In this episode of Tasting Notes, I was able to discuss something very special. Sun Bear season has arrived, and Jeremy Reeves and his team at Cornell & Diehl have outdone themselves with a new iteration on this fan-favorite pipe tobacco. Today I will be smoking Small Batch: Sun Bear Navy Cask, out now on-site in limited quantities.

Welcome to another episode of Tasting Notes. As is often the case when I find myself sitting here with a plate of very nice tobacco in front of me, I'm here to discuss something very special today. It's summertime. It's warm. Very warm. Not my favorite time of the year, but that's okay because that also means that it is Sun Bear season.

This is the biggest deal we've seen in Sun Bear season since maybe the original release. Jeremy Reeves and his team at Cornell & Diehl every year release a special-edition tobacco that is arguably one of the most popular things that they produce called Sun Bear. Sun Bear has seen several different editions where the base blend is always the same and the little secrets behind the components and the ingredients are always the same. One thing changes: the honey that is used. We've seen several iterations of different types of honey: the Mountain Flower, the Black Locust, the original version, and so forth.

This year, as you'll notice from the different color theme and different palette here, we have Sun Bear Navy Cask.

Navy Cask

What does Navy Cask mean? Navy Cask means that not the tobacco itself, just the honey that is used on this blend, has been aged in an ex-rum barrel. That's where the Navy Cask moniker comes from.

Of course, Navy blends and pipe tobacco are often associated with the old practice of using ex-rum barrels to transport tobacco across the Atlantic. It was a good way to preserve the tobacco and they found that it imparted a really pleasant flavor as well.

The honey used on this year's Sun Bear Navy Cask was aged in an ex-rum barrel, and that means that the honey itself has been infused with this boozy character and the barrel quality itself.

On paper, I was like, oh my gosh, this is right up my alley. I love Navy blends, rum, and honey, and Sun Bear as a blend itself does not disappoint. So let's get into it.

I have to point out, I love the color palette of this release, Sun Bear Navy Cask. We've got our little sailor Sun Bear there, he's got his hat and his mom tattoo. I also have a mom tattoo here, or it says "wow" depending on how you're looking at it.

Blend Components

It is the same blend as always. In this case, we have specific 2023 grades of Bright Virginia from Canada. There is 2020 Thai-grown Izmer and 2018 Turkish-grown Izmir. To that, obviously, a wildflower honey that has been aged in a rum cask has been added and a little something extra too.

The interesting thing about this Sun Bear is and always has been this really bright, zesty, summertime kind of a pipe tobacco, although you can smoke it all year long. I find it to be an all-day smoke anyway. It's been all about these brighter and zestier flavors at the treble end of the spectrum. Little less base notes, but still really complex, fresh, floral, lightly sweet, all that good stuff.

The addition of the rum barrel-aged wildflower honey adds a whole new dimension to this blend. I think it still has the body, strength, and aroma that we would expect from the blend. Everything on the base and middle register is sort of amplified.

We have something that's a little bit richer and has a little bit more broad of a spectrum of flavors, and really, flavors that I think complement the blend and the components extremely well.

Fruity and Floral Sweetness

The tin note is incredible.

I get a hint of all of those lightly floral flavors, a little bit of that elderflower, and a boozy quality, which is present in the original Sun Bear blend but it's amplified a little bit here because of that rum barrel-aged honey.

It's a little bit sweeter. I get a little bit more of the barrel character like I get from certain whiskeys and rums, vanilla notes, and maybe even chocolate. It's got a nice bready quality to it. It's still a zesty, bright Virginia character. It's rich, deep, and sweet. The sweet notes range from lightly fruity to honestly what reminds me a lot of a mix between a snickerdoodle cookie and maybe a white macadamia nut cookie.

I don't actually know, definitively, what the rum was in the barrel that the honey has been aged in, but I suspect it was a spiced rum because you do have some of those warming spices coming through, and some of that vanilla, which is part of the barrel character. It's incredibly complex and so appetizing.

Flakes and Drying Suggestions

The flakes themselves are really nice, dense, and supple. We see a lot more darkness here than we do with the original Sun Bear blend. The character of the honey itself has been infused with flavors from the rum barrel, and then the pressing, obviously, results in something a good shade darker. There's a lot more chestnut and even some really darker flex in here whereas typically we're looking at a little bit more of a blonde to chestnut range, so I immediately noticed the differences visually, in the room note, and in the tin note. And then also the character of the smoke itself is different.

I gave it just a tiny bit of drying time, so a lot of aeration. I rubbed it out normally, which is what I usually do, and I gave it a couple of minutes of drying time, not too much, because you really do want to preserve all of that complexity and nuance. I do find that, depending on the pipe that you're smoking and depending on your preferences, you may want to aerate this one a little bit extra or even give it a minute before you rub it out, and then you're gonna find that it takes to the flame well and performs well in a variety of chamber sizes.

There's tons of volume in the smoke. It's very dense on the palate. It's creamy, rich, and a lot of those notes that I picked up in the tin note are present kind of immediately: that vanilla character, the boozy quality, even what I perceive to be the sweets, like I mentioned, snickerdoodle and white macadamia nut cookies.

Underneath that, you have a Virginia character that is still zesty and bright, but has maybe a little bit more of the maltiness that I tend to associate with darker grades of Virginias.

Beautiful floral notes, a little earthiness from the two different grades of Izmir, the 2020 Thai, and the 2018 Turkish. The retrohale is insane. It's difficult to even articulate or put your finger on one thing because there's so much going on here.

To me, the main differences between the other additions of Sun Bear, which I have loved all of, and this one here, is the added richness, the deeper flavor profile and base notes, and the incredibly mature feeling to this tobacco. It tastes vintage, sort of right out of the tin. It has the deep sweetness that I associate with aged Virginias.

This is the kind of flavor profile that I associate with blends like Capstan Blue and Escudo that you've aged for a decade or more. It also reminds me of some really old vintage tins of pipe tobacco and vintage tins of cigarettes that I've smoked.

It's just a really amazing balance between a brighter and top-note heavy, zesty blend that is good for the warm weather and something that I could easily find myself smoking through the winter as well.

The sweetness that I get here is more like the difference between a cane-sugar sweetness and molasses. It's just richer and deeper.

The sidestream's amazing. If somebody gave this to me and my pipe was already packed, I would guess that this was an extremely well-aged pipe tobacco. It just has all of those notes, like the deep, rich sweetness, a tiny bit of spice, a little bit of earthiness, and that malty and sweet character from the Virginias.

Obviously most of the things that I choose to sit here and talk to you guys about are things that I enjoy, and things that I'm excited about. I've enjoyed the evolution of Sun Bear and the different iterations with the different types of honey over the years. Mark my words, this one's legendary. This one's gonna go down as one of the coolest things Jeremy Reeves and his team have ever released.

A Comforting and Magical Smoke With Long Legs

It's smoked straight out of the tin, like a vintage tobacco, and I've had that feeling before from other blends that were not aged, but this one could fool me in a blind test, for sure.

If you enjoy Navy flakes and Virginias in general, and if you're a fan of Sun Bear, you cannot possibly miss this one. Even Virginia/Perique smokers who enjoy tobacco that has a little bit more spice and a little bit more depth, this is gonna be right up your alley.

The coolest thing about Sun Bear Navy Cask, for me, is that it joins the other Sun Bears from past years to create a full rotation, at this point. Obviously I loved the other ones so much that I cellared them as deeply as I possibly could, so I've been sitting on some of my older tins of Black Locust and Mountain Flower. You can have something for earlier in the day or maybe even the hotter months of the year and something that you can smoke in the evenings or through autumn even.

I do still think that this is a great example of a tobacco that can be smoked in warm weather, especially if you happen to find yourself out on the water or whatever. Navy Cask, right? This is the same impeccable blend that many of us have fallen in love with and Jeremy has just taken that equalizer and picked certain frequencies and turned them up.

The experience is, frankly, pretty magical. I wax poetic about a lot of this stuff. It's not that often that I am blown away and shocked by a tobacco that on paper I'm probably already familiar with. The addition of the rum barrel-aged honey here is just a game changer.

Yeah, I look forward to smoking this as it ages. It's gonna have long legs, I have no doubt about that. But don't sit on it. Enjoy it now. It's ready to go.

Today I'm smoking the brand new Cornell & Diehl Sun Bear Navy Cask in a signature Tom Eltang rusticated Poker. It's a tall, narrow chamber and I feel like it really gives me the opportunity to see how these flavors develop in the bowl.

This is one blend that you're gonna find is very comforting, very easy to smoke, and very easy to enjoy. The complexity factor is kind of through the roof. Try it in a bunch of different pipes, smoke it at different times of the day, and find what you enjoy. Most importantly, have fun.

Thanks so much, Jeremy. We appreciate it.