Robert McConnell Scottish Blend

(2.87)
One of the original blends from 1848. Mature red Virginia and Kentucky from North Carolina, black cavendish and Turkish are blended with latakia to produce a blend which has given quiet satisfaction to smokers for over a century.
Notes: New description by K&K: Black cavendish and bright Virginias are combined with spicy tobaccos such as Latakia, Oriental and perique.

Details

Brand Robert McConnell
Blended By Kohlhase, Kopp und Co. KG
Manufactured By  
Blend Type Scottish
Contents Black Cavendish, Kentucky, Latakia, Oriental/Turkish, Virginia
Flavoring
Cut Ribbon
Packaging 50 grams tin
Country Germany
Production Currently available

Profile

Strength
Medium
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild -> Overwhelming
Flavoring
None Detected
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
None Detected -> Extra Strong
Room Note
Pleasant to Tolerable
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Unnoticeable -> Overwhelming
Taste
Medium
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
 
Extremely Mild (Flat) -> Overwhelming

Average Rating

2.87 / 4
12

20

10

4

Reviews

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Displaying 1 - 11 of 46 Reviews
Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Aug 29, 2014 Medium to Strong None Detected Medium to Full Pleasant to Tolerable
Curious… I bought this from a shop in Edinburgh in rode rot try Scottish from Scotland (whatever that means 🙂

Spicy smoke. And under notes of rose and strawberry jam.

Hard to keep lit.

Not as moist as people suggest on opening tin.

Its ok… Ive had better. I will finish it up and try other blends.

UPDATE: 2nd go…. much nicer. Dried fruits and spirits flavors. Smoother and still moist in can 2 weeks after opening as the can has super tight seal.

UPDATED AGAIN!! 😛 Smokey, yummy, delicious. Acacia honey, BBQ, brandy, dried fruits. Its goooood! Will buy more

Growing on me.. Enjoyable.
Pipe Used: Ferdnown Lovat
PurchasedFrom: Edinburgh UK
Age When Smoked: 6 months old
5 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Mar 06, 2014 Medium Very Mild Medium Pleasant
McConnell got this blend Scottish Blend right! Tin note is a mix of smoky hay, earth floral and slight sweet raisin/fig.

Charring Light is slightly sweet with faint raisin and well balanced blend of Virginia and Latakia. While the tin description calls this a “Robust Classic”, I would agree with Classic but my tin had nearly two years on it and I found this blend to be medium in strength with a smoothness and good interplay between the Virginia, Latakia, and Turkish well through mid-bowl. The Perique is also light but adds a nice peppery taste as you reach the bottom third and continues through the end of the bowl leaving a light gray ash..

Moisture content is perfect from the tin and only required a relight after the Charring Light. I found this blend to have no bite and I smoked it slow and allowed it to briefly rest occasionally, allowing the harmonious flavors to ebb and flow throughout the bowl.

While I prefer English, V-Flake, MV and VaPer, this is the Best Scottish Blend I have tried to date and I will purchase more to cellar. I would give it a 3.5 of 4.
Pipe Used: Stanwell HCA Callabash (w/ short stem)
PurchasedFrom: EBay
Age When Smoked: 1 yr 8 months
12 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 06, 2015 Medium to Strong Extremely Mild Mild Pleasant to Tolerable
Bought in Switzerland at average price for quality tobaccoes, at opening is pleasant, correctly moisted, with a quite delicate smell. Quite little latakious, as we usually expect from a scottish.

Aroma: light and quite complex, pleasant

Taste: good, smooth, elegant, complex and hard to find a definition, but lacks in something, maybe a typical recognizable trait... is much more STRONG than you can imagine, after 3 or 4 bowls in an afternoon you can go knocked for the kick...

Room note: not invasive or too persistent

Burning: good, correctly slow, if you puff only a bit too much it can easily overheat the pipe

Best Briars: EM & co. dedicated, gives its best in small pipes

Well, it's a good and elegant but shifty, difficult to understand, mixture: escapes to a clear definition and is a bit inadvertently too strong, by me.

Pipe Used: many...
PurchasedFrom: Dubini, Switzerland
Age When Smoked: 6 months
9 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Jan 23, 2017 Mild to Medium None Detected Mild to Medium Pleasant to Tolerable
This is a medium aroma and nic blend.when you open it the spicyness fights the woodyness in a confusing way.packs easy needs a little effort to light.burns from cool to medium hot with a bit moist.the flavours are more spicy and earthy with a decent dose of woodyness in a sweet base.for sure not a strong scottish like the dunhill blends.you can start your afternoon with it in a decent but not exciting way.if you want to try a scottish blend without strong flavours and taste but also not flat experience that's your blend
Age When Smoked: When opened!
7 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Apr 21, 2002 Medium None Detected Medium to Full Pleasant
Virginia, Latakia and perique combine to make a soft yet firm presentation. And the leaf that McConnell's was famous for (the Virginias), are rich, dark and tasty. A special blend that has never quite been duplicated by K&K, although they certainly are giving it a good effort.
7 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Mar 13, 2018 Mild to Medium Very Mild Mild to Medium Pleasant
Well.....you will just have to salivate over the fact I broke open a tin nearing 30 years of age on it, courtesy of a pipe dealer in Sweden, who has been cellaring this for a very long time. The Virginias take the forefront due to their aging, and this blend presents itself as a delightful, mild, smoke. The room note is wonderful, the nic hit is mild, and the Orientals blend perfectly. Simply awesome. I shall mourn when I finish this tin, which should serve as an ode to cellaring fine pipe tobacco.
Pipe Used: Dunhill Shell billiard
Age When Smoked: 30 years
5 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Jan 20, 2019 Medium None Detected Medium Pleasant
I recently decided to get back into English Blends after a 10 year hiatus, having switched to smoking only pure VA's, VA /Burley and VaPer's.

At this stage I'm looking for lighter to medium English blends; not the Latakia forward tobaccos I formerly smoked such as Charles Fairmorn Lancer's Slices, Esoterica Margate & Penzance, etc. So I ordered various tins based on some reviews here.

My goals above have been met, and my take on this tobacco is pretty much in synch with DenizBeck below. However I do not detect any Dextrose or flavoring.

This is a very, very nice English blend, with nice balance, restrained Latakia, and the VA, Orientals and Cavendish are well balanced and all contribute with no one leaf dominating the experience. It is complex, smooth, very easy to smoke and stays lit really well.

Honestly, other than not being a strong mixture, the back tin label description summarizes it well. The contents on my tin's back label states "a rather strong mixture in the English style, made of full Bodied Black Cavendish, naturally sweet Virginia, smoky Latakia, exotic flowery Orient Turkish and a pinch of spicy Perique, which is very balanced and rich in aroma".

Highly recommended from my perspective.
Pipe Used: Karl Erik freehand
PurchasedFrom: Mars Tobacco
Age When Smoked: Recent
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Dec 23, 2017 Medium Extremely Mild Medium Pleasant to Tolerable
The new 100g tin is now pale-green, reminiscent of moss. Great tin-art, like virtually all McConnell blends. Two shepherds with their dog. Funny enough the description on the label doesn't mention the Kentucky, whilst the sticker on the bottom of the tin does. It also says "full proportion of Leaf Latakia" which I contradict.

Cracking the tin you'll be greeted by lots of black ribbons, interlaced with red and brown ribbons and very few bright ones. Still the Latakia is rather smooth and not obtrusive. Wonderful tin-note of Latakia smokiness, sour and woody Orientals and some nuttiness. There's also a somewhat alcohol-ish and fruity note to it. The tin-note truly reminds me of scottish Highlands, a field of green and a shepherd smoking his pipe in the rough landscape. Great!

In the smoke Scottish Blend is delicious, delicious, delicious! The componenes create a smoking experience with depth, and the Latakia does what it's suppoed to do: season a tobacco blend, not dominate! Buttery, creamy, smoky, earthy and woodsy and with some sour and peppery tones to it. Pleasantly mild sweetness, with a fermented character.

I plead for there being some Perique present, that sports the sour-peppery notes I know and love about the Perique. In fact the K&K website description says there's some Perique in it: "B. Cavendish with bright Virginias and various spicy tobaccos like Latakia, Orient and Perique" it says. The typical Kohlhase & Kopp dilemma... 4-5 various blend descriptions floating around, each one contrary to the others... I'd go on a limb to sa there's B.Cav/Virginias/Perique,/Kentucky/Oriental in this blend, I definetly get a Kentucky nuttiness, and the Periues piquancy. Don't even mind to contact K&K for clearification, they won't tell you whats in the blend, that's my experience with it.

There's also a very, very mild flavoring and Dextrose added, which I guess contributes the fruitiness and sweetness as well. How do I know? Easy...you can find all of McConells (as well as other brands additives) on this website: https://service.bmel.de/tabakerzeugnisse/index2.php?detail_id=104486&site_key=153&stichw_suche=scottish+blend&zeilenzahl_zaehler=2

Scottish Blend is - aptly named - a blend with a good amount of not too sweet, unflavoured Cavendish and a moderate amount of Latakia whilst having a tolerable, almost pleasant roomnote and a broad variety of ingridients. Great aroma! Sour, sweet, smoky, hearthy, leathery, nutty...it has it all!
Pipe Used: Clays, Cobs, Briars
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Sep 29, 2017 Medium None Detected Medium to Full Pleasant
Robert McConnell - Scottish Blend.

One of my first reviews that I didn't think much to so have decided to re-post.

A mid-size ribbon, with an equal quantity of brown, yellow, and black pieces. I usually find the moisture good.

Scottish' has lots of flavour. The Kentucky adds a definite character, but doesn't rule the smoke. This is prevented by its counterparts. The Turkish and Latakia form a buttery, woody, support, with the Cavendish and Virginia sweetening the smoke. The smoke has a fairly thick texture, and is of medium a temperature. I've never had a bite from it.

Nicotine: medium. Room-note: pleasant.

I can see why this has been around for over a century. Highly recommended:

Four stars.
Pipe Used: Various
PurchasedFrom: Various
Age When Smoked: Various
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Sep 03, 2017 Medium None Detected Medium Tolerable
Scottish Blend, this is the only real Scottish mixture from Robert McConnell. The other two, Scottish Cake and Scottish Flake, are not Scottish at all. Both don’t have Latakia and both don’t have unflavored Black Cavendish. Scottish Cake is a Virginia/Kentucky mixture and Scottish Flake is a Virginia/Perique mixture. That said, Scottish Blend is a good and tasty mixture, even if a typical Scottish mixture contains a little bit of Latakia and in Scottish Blend there is a lot of it. Black Cavendish is correctly unflavored and Virginia is of good quality. Kentucky and Turkish feel less but they blend (mix) the mixture very well. In my personal rating system (from 1 to 10) my score is 8 and three stars.

UPDATE: 2017 – 11 – 05: At the moment I think this is the best Scottish blend you can find in the market. For this reason I add a star. 4 complete stars.
4 people found this review helpful.
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Reviewed By Date Rating Strength Flavoring Taste Room Note
Nov 27, 2015 Medium None Detected Mild to Medium Pleasant to Tolerable
The Kentucky gives a little boost in terms both of body and spiciness to the smoke, that goes very well with the Latakia and the other Orientals.

Although this blend is really pleasant as it is, I would, for my taste, have added a little bit more of Kentucky and subtracted some Cavendish or Virginias, in order to reduce its sweetness and increase the overall strength.

There are fuller blends on the market considering the content of Latakia, sure. I myself am going to look for something stronger and deeper in such terms. Therefore, I’d consider this blend being of medium strength.

Quite enjoyable through the all afternoon indeed, but lacking that share of strength you may look for in a late evening smoke.

The plus of this blend is that it is never flat or boring : there are a few main flavours that constantly interplay with a higher number of nuances that will keep your palate quite awake and interested in the evolution through the bowl.

A tin was well enough for me, but honestly I’m not considering any further purchasing.

Cheers Everyone, Brandr ODS
Age When Smoked: Fresh and 2yo
4 people found this review helpful.
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