Cornell & Diehl's most popular Small Batch blend, Sun Bear, is back for enjoyable summertime smoking. This year's submission is named Navy Cask, evoking the ancient practice of sailors who preserved tobacco by twisting it, moistening it with rum, and storing it in wooden barrels.

This is the seventh iteration of this renowned blend, which has maintained the same recipe over the years, with one important annual difference: the handcrafted honey that flavors each. Honey isn't just a sweet, dense fluid to be squeezed from a plastic bear; it's a miracle of nature whose character changes with the seasonal flowers harvested by the bees and with the honey processing employed by passionate beekeepers. Sun Bear's honey for 2025 is particularly provocative. "It's amazing," says C&D Director and Head Blender Jeremy Reeves, "how big an impact just changing one honey to another has on the way the blend tastes."

Sun Bear is a light-bodied Virginia/Oriental blend. "It is not what I would consider in any way an Aromatic," says Jeremy. "It is a gentle, pleasant blend to smoke in the warmer times of the year, in particular. And that's really what I designed it for: to be something pleasurable to smoke when it's hot out."

A blend of Canadian Bright Virginias from the 2023 crop year and Red Virginias from 2017 is balanced by Izmir Orientals from 2020 and 2018, accompanied by whispered notes of silver tequila, elderflower, charred oak, and honey. Sun Bear delivers aromas and flavors associated with summer. The honey, in particular, highlights the natural, fruity, floral, and sweet characteristics of the blend.

Honey isn't just a sweet, dense fluid to be squeezed from a plastic bear

"We have not made any notable changes to the components used," says Jeremy. "We started this blend in 2019, and over the past years, there have been crop-year changes of one kind or another, but that's really about it. For all intents and purposes, we're using the same tobaccos to make this blend as when we started. The thing that has always been different with every iteration has been the honey."

Sun Bear has become a popular and important mixture. "I would say that it has usurped Carolina Red Flake as our flagship Small Batch," says Jeremy. Unfortunately, only limited amounts can be manufactured, which is why its release is an annual event. It started rather humbly, with only 4,500 tins the first year, but it then went on to 8,000, 10,000, and 15,000. "We have maxed out at 20,000 two-ounce tins for Sun Bear," says Jeremy. "It is a lot of work to get the kinds of honey that we want to use for a special product like Sun Bear. It is a lot of work to apply that honey in small batches to the blend. It's time-consuming. It requires a significant amount of downtime for the blend to fully absorb and incorporate all those flavor characteristics into the leaf. And it's too great a burden on our other factory operations to increase beyond that. So, 20,000 tins is our max."

The honey used this year is particularly special. Prepared by beekeeper Victor Seested, who has contributed to previous iterations of Sun Bear with his Maryland wildflower and locust tree honeys, has provided something new and impressive.

"It was something that Victor and I brainstormed on," says Jeremy. "He and I talked about what other honey profiles could be explored, and one of the things he thought of was, what if we aged honey in a Perique barrel? We discussed that for a little while. This led us down a rabbit hole of exploring other barrel options. And then Victor got a line on a barrel from a distillery there in Maryland, not too far from him. It had previously been used to age a bourbon and was then used to age a limited rum. So Victor filled this very special, unique barrel with his wildflower honey. There are elements of the bourbon and rum that come through in the honey. It's interesting that the tobacco itself has actually taken on a darker color this year compared to years past, similar to the way the honey darkens in the barrel. It's still a mild blend, but the flavor profile is a bit deeper and richer. There are palpable notes of a boozy element to the blend that is unique. I just think that these micro-changes, yielding different expressions of the blend, are such a fun and cool thing."

It requires a significant amount of downtime for the blend to fully absorb and incorporate all those flavor characteristics into the leaf

Barrels used for aging both bourbon and rum are unusual, and it was a small boutique distillery in historic St. Michaels, Maryland, that happened to have these barrels. But imbuing this honey with the rich flavors of bourbon/rum barrels is more complicated than just changing containers.

"I read an article about barrel-aged honey in a whiskey magazine," says Victor, "and I thought, 'That would be neat.' So I called people and googled. Some people were very helpful; others hung up the phone."

But Victor wanted to know what kind of aging was involved. One source told him five years, which made him curse under his breath. "I could be dead in five years." Other people recommended three or four months. The solution for Victor was to use a method used in the bourbon industry for aging, known as a rickhouse.

"It's a big wooden building, like a barn," says Victor. "When the bourbon is distilled and put into the barrels, they put these barrels up in the rickhouse. The sun rises and falls, and depending on the floor level and the direction that part of the building is facing, some parts of the rickhouse will get very hot, while others will get less so. That fluctuation in temperatures has an effect on how the whiskey interacts with the wood." Victor employs the same methods for his honey as distillers for their whiskies.

The barrels are internally charred to add additional flavor, and bits of char and honeycomb wax are filtered out of the final honey. "There are different char levels. I think it goes from a one to a five. So, depending on the char and the location in the rickhouse, some of these barrels take on an incredible flavor compared to perhaps somewhere else in the warehouse. That has a lot to do with it."

Victor's barrels are in his greenhouse, where summer temperatures can reach over 100 degrees for hours at a time, reducing again at night, just as in a rickhouse. But Victor also rotates and repositions the barrels. He has used steel rods to make axles for the wheels, which allow him to reposition the barrels without injuring himself. Barrels are 53 gallons, hogsheads are around 65 gallons, and other barrels can be 172 gallons, but Victor uses quarter casks, which are 13 gallons and easier to maneuver, though you wouldn't want to drop one on your foot.

These casks have bungholes with wooden plugs, and every couple of weeks, Victor removes the bung and dips a chopstick into the honey for a taste test ("I never double-dip," he adds with a laugh). He's found that the flavor reaches its peak at about six months. He has several different experiments going with different barrels and honey, aging times, and degrees of char, and we may be seeing some of them in future versions of Sun Bear, but this year's honey was aged in casks used first for bourbon and then for rum, bringing those two flavors to the fore.

That fluctuation in temperatures has an effect

The distilleries where these casks originate are highly regarded and award-winning. "Every distillery is different," says Victor. "You have all different kinds of stills: pot stills, column stills; there are books filled with the methods. But the end result is that it's an art. I think, in this case, the Sailor Rum Distillery produces some phenomenal rums. They've got a rum right now still in barrels called a pineapple rum. I've got a Texas wildflower honey in a Texas bourbon distillery barrel right now. I also have a black mangrove honey from Florida, which is aged in a bourbon barrel and has piqued Jeremy's interest. It's just fun. It's different. You get different flavors."

Kings County Distiller is New York City's oldest and largest distillery, utilizing American oak barrels for its renowned bourbons. Windon Distilling in Maryland is renowned for its Lyon Sailors Reserve rum, which is aged for 24 months in bourbon barrels from New York. And then Victor gets them. "They use 100% Louisiana cane sugar," says Victor, "and I think what they call blackstrap molasses. They produce a number of different types of rum and are a highly regarded rum distillery. What you get out of the honey in this case is a combination of the bourbon essence and the rum essence, and it's spectacular. It's phenomenal."

"Sun Bear projects a subtle funkiness," says Jeremy, "almost like you find in some aged rums. There's a little more kicked-up sweetness to the blend, but it's still very much a tobacco-forward mixture, as it's always been. It's just one more unique change brought on by the specific honey." "I think the honey," says Victor, "is a product of the barrel, the char, what was in the barrel, and the type of the honey, along with the heating and cooling. They all combine for a unique honey experience."

That experience is especially pronounced when combined with fine tobaccos, and Sun Bear benefits from the honey's unique characteristics. "In South Carolina," says Jeremy, "it is oppressively hot in the summer. Going outside is like having someone drop a wet duvet on you. So, the last thing I really feel like smoking in summertime is something that is going to be an oppressively strong blend. I'm not looking to sweat any more than I already am. I'm not looking to be overwhelmed with big, bold, over-the-top flavors. I'm looking for something that is refreshing. And something that I find really refreshing about the combination of Bright or Virginia and Oriental is these notes of citrus, floral elements, and light, spicy elements. They're bright, effervescent, and vibrant. And they have characteristics that are very tea-like. Iced tea is so refreshing on a hot summer day. I think that this blend rings some of those same flavor bells for me."

There's a little more kicked-up sweetness to the blend, but it's still very much a tobacco-forward mixture,

Sun Bear provides a mild and flavorful smoke for refreshment in the summer heat. "It's mild, and it's subtle," says Jeremy, "and it ties in with the aromas of summer and of greenery growing in flower gardens. I love to see the bees on my own property, pollinating the flowers in my garden, and smoking this blend seems like I'm partaking in that environment through my pipe."

Though Sun Bear is deliberately formulated to perform well in the summer, there are some smoking techniques that provide a better hot-weather smoking experience that work with all tobaccos. "When it is hot," says Jeremy, "it can seem like your pipe is burning hotter. When it is muggy or very, very humid, your tobacco certainly is drawing in more moisture as you smoke, and so you end up with these muted flavors a lot of times."

Jeremy tends to prepare his pipes for his environment. "If I'm smoking indoors, I may pack my pipe with tobacco that has had some dry time, but not as dry as it would be if I were packing it to smoke outside. Additionally, consider factors such as wind when smoking outside. I do a lot more breaking up and rubbing out of tobacco when I'm going to be smoking indoors, and where I think that it can handle having a little bit more moisture in it, and I'm not going to have crosswinds that blow ash everywhere. But if I'm smoking outdoors, then I might dry my tobacco down more, but leave the tobacco a little chunkier so that gusts of wind along the way aren't blowing out tiny little pieces of ash."

notes of citrus, floral elements, and light, spicy elements

Regardless of how you prepare it, Small Batch: Sun Bear Navy Cask will deliver flavors that accentuate the pleasant characteristics of summer and the aromas that accompany watering a flower garden or walking through a freshly mowed park or baseball diamond. The honey that lends its flavor is unique and lovingly nurtured, contributing to a smoking experience that conjures summer memories and inspires the creation of new ones. Sun Bear will be available as of 6 p.m. ET on August 5.