Rattray Marlin Flake

I love this tobacco. Its my favorite of Rattray's blends, with Old Gowrie tied with Hal o the Wynd for 2nd place. OG might have a tiny edge. Im partial to the unsweetened (see update below) cavendish taste (and in a sense this is not unlike McClellands Navy Cavendish)...except this has Perique. Not a huge amount of perique, but enough. Its a more earthy perique, a bit like gawith uses in st james flake. Its a subtle taste and its best to smoke it slow. Comes in long ribbons of flake (a bit like Reiners long golden flake). But in the reiner (and dan tobaccos Tordenskjold Virginia Slices) the perique is brighter and a bit spicy. This is earthier and a bit more pungent. But this is predominated by cavendish taste.....making it different from a lot of Vapers. I love that taste so I give it 4 stars. Some prefer a pure vaper with just virginia....straight up. I like that, too. But my personal taste runs to this. The nic hit here is between mild and medium. Closer to medium. Not quite as strong as hal of the wynd. It smokes very slow....good to rub it out a bit. Consistently cool. Rattray is still a fine maker of pipe tobacco.

update: reading a lot of reviews here that suggest this is heavily cased or that the cavendish is sweetened etc. Im pretty sure there is a mild casing...much like there is for Solani silver flake or astley's 144....or a few others (most all of K&K have some casing). But its a comparatively light casing. Gawith tobaccos....sam's flake for instance....has a tonquin casing. Its mild, but it is present. And this leads to a big debate worth having I think. How many totally uncased tobacco blends are there? Precious few. Honestly, very very very few. So the question is, should things like Gawith Hoggarth's Cut Bosun Plug for example be considered an aromatic? Technically yes. But then youd have to be clear that such aromatics bear no resemblance to Capt Black or Amphora or other drug store blends. Now i admit that the flavoring in St Brunos flake ...as another example, is too much for me. Its not too much in Marlin Flake. In fact its barely noticable to me. But i know its there. Reinders Long Golden Flake has an orange flavoring. It does bother me a bit after a while. It that an aromatic? Few people would say it is. So i dont know. I do know and admit that rattray's old Perth blends were different and as far as I can remember not cased at all. So K&K have altered the recipe a bit. It remains however, for me anyway, a very fine tasting tobacco blend and one in which the pure tobacco taste predominates.

With McClelland gone, I was a little neurotic to find other Virginia's I'd be able to smoke so as to keep my 40th anniversary and red cake stashes around a bit longer.

Boy, am I glad I found Rattray's Marlin Flake. I didn't think I'd ever find something better than McClelland, but this one really does it for me. It's spicy full Virginia dark flake that is a little more smoothed out and consistent than even my favorite 40th Anniversary. It has a subtle sweet nuance to it probably from whatever minimal Cavendish is applied. Neither the perique nor the cavendish do anything but completely enhance a very Virginia forward taste in the vein of 40th though. It's deep and something I quickly stashed up on. Now, I can just smoke my 40th anniversary on special occasions and I really won't miss it too much when its gone, knowing I have plenty of this in my cellar and still available for purchase from Rattray!

As one of Rattray's 'Big 3' Marlin Flake is a fine tobacco blend. The tin note is earthy and rich, with just a hint of tangy perigue hiding in the background, almost daring you to light a bowl.

The flakes are very well presented, soft and easy to rub out, or folded and stuffed. I find it behaves rather nicely rubbed out and let dry for about 20-30 minutes.

The virginias are rich and creamy, yummy bready notes with grassy highlights sneaking in. The perique shows up mid-bowl, and really brings it all together with some excellent spicey goodness. The cavendish provides a nice cushy bed for everything else to roll around on.

This blend clearly has a casing, I get brown sugar/licorice undertones, but this never gets in the way.

Highly recommended!

Tangy plum sweetness is brought about by the interplay of the red virginias and perique. One can also detect a bit of earth and bread as mentioned in Jim's expert review. The telltale brown sugar sweetness of the cavendish smooths out this extraordinary blend. This flake comes quite moist, so a little drying time will be necessary. Won't bite and burns clean all the way down to a fine speckled gray ash with no relights. This is the embodiment of a fine pipe tobacco. You'll definitely want to cellar this one, gents.

My 50g tin consisted of just two large flakes folded and squashed together. The tin note had just the faintest hint of pepper and smokeness hiding behind a dominant raisin smell, lovely. For me it needs some dry time or it turns into a damp sticky mess in the bowl.

When dried it lights easily after a charring light and burns slowly. Whilst it doesn't bite it needs sipping to get the most of the flavour, alot of which can be found on the snork. The tin note comes through into the smoking perfectly, it has a deep stewed fruit / plummy / raisinish sweet taste.

Damn this stuff is delicious. It's pricey but worth every penny. It's a full and delicious Virginia flake that I only smoke when I can sit and savor it with absolutely no distractions. Like all Virginias it has a delicious tangy/grassy sweetness. But unlike some whose sweetness is that of honey or crisp fruit, this one is a rich dark molasses sweetness. Absolutely mouth watering if you ask me.

It is for the Virginia lover who knows how to treat the tobacco properly. Don't try and smoke it too quickly or it will slap you back for trying to move in on her too fast. Take your time and you will be richly rewarded.

It's easily in my top 5 and I smoke it almost every day.

An excellent smoke! I recently asked for a recommendation for a VaPer fan from my tobacconist and that's what I got; now I doubt it's ever gonna leave my rotation! I've been smoking it straight from the tin (yes, I'm quite impatient, I know) but I'm sure it's gonna age well so I'm also cellaring a lot of it.

The tin note is incredibly sweet and fruity. The fermented sugars give a strong impression of dried figs, much like Solani's virginia flake (633), but I think that Marlin flake is somewhat more strongly fermented. I also got hints of dried plum, yum!

The flakes are quite thin and long, and somewhat darker than Solani's. Quite easy to take apart, and are rather on the moist side. Personally I often pack my pipe and let it rest for half to one hour before lighting it up, so the moisture didn't end up causing me any trouble at all.

About the smoke itself, I'd say it's the sweetest smoke I've ever had. More importantly, the sweet taste stays even throughout the entire smoke. In addition to the sweetness, I get also hints of citrus, and a touch of bread. Needs very few relights, and burns quite consistently throughout the entire smoke. Haven't had any tongue bite so far, even though I often get off cadence.

I'm usually not good at identifying toppings (unless they are very present, like vanilla or cherry), but I have the impression that this tobacco is somewhat cased; the sweetness that comes with it goes beyond what I get from any other straight Virginia/Perique blend I've tried. Could be sugar cane or licorice, I can't say for sure.

Rattray- Marlin Flake

Upon opening this blend I was met with a a beatiful figgy plum smell, with some grassy/hay scents, presentation for this blend is beautiful flakes are stack and cut perfect rectangular gum strip density. I let this dry for a good 30 minutes prior to smoking and broke two flakes apart and loaded them into my Rossi 320.

This was a fantastic Sunday afternoon smoke, the spicy sweet Perique and hay of the darkened Virginia’s far surpassed anything I’ve enjoyed to this point, I can honestly say that I understand why Rattray blends are held in high regards as this blend knocks the va/per definition to another level.

The cavendish is there, and I’m not sure if it’s there for body or if it may have some topping, regardless it doesn’t, hinder anything. This is a blend Va/per lovers should rejoice in and attempt to get ahold of down the road.

Added to the rotation and cellar for down the road.

Six months ago I added pipe smoking to my daily habit of smoking one small sized Cuban cigar. I still consider myself a beginner. This is my second review. After reading lots of reviews, viewing lots of Youtube instructions and a lot of trial and error, I now deal with this tobacco without worrying too much about the sophistications of the fine pipe smoking culture. It comes as a sort of flat wet bobbin of long filaments. Having it opened one or two months ago, maybe the bobbin has dried out a little on the outside. Well, I pick up some of the outer filaments, rub them a bit, break the long fibers in smaller pieces and pack them tightly in the tiny bowl of a light 20-cm-no-filter-briar-pipe. Maybe lighting takes me more time than a connaisseur would need. Maybe I’ve to relight or tamp it several times. Maybe I puff it too fast; when the bowl gets too hot, I grab the pipe by the stem. However, it doesn’t punish me for the untender treatment. It’s 15 - 20 minutes of splendid tobacco taste and smell (obviously pure tobacco).