Pipe Tobacco Review: St. Patrick’s Day 2016 by Peterson

• $13.49, 50g tin
• Purchased at Burns Tobacconist

Background

Peterson is one of the biggest names in the pipe and pipe tobacco world. Along with some fantastic looking regular production pipes, they make annual “Dracula” pipes for Halloween and St. Patrick’s Day pipes for springtime. They also produce some very sought-after blends, including Holiday and Summer blends, and this pipe tobacco I bring before you today: St. Patrick’s Day Blend.

The 2016 St. Patrick’s is the first time I’ve had any Peterson holiday blend. My research says that it incorporates Virginia, Black Cavendish and Burley varietals with some whiskey and citrus flavoring. The company’s product description goes something like this:

Peterson’s annual St. Patrick’s Day pipes and tobacco are celebrated every year. They are something of a modern pipe smoking tradition. This year, for the 2016 blend, the European-style Aromatic returns to more traditionally Irish territory than last year’s blend. This smooth smoke features notes of whisky and citrus, but this isn’t your standard Aromatic. Like the other Peterson Annuals, this blend’s flavoring is subtle and smooth–you’ll experience a prominent tin note, but will want to smoke this one slowly to allow the flavors to develop for your palette.

I have smoked a couple bowls of St. Patrick’s Day before I did this review. As a reminder, while I know my cigars pretty well and have developed a reasonably good palate for them, I am new to reviewing pipe tobacco. I have smoked pipes sporadically over the last 15 years, but have taken a more concerted effort to evaluate them only lately.

Notes

The aroma of the St. Patrick’s Day Blend is remarkable and complex. It has notes of lemon and orange, along with some other sweet fruitiness that I couldn’t quite put my finger on (I wrote the review part before I looked up details…the other sweet notes were more than likely the Irish whiskey flavors). And it all overlaid and light grassy natural tobacco goodness.

Once lit, the tobacco had a very fragrant room note with citrus notes up front and a nice, light natural tobacco note on the backside that I believe was a Virginia flavor. While it’s most definitely an aromatic blend, it had enough naturals mixed in to not be cloyingly sweet.

I found that I had to relight this a few times during the bowl, probably mostly due to the extra moisture found in this aromatic…and that is after I allowed it to have a bit of a drying period since I first bought and unsealed the tin. Probably the best way to avoid this is a little more time to allow the tobacco to lose so moisture…and, of course, learning to better pack the bowl of the pipe wouldn’t hurt. I’m getting better as I go, but I still can’t get this particular pipe to burn entirely throughout without relighting.

As aromatics go, this was a nice, complex example with plenty of fruit flavors but a good amount of natural tobacco in the mix as well.