Robert McConnell Scottish Blend

While the older format allowed the reviewer several degrees of recommendation, the newer format only allows one to say that I smoke this regularly, or occasionally, etc. But since I just tried it for the first time, old-familiarity terms do not really apply. I liked it. I recommend it. I cannot predict whether I will smoke it regularly, or occasionally, or seldom.

I am not sure what makes this "Scottish". When I think Scottish, I think Scottish cake, i.e., broken, instead of fully-rubbed, flake. I get the impression that modern Continental blenders use the term for a mild English blend, often with Cavendish-processed leaf.

That is precisely what this is. The smell in the tin is absolutely scrumptious, rich, mildly yeasty, a Latakia-blend smell. Truly mouth-watering.

Taste-wise, think a lighter My Mixture 965. The Latakia is applied with the most expert light hand; the orientals give a silkiness that caresses the tongue, and the virginia/cavendish base makes the whole thing as round and savoury as nutmeggy, cinnamonny bread pudding. Very good.

I smoked it in a Stanwell poker and then a Larsen prince. It burned cool, dry and tasty every time.

This review pertains to the 2022 version, and not the previous incarnations, which were different. The bright Virginias produce plenty of tart and tangy citrus, grass, bread, sugar, floralness, some vegetation, sour lemon, light spice, honey, and a touch of acidity as a team player. The spicy, woody, earthy, floral, herbal, vegetative, mildly creamy sweet and sour Orientals lead more often than not. The Cyprian Latakia offers some smoke, earth, wood, floralness, musty sweetness, and a little spice. It’s in the third slot most of the time. The spicy perique produces moderately sweet plums, figs, earth and wood. Overall, it’s a notch or so below the Latakia, but here and there equals it in effect. The sugary, toasty, mildly spicy fire cured black cavendish plays back up below its percentage in the mix. The strength and nic-hit are a couple of steps past the medium threshold. The taste is a rung past that mark. Mildly moist, it burns cool and clean at a reasonable rate with a deeply rich, very inconsistent sweet and spicy, floral, smoky, savory flavor that extends to the pleasantly lingering after taste. The room note is a little more potent. Leaves little dampness in the bowl, and requires a couple more than an average number of relights. Can be an all day smoke for the veteran piper, and repeatable for the rest. Three stars for the taste rounded down to two due to the constant changeability of flavors.

-JimInks

I bought my tin in 2018, and it has been aged 4 years now in a jar. Well, perhaps time for a review. I was led to this one because someone said it was similar to Old Gowrie which I enjoyed at the time. So I bought a tin, but did not care much for it so I put it away. This is a perculiar blend. Ok, I will try to break it down, what it tastes like IMO.

Taste: Sweeeeet and stout, that is what you get in this blend. Perhaps sweet from cavendish used. But it is not at all sweet in a natural way, more like sickly sweet and I would say the sweet profile that I get tastes a bit like apple (some topping I believe). But the sweetness is then also integrated with the perique which gives it a kind of dark prune note together with spice. What stands out for me is this strange combination of too sweet and too much perique. But then add kentucky into the mix, and you also get a very robust taste. Virginia and orientals I don't taste so much, they are minor players, even if I do get some natural sweetness from virginias too i the background, and some woody notes and sour that probably are a hint of latakia and orientals. Latakia is almost hard to detect IMO. Sure, the sweet profile in this blend can be enjoyable, but as you smoke it just builds up a bit too much. Imagine you have some kind of sickly sweet sirup-apple taste and then you pour over peppar on it. Then add the very full and robust character of kentucky and some sour woody note. What a weird combo, no? The second half of the bowl kind of mellows out a bit, and the taste caramelizes into something slightly better that I can appreciate more, mostly because the perique turns into something less peppary and more mellow-sweet. This is when SB presents itself as its finest, IMO. At times it almost wins me over. But just almost, because I still feel that the taste builts up in a slighty overwhelming way. Even when it mellows out and performs at its best in the pipe, it still is kind of too sickly sweet for me. But maybe if you had a sturdy meal and you feel like a dessert-like tobacco, this could do the trick.

It burns well, not too hot, produces a creamy smoke, but you do not want to smoke it too fast. I get the impression that if packed tighter the perique tends to dominate even more. Personally, I wished they had skipped the perique all together, I think it would have made it better (the kentucky is already strong enough). It is a very stout smoke, but dessert sweet at the same time. I can kind of see how aging has brought forth the sweetness of the perique, integrating it with the other tobaccos used. And sure, it is stout yet still very mellow, I can give it that. But still too weird for me.

Musty. That is the recurring theme I get, from first light to the end of the bowl. Earthy, modestly dark, a bit smoky and intermingled with occasional notes of spice and pepper. Musty.

But in the right setting, like New England autumn and winter, this is a most agreeable blend. It does not demand much attention, is not very strong, but is a fine accompaniment for contemplation on crisp, grey days alongside a cup of coffee. It provides enough slight variations and body to satisfy and stay interesting in the background of one's thoughts. It required little to no drying, burns at an easy pace and leaves a fine ash.

That said, I can see where Latakia fans will be potentially underwhelmed, as will those looking for bolder spice or intensity of flavor. Indeed, the mustiness I enjoy may come across to some as flatness.

For me, this blend works much, much better in a tall pipe than a low, wide one. The former seems to lend more concentration of flavor, whereas the latter dissipates most of the nuances.

UPDATE: I keep being drawn to this, and enjoying it, so I am upgrading from Recommended to Highly Recommended. Also, I notice that one of nice things about this blend is that unlike many Latakia blends, this one leaves a toasty nutty spice flavor on my tongue, rather than a heavy Latakia coating.

Typical tan-to-black ribbons with some choppier cut. Smell of hay and latakia in the tin nose, with some pleasant if not terribly rich oriental presence. I have no idea how old this tin was but the tobacco was not only still moist but the paper cover had discolored greatly from moisture. I found this one was better with just a bit of extra drying. Too moist and it tasted steamy and bland, too dry and it produced richer flavor but it burned too hot.

This is not my idea of a traditional Scottish mixture, as it contained Kentucky. Burley or its kin is just not part of what I view Scottish as, which is simply Virginia, orientals, a smidge of latakia and perhaps some unflavored Cavendish. Consequently, I found this one too robust and not sweet enough, as the Cavendish did not make up for the lack of character in the Virginias. Without viewing this as an actual Scottish blend, it still suffered from a lack of real development and a resistance of the various tobaccos to meld. The latakia was light, which was good, but the Virginias didn't play the lead role. The orientals were more dominant in the tin and room aromas but didn't shine in the taste. The Kentucky was probably the lead flavor but it too was subdued by the "too balanced" leanings of this blend. And I could swear that at times I tasted perique, and wondered what perique was doing in a Scottish blend. Some of the old Rattray Virginia recipes added perique once they got to K&K to better replicate the Virginias of old, so perhaps they did so here. Snorking did not elevate its presence so I may be incorrect. As Robert McConnell is one of my favorite blenders, this blend makes me wonder what K&K did to it that made it so forgettable. There are much better examples of Scottish mixtures out there (look no further than K&K's own Rattray line) and while I didn't dislike this one, it failed to excite.

I picked this up at my local B&M. The components come together to make a fine blend with no one leaf really beating away the others for center stage. The moisture level is spot on at the cracking open of the tin. The tin note is quite nice and the room note even better. The nicotine level is about middle of the road, all the better to smoke 2 bowls back to back. This produced a decent amount of smoke and burned down to a nice ash at the bottom of the bowl. Definitely recommended.

For me, this blend was not so inspiring, but it was a unique experience.

The latakia is well mixed in with the virginias and orientals, and I would say it does not stand out in the forefront at all. On the forefront of the palate are the Virginias, but not pure virginias... virginias mixed with something,,, the perique! The perique is also not at the forefront by any means, but it is detectable, with that peppery quality. This blend was hard to pin down for me... leathery, light smokiness, grassy.

I really either like stronger lat blends or straight virginias, so this just wasn't my my alley. However, the quality is there, it burns well, burns cool, and really can't knock the quality of the product. It just wasn't for me. Still, a good blend for what it is.

I have to say that, being accustomed to stronger and more tasty mixtures (Balkan Mixture, Elephant Dung, Schürch 128 and 146, to name names), by now this one seems to me quite unremarkable. But (someone said that, here) this could be due to some balancedness of the mixture - a very steady one, too. So I'll stick with this for some time and see how the relation develops. Last thing, I noticed that drink some glasses of just milked milk (is this a proper or at least decent expression in English?) and the smoke some of our blend, well, that fits very well. A milky mixture, I'll say.

***UPDATE*** I have finished some time ago my first 50 g of S.M. Initial mistrust developed into honest tolerance and again changed into warm liking... and there I ran out of the stuff. But "you can't hurry love" (sang the Supremes). Also, the S.M. is the only thing I like to smoke in the morning (I mean, to smoke "just like that" and apart from special occasions). Waiter, one more star, please!

***UPDATE #2*** Now I really like it.

Contrary to some other reviewers, I didn't have the chance to smoke any of the McConnel's blends of the pre-Kohlhase & Kopp era. So I wouldn't be able to compare.

What I can say is that this blend is definitely English/Oriental, without a doubt. Certainly not a heavy one, but I can make out easily the Orientals, a bit of Latakia, VAs. I can't detect the Périque nor the Black Cavendish by tin aroma, but I can detect them when I'm smoking the blend.

This Bakkie is a long cut, with leaves of golden, orangy, red, green and black colours. The tin aroma is somehow reminiscent of Dunhill's Standard Mixture medium, so it is to say the amnount of Latakia is not high, because Standard Mixture Medium has no- or barely none- Latakia.

The filling is quite easy, due to the cut of the Bakkie. I like shortening the length of the bakkie to make the filling even easier. The moisture level was a bit high, but still smokable, despite the fact that it required more religthnings than usual.

The Orientals and Vas sure shine through right from the start, and they will remain consistent throughout the smoke. This is tasty, not really strong, but not light either; it's a proper balance, and the nicotine level is satisfactory. Think of a Rattray's no 7 on steroids. As you smoke your way through, some distinct hints of Latakia will emerge, but what comes back more often, but still on an irregular frequency, is the sweet black cavanedish which, frankly, is a nice addition as it cools off a bit the kick of the smoke and blends in well with the rest. It offers a nice contrast which I appreciate. Contrary to other reviewers, I think that those tobaccos blend well together and will benefit from some aging.

After all, more English blends than we think contain some black cavendish, sweetened or not, to smooth out the global taste.

The smoke gets stronger past half bowl, and I can't say I've detected with certainty any substantial amount of Périque in there. So, if it's there, it's in very small proportion. What I can say is this, though: make sure the bowl is not too loosely packed on the bottom, or the smoke will bite and irritate your taste bubs!

The ending is rather dry, but I've discovered that I prefer to finish off my pipefuls the next day rather than the same, for my ending of bowls have a tendency to be wet and alter the tobacco taste a lot when I smoke the whole thing at once. Maybe I smoke too fast, I don't know yet. But it's a diferent issue.

I must say, I like this Bakkie, and will order more. This is a different Latakia/Oriental and, thanks to the addition of the sweetened black cavendish and the low content of Latakia, the wife has no problem with it and I can enjoy it at home. And that is priceless!

Recommended!