Welcome to another episode of Tasting Notes. Today I'm here to talk about something brand new from Cornell & Diehl and Jeremy Reeves, and that is the Cornell & Diehl Summit Series, a series of four plug tobaccos inspired by the outdoors and specifically some really important landmarks across America's West and our national parks. The first blend that I've chosen to smoke myself and share my thoughts with you about is Skyward Gate.

Skyward Gate: A Straight Virginia Plug

Skyward Gate is inspired by Arches National Park in Utah. It is a straight Virginia that is mostly comprised of Red grades and a little bit of Orange flue-cured grades.

Plug tobaccos are seldom seen on the market these days. It was originally a format invented as a preservation method of tobacco, where you could press the tobacco and it would hold its moisture content and stay fresher longer over transit periods. It had the unintended effect of also providing richness and jump starting the aging process and the fermentation that we all look for when we're cellaring our tobaccos. The fact that this is a plug tobacco and it is a straight Virginia, once again, I feel like I've been blessed with a tobacco that is on paper right up my alley.

Moisture content right out of the tin is great. The coolest thing about plug tobaccos is that you are in control of how you slice them, so you can slice them thicker if you wanna do a cross cut, cube cut kind of a thing, or you can slice them very thin if you're looking for a finer shag when you're rubbing it out.

I do think that they will age differently in plug format than they would have in ready-rubbed or flake format, and I think the control that you get over how you prepare them is really one of the biggest benefits here. It's just so much fun to play around with.

I did leave some of the tobacco in the tin so I could check out the tin note. It's rich, and I'm getting malty, bready, and maybe even some baking spices and graham crackers. There's a little bit of a grassy and citrusy vibe. It's zesty. Really nice, really approachable, and really friendly. It's not overpowering; it's definitely on the understated side but if you're a straight Virginia smoker, that's exactly what you're looking for.

Richness & Natural Sweetness at First Light

It's so much richer than I would expect a fresh Virginia blend to be right out of the tin, and I think that's one of the benefits here of the format. It also gives me a little bit of a different experience than I think I've gotten in other really similar straight Virginias that are produced by Cornell & Diehl.

Some of the maltiness and the really bread-like qualities — I often say sourdough that I get from Red Virginia and flue-cured grades that are on the darker shade part of the spectrum — actually come to the forefront immediately at first light, and typically that's something that develops over the bowl for me.

I tend to find that, without condimental tobaccos included, straight Virginias build over the time that you're smoking them. And what I've noticed so far about Skyward Gate is that that intensity and that richness is there right away.

It's a really nice balance of natural sweetness. I did not look into the sugar content of these grades specifically. I went into this one blind, which was by choice, and I really do perceive a fair amount of sweetness right off the bat. It's almost like powdered sugar, somewhere between that and maybe a honey-like sweetness, along with those baked goods, sourdough bread, and malty character that I mentioned.

An All-Day Smoke

As the bowl progresses and that richness builds, I also start to notice, especially through the retrohale, some zestier notes, a little bit of citrus, and that grassy character that we associate with Virginia grades too, except it's more like sweetgrass to me than it is your typical hay-like aromas. I'm also getting a touch of vanilla or cocoa-like notes that I tend to get from barrel-aged spirits. A fair bit of complexity, but this one is just a straight, comforting, and warm Virginia blend.

This is an all-day smoke for me, personally. There's enough going on and enough body here that I think I would never get tired of smoking it later in the day. Plus, you do have some flexibility here where you could slice it a little bit more thin, rub it out to a little further of a degree, and then you should get a bigger burst of flavor that way. Or you can keep it in almost flake-like format or cube-cut format, slow down the burn rate, and then have a crescendo of these Virginia flavors throughout the smoke rather than right off the bat.

There's just so much to play with here. It almost feels unfair to review a tobacco like this because I would have to cut it in a million different ways and load it into a million different pipes to really wrap my head around the possibilities here. They're endless.

Pipe Smoked & Comparisons to Skyward Gate

Today I'm smoking the new Summit Series Skyward Gate in a little bent Brandy by J. Alan. It's a little Virginia pipe for me and it's singing in this pipe here, although I do think this will perform well in a variety of chamber sizes.

If you're a fan of C&D's Virginias — and who isn't — this is definitely gonna be right up your alley. I think if you like tobaccos like McConnell's Red Virginia, maybe even some of the lighter Rattray's Virginias, like Brown Clunee, and even some richer stoved Virginias, this is definitely gonna be in your wheelhouse. If you're a fan of Cornell & Diehl's Bijou and Full Virginia Flake by Samuel Gawith, you're gonna really like this one.

Don't forget to try Skyward Gate in a variety of different widths and thicknesses and different degrees of rubbing out those slices. Have some fun and cellar some to see how it does in the future.