Nestled into the fertile hills of Tuscany in the province of Arezzo, Italy, is a small town of about 16,000 residents. It's been there for over 1,000 years, built on the site where a pair of pilgrims returned from the Holy Land and founded a monastery. They had with them a stone from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre in Jerusalem, and news of the relic traveled. The stone attracted other pilgrims and a market town called Sansepolcro grew around the chapel, its name derived from San(Saint)-Sepolcro(Sepulchre).

Sansepolcro's dedication to history thrives to this day, manifesting in art and architecture, but most interestingly, and perhaps strangely, in medieval crossbow competitions. Crossbows were cutting-edge technology in the Middle Ages, devastating in warfare, but requiring skill to operate. In a festival every year since 1594, Sansepolcro reenacts the traditional crossbow competitions that it has held with the city of Gubbio. The festival has become part of the town's identity, and Sansepolcro has for many centuries been known as the "city of the crossbow."

Besides medieval warfare, Sansepolcro is known for its agriculture. Like St. James Parish in Louisiana, the only place in the world where Perique can be grown, the soil and climate of the Sansepolcro region inspires the cultivation of a remarkable Dark-Fired leaf used primarily for small Italian cigars known as Toscanos. We've seen them smoked in popular spaghetti westerns by such stars as Clint Eastwood, but they were popular for 150 years before Clint first squinted through their rising smoke. The tobacco is unique to the region, impossible to copy, and is especially important to those of us who enjoy exceptional, original tobacco.

Small Batch: Sansepolcro Reformulated

Cornell & Diehl has for some time been producing a special blend whose character depends upon this remarkable tobacco. Appropriately named Sansepolcro, it's undoubtedly the tobacco that Lee Van Cleef in those same spaghetti westerns would have been smoking in his famous meerschaum. His character's badassery was equal to Eastwood's, after all, and it would be only right that he smoked an Italian crossbow blend.

However, as good as the original formulation is, C&D's Head Blender, Jeremy Reeves, has reformulated the Small Batch blend, not in its recipe or ratios but in the quality and character of its components. It's the same blend but now refined to a surprising level.

"I wanted to achieve an elevated version of the blend," says Jeremy. "In the past, Sansepolcro has been a little bit more of a rustic blend overall. I think the style of Virginias that we used really did a lot of justice to the Italian Dark Fired and were very evocative of the experience of smoking a Toscano. But I wanted to do something a little more refined on the Virginia side."

Different Blend of Virginias

Sansepolcro is primarily a Virginia blend, and the types of Virginias employed impact the overall character. "With just a little difference in the components that made up the majority of the Red Virginia, by using a couple of Virginia grades that were a touch sweeter than we'd used in the past, it worked really well to make this overall a more refined iteration of the blend. It is mellower, and it is much more Virginia-forward, even though there's no less Dark Fired in this version versus the last time."

... the soil and climate of the Sansepolcro region inspires the cultivation of a remarkable Dark-Fired leaf

The sweeter Virginias additionally provide a softer, milder experience on the palate, and while they dominate the blend, those characteristics help to define the smokier aspects of the Italian leaf. "You end up with more of a hint of smokiness throughout the bowl. The Dark-Fired presence seems most pronounced at the light, but then as the bowl progresses and the tobacco kind of settles down, as most do, the Dark-Fired aspect floats in the background along with the melange of fruits, spice, and more fermented flavors. It has some lovely notes of wine, and if you're a fan of rye whiskey or the light, sweet, honeyed single-malt Speyside scotches, I think this blend is going to be very appealing."

The Red Virginias require impeccable balance for the blend to achieve that characteristic, and Jeremy has employed the best. "We've used two different Red Virginia grades. One is the TA 22 used in Carolina Red Flake and Carolina Red Flake with Perique, and that we've used in Anthology. It's combined with a very nice middle-of-the-road strength Red Virginia possessing an excellent balance between its fruity and darker notes. So it has some of the fruitier flavor profile that you might expect in a lighter-colored Virginia, but also has a lot of depth of flavor. The two of them blend really nicely."

The blend is about 10% Dark Fired, and contains a very small amount of cigar Black Cavendish. "That's hardly even worth mentioning," says Jeremy. "It's less than half an ounce per pound, just enough to add a touch more softness and a little bit of a chocolatey note."

The Dark-Fired presence seems most pronounced at the light

The Italian Dark Fired differs from Kentucky Dark Fired, not only because of the climate in which it grew but because of the different woods used for the fire-curing process. "There's an aromatic character that differs between the Italian and the U.S. leaf. I find the U.S. Dark Fired smells much more of hickory and oak, and the Italian stuff has a little bit more of a different kind of smoke character. It's a little sweeter. I find the flavor of this Dark Fired to have a clovey and almost floral character."

Sansepolcro In Flake-Cut Form

An important difference between the current Sansepolcro and the previous is that it's now in flake form. Previously, it was ready-rubbed, still pressed, but immediately chopped and tumbled into ribbons. It is pressed at 23 tons for seven days, which is standard, and then sliced into flakes.

"There's an aromatic character that differs between the Italian and the U.S. leaf"

Regarding these flakes, it's interesting that Troels Mickelson, who worked at STG (Scandinavian Tobacco Group) for 25 years as factory manager, visited C&D recently as a consultant. "We were actually working on the development of Black Cavendish," says Jeremy. "But while he was here, I was picking his brain on all kinds of things, and one of the things we looked at was flake production. Essentially, we discovered that there's almost no difference between the amount of pressure that we are currently applying for flakes or plugs and what STG is doing. The only difference is that STG uses binding agents."

Hydraulic Setup For Tobacco Pressing

C&D has a new hydraulic setup for pressing tobacco. "There are some flakes that hold together much better now, but then there are just some leaf types that don't, no matter how tightly they're pressed. For some leaf combinations, pressure is not enough. And of course, we don't use binding agents, and we can't just change recipes for more sugar content. But for some, the new system makes a significant difference. On Virginias, generally, it seems to make a big difference. Sugar content is usually what I look at when I'm determining what I'm going to put together into a flake because we're not adding a bunch of gum arabic that will bind anything together into a flake." Most flakes on the market utilize glycerin and gum arabic, and because of that they hold together beautifully, but C&D does not subscribe to that method.

Sansepolcro: Enjoyable At Any Time

Sansepolcro is a versatile tobacco, easily enjoyable at any time. "I think it's definitely a blend you could enjoy multiple times throughout the day. If you're a fan of Virginia flakes in the medium-strength category, this is a shoo-in for you. If you're interested in smokier flavors, or in finding something to smoke with your coffee in the morning or with your tea in the afternoon, I think that this would serve you nicely. While there are no added flavors, Sansepolcro might be a good jumping-off point for Aromatic smokers to check out sweeter, natural tobaccos. It would pair nicely with just about any sort of beverage. Maybe not a lager, but I think this blend would go quite nicely with anything from bourbon to gin-and-tonic to scotch. The smoke is just hinted at. There are subtle chocolatey notes, fruity complexities, and a really nice subtle spice that kind of winds through the whole thing. I would say it starts off medium and might be a touch over medium, perhaps medium-plus, by the end of the bowl."

Peak flavor is encountered at the midpoint of a bowl and onward. "I think that everything just settles in and is really firing on all cylinders at that point. You've got peak sweetness and a perfect meld of all the different characteristics, and I think it builds nicely from that point as well. At the beginning of the bowl, you'll notice more of the smoke character, at least in my experience. It seems more smoky on the charring light and second light, but a few minutes into it, that smokiness really tones down and leaves a soft interplay of fruit, chocolate, and spice."

Sansepolcro might be a good jumping-off point for Aromatic smokers to check out sweeter, natural tobaccos

For the new Sansepolcro, the interplay of Red Virginias is orchestrated deftly from the background by the Italian Dark Fired, providing a smoking experience of complexity and harmony. Those who have tried the blend in the past may be pleasantly surprised that a few refinements can make such a difference. Such is the magic of tobacco blending. It may not be as iconic as a stone from the Church of the Holy Sepulchre, but it's worth the pilgrimage to explore what can be done to elevate a very good tobacco to the extraordinary.