Robert McConnell Original Oriental

This is the tobacco I have been waiting for all my life. Imagine, you walk in Mazedonia on a warm summer day in pure nature. You smell dry grass with flowers such as thyme, on your side you see huge bushes of rosemary and soon you smell wild honey, coming from some old and hollow trees in which bees are living. As you go on, you smell nuts and discover a farmer who is extracting nut oil from his nut trees. Then you get aware of all these odors at the same time: hay with flowers, rosemary and thyme, wild honey and nuts. A non smoking person, when reading these words, will say to us: why you smoke instead of going out to smell these odors in nature? We do both, go out into nature and smoke. This is a mystery of pipe smoking: the happiness it brings to us. This tobacco really is unique. All the different tobaccos inside only have one goal: to support and to complete the flavor of the orientals to the maximum possible. And please note: all this is pure tobacco, nothing added. The only tastes missing are horse stable, leather and soil, and this is the right thing for this tobacco, because it is a mixture of the sunlight. If you wish to complete your collection of Balkan /Oriental mixtures by one with much leather and soil, then you try Magnum Opus; these two cover both ends of the range of Balkan mixtures at the highest level. In the middle of this range you will find Comoy's English and Smyrna, also excellent blends.

Tin note is faintly smokey from the Latakia, hay and fig, sourness and barnyard. First half of bowl is sour and sweet with the latakia in the background. Kind of difficult for me to discern the different tobaccos. They just kind of meld together into a sweet sour mix. I may have needed more drying time due to the slight goopy condition of the cavendish. 2nd half of bowl much better. Orientals are leading the way with Virginias a close 2nd. Latakia is only slightly there kind of rounding it out and the cavendish just adding some slight sweetness. I think the key is a loose , gentle packing of the pipe and slightly drying. Over all impression is a good smoke.

The tin description mentions Orientals, Virginia, Syrian Latakia and Perique as well as dark Cavandish. I bought this tin only resently. And I suspect that Kohlase sadly again changed yet another recipe of a Robert McConnell blend.

While smoking, the Orientals are indeed a major player in the orchestra. A sweet start gives then room for a Ping Pong game between olivy-oily and oleoresinous aromas, sometimes with a hint of saltyness. A subtle and nice background of the Virginias are permanetly part of the music. The Latakia (which is definetely NOT Syrian) is only barely noticible. I could not detect any Perique. The dark Cavendish is a normal (English) Black Cavendish (I would say, it is Rattray's Black Virgina) which adds some fruity sweetness.

Overall this blend is round, good and enjoyable, surely something that one can recommment. But in comparison to e.g. the Dunhill Durbar, this one is merely a mid range tobacco, which is of course reflected in the much lower price.

Considering the price and the lack of Durbar, I think this one still will be a sporadic recurring guest in my cellar.

I've been looking forward to taste this mixture after reading good comments about it and..well.. Tin note is very nice and promising,tobacco is good to be smoked out of the tin but I give it a 10 min dry before filling the bowl. Lighting is easy and it doesn't need many relights,tobacco burns in to a fine ash. Smoke is cool and it doesn't bite you.Taste is semi-full yet satisfying enough. The mix is quite good but I would appreciate a bit more latakia,but I take it for what it is,a mild oriental. Recommended as a everyday smoke or when you don't feel a need for full english.

McConnell’s Oriental is a highly complex, Oriental-forward blend that offers a unique experience every time you smoke. This is the real deal when it comes to Oriental blends. With 5 different tobaccos, all the components are very well-balanced, with the Orientals being the most notable and prominent. The spicy Perique, followed by the Latakia play a well-crafted supporting role. It can easily be an all-day smoke, the room note kind of smells up your room, and has a medium to low nicotine content.

Ashton’s Artisanal Blend can only dream of being this good and is more of a 2nd rate blend when compared to McConnell’s Oriental. Now don’t get me wrong: Ashton has some excellent, premium tobaccos blended into Artisanal Blend. However, McConnell’s blending is far superior: artfully utilizing all the components, allowing the smoker to slowly discover the distinct taste of all five different tobaccos in the blend. Aston attempted something similar, but resulted in a bland, tasteless, uninspired murky mess of blend. Smoke these two blends side by side and tell me I am wrong. The difference is night and day.

If you are a fan of Oriental blends, this is easily a 4-star tobacco. However, I am not really an Oriental-forward kind of guy and I am just trying to ‘broaden my horizons’ instead of smoking English and VaPers all day. It is still a nice blend, I just personally needed more of a Latakia presence; felt a bit lacking in the Latakia department and wasn't as fulfilling as other blends.

The tin note of this short, fine ribbon cut is dominated by the smoky scent of its Latakia, which is accompanied by a sublime sweetness.

Because of the relatively short tobacco fibers it's important not to pack your pipe too tightly. Getting it burning evenly is easy: a single charring and true light will usually do.

The strong taste is clearly that of an English blend dominated by Latakia with a subjacent sweetness, which comes from the Virginias, that also add a slight tangy aftertaste, and Black Cavendish. For the minor role the Orientals are playing, I wouldn't truely call this a Balkan mixture. Because of the cut this tobacco tends to burn rather hotly and fast and therefore needs to be smoked with care, which is why I would not recommend Original Oriental to newbies. At the end there's some powdery grey ash.

The room note is fumy.

This is my kind of oriental mixture. It has just enough latakia and plenty of other Balkan tobaccos to add spice and zing to an otherwise mild smoke. I need to be sure to smoke this tobacco in a a dedicated pipe or a pipe which has been used for similar blends such as Campanile or Provost Mixture. Even a pipe used for Old Gowrie will leave enough of its spirit in the bowl to mask the subtle flavors of this blend. For me this tobacco has no bite nor harshness, and delivers plenty of flavor on the palate and zing in the nose. I describe the taste as full not in sense of a highly cased or English scented tobacco but in the sense of fully delivering the varied flavors of the oriental leaf. Highly recommended. Paddy.

Tin note Latakia muskiness greats you first with some lite sweetness and sour. a bit moist when first opened but settles out after a bit of drying time or jarred time. The first thing I notice on initial light is the Latakia's muskiness this is enhanced with the Orientals and the Turkish. It has a very lite touch of sweetness. Smokes better in a Mer. No detectable toppings. No bite even when puffed hard, but if puffed hard it can be a bit harsh. The flavors are much better with a lite cadence. Nic hit is medium . Burns clean. Smoking outside is recommended as the room note is quite musky. Not an all day smoke but a welcome change of pace.

December 22nd, 2020

The cut of this tobacco is a slightly rough ribbon cut. There were some standard ribbons mixed in with a bulk of shorter ribbons. The tobacco is slightly damp, but nothing that couldn’t be smoked out of the tin. I dried mine for about half an hour and it was perfect. In the blend you'll find a lot of black latakia and chestnut Orientals with a few brighter leaves throughout. It’s interesting seeing so much black though since the latakia takes a back seat overall in the blend.

The tin note is a sweet, smoky barbeque. It reminds me of bbq sauce dippers you’d get from a fast food restaurant. Makes me want chicken nuggets! The tobacco took to a light very well. One charring light, and it kept a light very well. The smoke was cool to warm, and I didn’t feel any tongue bite throughout, even during relights. I didn’t try to rip on it to see if I could get it to bite, but I’d imagine it’d take quite a bit to try to get it to nip at you.

The initial light gave me equal parts soapy, leathery latakia and toffee flavors from the Orientals. It reminds me a lot of a Balkan blend, which left me with question marks considering it’s supposed to be an oriental blend. In the first third, the latakia quickly takes a back seat, and my question marks are taken away. The latakia is a nice smoky support to the sweet toffee flavors I get from Orientals. The taste danced between the toffee flavors, and toasted bread. Sometimes the toffee would lead, sometimes the bread would lead. In the second third of the bowl, things started to settle in. There was a lingering sweet, toasty flavor that stayed consistent. Nothing super complex, just a very pleasant ride. The last third of the bowl saw the sweet toasty flavors staying consistent, but I noticed a slightly floral flavor sneak in from time to time when I would take a puff. I found the bottom of the bowl about 60 minutes in. The flavors kept the consistent sweet toast, but instead of floral, I was finding very subtle semisweet chocolate in some of the puffs. The last part of the bowl definitely left me pleasantly surprised with those flavors sneaking in after such a consistent middle of the bowl. As I’m writing this review, the smoke has left a smoky aftertaste that is accompanied by a sweet floral flavor akin to Violet candy.

I gave this a mild strength. I might go mild to slightly medium, but I didn’t really feel much of any nic hit, and it was on an empty stomach

The flavor profile is a nice medium. Nothing super overpowering, but it had some nuances in it that left me smiling at the surprises I’d find along the way. There wasn’t any topping that I detected, just a consistently smoky sweet that gave way to toffees and bread for the most part. The nuances are small enough that I’d be interested to see if someone caught the same things as I did.

I smoke outside, so the room note is difficult to really comment on, but when I put my mask on after smoking, it smelled like lightly toasted bread in contrast to the darker toast I was getting in the flavor notes.

At the time of this review, this tobacco is just over a month old, and has been stored in a canning jar.

This is a prevalently stocked blend, so you shouldn’t have trouble finding it online, and if your local BnM carries McConnell blends, you’re likely to find this one amongst them.

I gave it a 3.5 of 4. I’ll definitely be putting a tin in the cellar and seeing how it develops after a few years