who has found that virginias, especially those without perique, burleys and/or kentuckys, are damned finicky smokes?

viginia flakes even more so,

in my admittedly limited experience, viriginias are inconsistent....packing, puffing, pipe choice are always wild cards.i have smoked the same tobacco in the same pipe three or four different times and have had thre or four vastly different smoking experiences.

by contrast, my dunhill smm smokes great, seemingly oblivious to the pipe or packing technique (or lack thereof). so does squadron leader and duhill london mixture. prince albert too. but mostly blends with latakia or orientals.

sure, there are pipefuls which are tastier, but mostly day in day out the range between an ok smoke and an outstanding one appears a lot narrower.

anyone else have a similar view, or am i out in left field...again?

john

I think you have hit on why most tobaccos are blends. Although there is a range of Virginias, by themselves they tend to be a little one dimensional, sort of like ..well cigarettes. And blends take sweetness from here, and add a little spice from there, and a little smokiness from over there, etc.

And from the way I smoke I have to be much more careful with the Va.s or I tend to smoke a bit hot..ouch! Looking at what you like I might suggest you see if you can find some Rattray's Highland Targe or SG's Balkan Blend.

Al (in Canada)

that's my experience too, jrtaster. straight virginias are my favorite smoke, flake versions especially but they are a challenge and definitely aren't the kind of smoke that you can count on being the same day in and day out. all the variables you mention and many more seem magnified with virginias. sometimes i'll have a bowl of Mc Xmas cheer and be blown away by it's rich sweet spicy complexity and then the next day i'll spend an entire bowl searching for that wow experience with no success. it can be very frustrating because you know the magic is in there somewhere but doesn't always come when you call it.....kind of like my blockhead dog. but when you get it right and that virginia sings to you, it's the best smoking experience i've had.

best advice i can offer just keep up the trial and error. eventually you'll figure out how to tune those variables to give you the best chance at getting that virgina to sing to you.

Learn how to smoke Vas. and open your pipes up, it's not the tobac, Ken
Pacem en Puffing!

I smoke about 5 bowls a day va's for 4 and english or oriental blends for the 5th. I find va's or va/par's very pipe particular. I have few pipes that just smoke them better then others just my opinion.

It took some trial an error before I developed a technique for smoking Va's. Just hang in there and you'll be rewarded with one of the most flavorful smokes out there. I get a different experience out of FVF each time I fire up a bowl, depending on how I prep it. And I always smoke down to the heel because the good stuff is in the last third.

Smoking Virginias is like playing golf. Very frustrating but when you hit a good one, OH BOY!!