Cornell & Diehl Christmas Blend 2014 (We Three Kings)

Tin note of vanilla, earth, and a mild note of cinnamon toast. Tobacco cut is a mix of tan ribbon, reddish-brown broken flake and black broad cut. Tobacco is somewhat dry, no drying needed. Burns slightly slow with few relights. The strength is mild to medium and nic is mild. Flavoring is mild, with notes of allspice, cinnamon and light vanilla. Taste is mild to medium and mostly consistent, with notes of very woody, very herbal, very floral, earthy, lemon grass, mildly sweet dark fruit, and mildly peppery retro. The 31.25% Red Virginia and 31.25% Bright Virginia are ganging up on the 31.25% Katerini Turkish while the 6.25% Cavendish plays referee. Flavoring is calling the fight. Room note is pleasant, and aftertaste is ok.

The smell does not match the taste but that is ok. It’s one of those VA blends with a hint of casing. Pleasant enough room note but the taste is more like a VA tobacco. It can bite if puffed to hard. Ok but I wouldn’t buy it again as I was hoping for a more “in your face” aromatic rather than a middle-of-the-road VA tobacco blend.

2021 We Three Kings:

Tin note reminds me a lot of Autumn Evening, but on the low fire. Maple, cinnamon, caramel.

Smoking it I mostly get a cinnamon-vanilla flavor. Again, it reminds me a lot to Autumn Evening, but on a lighter level. There's a nice clove spice and creamy maple sweetness.

Ribbon cut, easy to pack and smoke. The flavor does get a bit less sweet and more rough towards the end. While it is generally a mild blend, it also gets stronger towards the end. No tongue bite, moisture level is good out of the tin although I can see some people giving it a slight drying time.

Characteristics: body (flavor), strength, aroma (tin note), complexity, balance.

Mild-medium in body and strength, medium in flavoring. It does feel a bit like too many flavors are mashed together which takes away any uniqueness from the blend. I imagine getting a similar result by blending 10 different aromatic tobaccos by myself (not to take away from the skill that blending actually requires, but you get my point).

This is a nice blend but to be honest, I don't find it exceptional in any way. It is just an ok aromatic. Cornell & Diehl has more to offer in terms of aromatic blends and while I wasn't crazy for Autumn Evening either, that was a much better blend, in my opinion. I probably won't pursue it the next time it shows up.

This review is for the 2021 version. I agree with juanpr's review. The tin note is mostly vanilla, followed by the the VA. I couldn't detect the advertised allspice and cinnamon, the reasons I bought this in the first place. To be sure, I handed the jar, having transferred the tin's contents, to my significant other. Her olfactory powers are immense, and she failed to detect any of the aforementioned spice aromas. The same goes for the taste when I smoked a couple bowls...Vanilla, VA, maybe a touch of sweetness from the cav, and that's it. I found it to be a bit bitey if I wasn't careful. We Three Kings (2021) is an overall disappointment. I found myself wishing that I had bought a tin of The Virginia Cream instead.

EDIT 12/13: Smoked a bowl of this earlier, and decided it wasn't as bad as I thought when I wrote this review. Still no allspice or cinnamon, and maybe I was in the mood for vanilla this time...idk. Anyway I'm adding a star.

Christmas blends are my favorite, I want to try them all, so I go into each Christmas blend with great expectations! This is for the 2021 edition, not the 2014 in title... Opening the tin, what I smelled was some vanilla and spices. The flavor I tasted was very light compared to the tin note, was expecting the flavors to be a bit more noticable. I did not have any tounge-bite with this blend.