Welcome to another episode of Tasting Notes. Today I am revisiting another old friend, Cornell & Diehl's Small Batch Carolina Red Flake with Perique, back again for 2025. The "with Perique" part is the most important part, especially if you, like me, prefer Virginia/Periques as your main smoke. It's definitely one that you're gonna want to act on quickly if you want to be able to smoke it with any regularity.

Virginia/Perique Components

I also think that out of all of the really amazing Small Batch blends that Jeremy and his team have created over the years at C&D, Carolina Red Flake with Perique holds a special place in my heart, and I think other collectors out there would agree. It's definitely one that you have to chase. This one does not come out every year. As much as I appreciate the original version of Carolina Red Flake, the addition of that proprietary 31 Farms Perique does something incredible to this blend.

The star of the show for this year's grades that make up Carolina Red Flake with Perique 2025 is a 2013 Mahogany Virginia that is 12% sugar. To that, we also have a couple of North Carolina Red Virginias, one from 2017 that is 2.4% sugar, another from 2019 that is 10% sugar, and then my favorite are the 2019 Georgia-grown Oranges with 17.72% sugar, and then, to top it all off, a 2022 North Carolina Orange-Red tip that is 13.53% sugar. To that, heirloom St. James Parish Perique from 31 Farms is added. All of those grades come together to form a really good spectrum of what flue-cured grades offer and what the addition of Perique does to those high-quality, flue-cured grades.

A Virginia Lover's Fantasy

Getting into the tin note, which is always my favorite. This is a Virginia lover's fantasy here. It's malty, sugary, and has notes of baked goods. There's a nice amount of tang here, almost a hint of apple cider vinegar. You have a little bit of a barbecue sauce thing going on here, honestly. There's also a bit of a woody character. I'm guessing some of that comes from the Perique. A little bit of spice and lots of sweetness comes through, even in the tin note.

It's a gorgeous presentation, with really lovely broken flakes. There's lots of different colors because of all of those different grades of flue-cured tobacco that are included here. Quality is apparent and it is exactly what one would hope for when opening a tin of one of Cornell & Diehl's famous Small Batch Carolina Red Flakes.

I did not give this one any drying time out of the tin. I find that the moisture content is perfect right away. You can give it a little bit of aeration or you can break up the flakes a little bit more, depending on your preference, and depending on whether you're smoking indoors or outdoors. I tend to leave them more chunky when I'm smoking outdoors to slow the burn rate. I tend to rub out the flakes entirely when I'm smoking indoors, which is my preference, because I want that immediate burst of flavor. That's what I've done here, and with the last couple bowls that I've smoked, it takes to the flame super well.

You can see that it was nearly out when I was yapping just now, and just a couple of puffs and the spontaneity of the burn is really good. You can back away and sip it. You can just increase your cadence and puff a little harder and get the burn going again. In any case, it is really well-rounded, never harsh, with all the edges here, and I think a lot of that comes from the heirloom flue-cured grades that are in here that are rounding out the blend.

A Perfect, Complex VA/Per

It's pretty much exactly what I'm expecting and what I'm hoping for in an edition of Carolina Red Flake with Perique. It's the perfect balance of flue-cured grades and the highest-quality Perique in the world. The Perique is seed to finished product all produced within Louisiana by 31 Farms in St. James Parish. The grades that Jeremy has chosen here feature various levels of sugar and flavor profiles, and you still have a malty character coming through. There's some bread-like notes, a little bit of that sourdough quality that I look for in North Carolina grades of Red Virginia, and it's just a perfect stage to highlight the best Perique in the world.

You get a little bit of that fruitiness, a barrel character, some charred kind of notes, and maybe even a little bit of what I would perceive as a natural-tasting vanilla. Mostly it's dark fruits, stone fruits, and a little bit of pepper on the retrohale. There's a ton of complexity, and actually enough sweetness to keep me interested there too, because I really like, particularly from that high-sugar Georgian leaf that we've seen make appearances in other Small Batch blends, the sweetness there is never cloying but the perception is a higher degree of sweetness than I normally experience, even with flue-cured grades that have a higher sugar content. What that does is create an interplay between that sweetness and that malty character from all the flue-cured leaf, spice, stone fruits, and dark notes from the Perique. It's exactly what you're looking for. It's why many of us fall in love with this format and this family of tobaccos.

Pipe Suggestions & Aging Potential

Today I am smoking Carolina Red Flake with Perique in a Smooth Poker by Tom Eltang. It's his signature bamboo Poker in a smooth finish and it's a workhorse pipe. Everybody that's familiar with Tom's work knows that. I highly recommend adding one to your collection if you don't already have one, especially for products like this where you definitely don't want a wide chamber, but you want some depth to the bowl to really experience a blend developing. It's the perfect Virginia/Perique pipe, and Carolina Red Flake 2025 with Perique seems to really enjoy it.

Even though it's well documented that I smoke mostly smaller pipes, I did choose a little bit more chamber depth for this one because I wanted to be able to see how the flavors develop throughout the bowl, and really I recommend smoking something as complex and high quality as Carolina Red Flake with Perique is in as many different kinds of bowls and chambers as you can because you're gonna find something different every time and it's gonna provide a lot more insight into the blend itself the more you experiment.

If you've smoked any of the Carolina Red Flakes before, either with or without Perique, any of the other Small Batch Virginia blends, or if you're a big fan of blends like Escudo, this one is gonna absolutely sing for you.

Even though it was recently produced, it smokes with a lot of maturity. In terms of aging potential, particularly Carolina Red Flake with Perique maybe has some of the best aging potential of anything that Jeremy and his team produces, especially with the grades of flue-cured that are in this particular edition. Go deep. You're gonna want to. Not only to be able to track this blend's progress throughout the years but because this is one that you're gonna have a hard time not just smoking all the time.

Thanks, everybody, and thanks to Jeremy and his team again for another incredible edition of one of our collective favorite tobaccos: Carolina Red Flake with Perique, out now for 2025. Enjoy it, guys.