Aromatic Tobacco » Mac Baren Mixture Scottish Blend Tobacco Reviews

Mac Baren staple tobacco

This tobacco is certainly the most known Mac Baren blend. It is a very good and satisfying puff. While opening the pouch or tin a whaft of something that reminds me of honey hits my nostrils. The tobacco is easy to pack, but  bit chunky sometimes so better rub it a bit just to make sure. Treat this gentlemen properly, giving it short and steady puffs, so you will get the most out of it and without heating up your pipe. Aroma is soft and mellow. Not overpowering...One of my fave pipe tobaccos to date. I do not give it all stars becuase these are left to a few English blends which are remarkable.

Classic Nutty One

This is what I call a tricky weed.

Mac Baren Mixture Scottish: a mild aro that works with the natural leaf nicely

I’ve been smoking Mixture from a bulk purchase I packed into small Mason jars more than a year ago. The Mac-Baren website states that “Mixture is made from more than 35 different tobacco leaves from different parts of the world.” Where does one start to describe a blend so incredibly complex? They offer some help: “The loose cut tobacco in Mixture is light, sweet Virginia”, and “pressed Virginia and Burley tobacco has been added, which after a meticulous pressing process is carefully loosened up”, which accounts for the small bits of broken flake scattered throughout this olio. A loose cut Cavendish and carefully balanced aromatic top flavor completes the blend. There are two more statements from the website that I find especially true: “Mixture does not consist of one dominant taste, but a profusion of different nuances of flavor that keep changing,” and it is “a mild tobacco with good body without being strong.”

A bowl of Mixture starts out as a robust Burley-forward smoke that is truly nutty – creamy-nutty; but it quickly settles into a nice balance with the citrus and wine-like flavors of the Va. As if you didn’t already figure it out, this is a very complex blend, and one can smoke pounds of this stuff exploring all the different flavors it generates. At one point or another in your adventure with this blend you can find various types of sweet tastes, ranging from sugar to honey to cane to caramel to molasses. This all happens while your taste buds delight in various Virginia characteristics: from fruity to wine-like to grassy; from mildly sharp to zesty, piquant or tangy. And the nutty, creamy Burley is always in the background providing the body and support for this delicious blend.

Mac Baren’s signature Cavendish plays a big role in Mixture’s flavor matrix, and I can’t begin to speculate how it works with and against the other leaf. It is nothing less than amazing that such variety can integrate so well yet retain such clarity and brilliance, for each flavor nuance makes an appearance and then recedes like an actor on stage. The Cavendish is no doubt responsible for some of the sweet flavors and darker tones that appear in the blend; but I think that it also brings the flavor to the brink of a butterscotch taste without ever resolving it definitively.  That is what keeps me coming back puff after puff, trying to parse it out – teased, delighted, and always intrigued.

Mixture has great body and delivers a wonderful volume of smooth, chewy smoke. The nicotine level is moderate; it smokes cool, dry, and bite free; and has a pleasant room note. This is one mild aromatic that works with the taste of natural tobacco leaf quite nicely.