to favor tannic oak bombs, crown doesn’t stand up to blends of really high strength. For a first pipe of the day or milder smoke I think it’s a wonderful experience. Maybe it’s my inexperience, but I have to believe there is a light topping here that makes it smoke like a slightly sweet early morning pipe. The Virginias are most prevalent, but the Orientals and Cavendish provide depth and balance. If I’m having a single pipe a day I may not reach for it, but if I’m loading the pipe all day long I’m definitely leaning heavily on the Crown

Based on a 1 oz sample. Just a bit darker than Century, this has the same balance of all components in the bag aroma. This one doesn't specifically list latakia as a component, but it's quite obviously involved. Ribbons were a bit larger than Century.

Lighter in flavor than Century, but seemed to have more latakia. Not as well balanced, but that's not meant as a slight. In this one the components each moved to the forefront at various times. I'd call this a Virginia-forward light English blend, and I kept wishing for a bit more of an overt oriental presence. But that's just my preference talking. If one were comparing this to another early morning blend such as EMP, they might find this one with less body and oriental spice but with more latakia... or probably more noticeable latakia, if not more by recipe. The Cavendish in this one added some sweetness and smoothness but not much. It was perhaps topped with something, as I occasionally got a whisper of a foreign flavoring that was not terribly pleasant. All in all this one is worth a try for fans of lighter English fare, but I was not impressed.

I like to start the smoking day with a nice bowl of an English-latakia blend and this mix fits the bill quite well. This is what I would call a "light latakia" English blend. The Vitamin L in the mix is more subtle than the mid-range English-latakia blends I usually seek out and prefer. Still, it is very enjoyable and the other orientals and cavendish in the mix keep the virginias from being too dominant. A very smooth smoke. I believe the touch of cavendish adds to the smoothness also. A very nice smoke that has grown on me as I worked through the bag. There are other Peretti, and other tobacconists, English-L blends I prefer but this one is worth a try. I think I will revisit it after some time. I did not detect any "aromatic" flavor.

Maybe my tastes are different than the other reviewers here, but I feel they have under-rated this blend. I think it holds its own just fine. For me it was the excellent Oriental coming through, nicely balanced with the Virginia. There seems to be a light topping, and it enhances the blend quite nicely. Could easily be an all day smoke if you prefer your English blends on the lighter side. A good book, a good chair, and a pipeful of Peretti's. Satisfactory!

Not really Peretti's best creation. A little boring and rather run of the mill. There are much better blends such as Tashkent .

The tobacco upon opening is a ribbon cut with darker strands being the predominent, and ocassional lighter ones. The oriental in this blend plays a condiment-role with the virginia being the main character, and the cavendish a secondary backer. As one gets going down the length of the bowl the orientals do make their presence more known to the smoker; as a background note that increases in intensity, but never quite challenges the virginia or cavendish. The blend burns clean and seldom leaves more then a slight dottle at the end. A nice experience.