Virginia Tobacco » Mac Baren Latakia Blend Tobacco Reviews

latakia blend

This is my favorite of the MacBaren blends.  Really nice tin aroma; citrus-fruity notes on opening.  Sliced coins of twist roll rub out nicely, about at perfect moisture level when tin is first opened.  Lights and burns easily.  Smokes clean, and cooler than other McB tobaks.  It's very light on the latakia, just enough to spice it up slightly.  Plenty of sweet natural tasting smoke, even though it's obviously sweetened in the usual Danish way.  Citrus(orange) tasting notes throughout the bowl.  Nice Danish Blend.  Again, it's latakia amount is very slight in the blend, not at all like a full English,  or even a Medium English.  Quite nice.

Worst tobacco I've smoked in years

Mac Baren should be sued for false advertising.  There's virtually no latakia in this that I can detect, which is probably why I hate this blend.  It's predominately Virginia, which I'm not a fan of.  I bought this tin yesterday, and smoked one bowl on the way home, and wasn't impressed but was withholding an opinion.  Then, tonight I fired up another bowl and it was so bad that I couldn't finish it.  It made my mouth feel like is was drawing up. It wouldn't stay lit, and was just overall terrible.  I think I'm going to quit trying other blends and stick with my favorites--Black House, Larry's Blend, Magnum Opus, London Mixture, My Mixture 965, and Nightcap. I've been sampling quite a few blends lately, and this is the only one that's been a total bomb. I don't think I'll ever buy another Mac Baren tin because to call this Latakia Blend is an outright lie.

Probably the greatest misnomer, ever.

Mac Baren's Latakia Blend is, as has been said before, not really what you would expect given the name. It really does not contain much Latakia. Given the context of when and where this blend originated (Denmark, in the 1950s), I refuse to downgrade MBLB just because it is mis-named.

Yes, there is truly little Latakia in there; Mac Baren's website says 1.5 %. Then again, having even that much Latakia, in a Danish blend, at the time this was created, was pretty forward. These days, of course, if any blend has "Latakia" on its label, one would expect at least 20 %.

Thankfully, I was able to taste this blend without any undue expectations. The 100 g tin I got was not exactly cheap, but the curly slices inside made up for the price by being toasty and sweet with a bit of a cocoa/coffee note in there: I make it mostly VA with some Burley, and the famous 1.5 % of Latakia.

As with all MB curlies, the presentation is a mess of nice slices, it packs well and lights well (though you want to be ready to tamp down a few times at the beginning), and unlike most of the other MB curlies, this blend burns down very gently and sweetly to nothing but ashes without any dottle. Fold and sink, rubbing out or just plain stuffing the whole curls work well for me.

This is not a blend I will be coming back to; I have since gone on to blends far stronger. But I still can recommend it whole-heartedly, with the caveat that you should just forget about the name on the tin. It's not a Latakia-dominated blend, but still a very good one.