Autumn is upon us. We are getting into the cooler months. I think a lot of people get excited about this time of year; the weather's cooling off, we're getting pretty close to Halloween, and pumpkin spice is back. But around here, there's a different reason that we get very excited about this time of year, and that is because Cornell & Diehl's Carolina Red Flake is coming out again.

I am very fortunate to be able to get my first taste of Carolina Red Flake 2024 today. I just popped a fresh tin. Unlike a lot of the other blends that I'm trying for the first time, I have been a huge fan of Carolina Red Flake since the original release, and I've tried all of them, of course, and cellared quite a few of them as well along the way. So, every year, I'm excited to see what this year's batch looks like, and we have a couple of tweaks that Jeremy made that I'm particularly excited about.

Tribute to Old Belt Virginias

Cornell & Diehl's Small Batch Carolina Red Flake is a love letter and tribute to the Old Belt Virginia grades that are still produced in the U.S. like they have been for a very long time and the highest-quality grades in leaf that you can find in the Old Belt. Before I talk about the grades this year, as soon as you pop the tin, you can smell the very familiar sweet, tangy, and lightly grassy aroma. It has everything that a Virginia guy's looking for. Obviously, a straight Virginia like this isn't going to have really crazy notes, particularly in the tin note, but I'm getting the malty, slightly sweet, and a little bit of tanginess right now. It's very promising, considering this is the kind of stuff I smoke 90% of the time.

As usual, Carolina Red Flake has really lovely broken flakes. There are a lot of different colors in here, and a lot of different shades. We have some lighter leaf, some look like a medium orange leaf, along with a few darker flakes. I love the cut on this. It's really easy to deal with and rubs out and loads really well in a variety of chamber sizes. I do personally recommend smoking Carolina Red Flake in a medium-sized pipe. I have found that over the years — I'm using a Group 4 size or so here now — I really do like giving this blend, in particular, a chance to evolve and a chance for the flavors to come together and deepen throughout the smoke.

First Light: Familiar Tangy and Sweet Notes

Right off the bat, I get the very comforting and familiar, high-quality Virginia notes. I'm getting like the malty character, a little bit of that tanginess, and plenty of natural sweetness. There's something a little deeper, too. The sweetness that's developed already is kind of crazy. It's also much richer at this stage in the bowl than I can remember previous editions being. Normally, when I start to get those really sweet, like baked good notes, I've already smoked through about a third of the bowl, maybe even more than half, but this blend starts off that way. I'm getting a powdered sugar sort of sweetness. Man, that is crazy. Even early in the bowl, I am also getting some nice warming spices, particularly in the retrohale.

This is an extremely comforting blend, especially for this time of the year. I find that this is one of those Virginias, year in, year out, no matter what Jeremy does with the recipe, it always has that really nice sweet spot between being really straightforward, easy to enjoy, and comforting, but also having enough intrigue and complexity that you want to keep coming back to it over and over again. It's really remarkable how much sweetness is coming through basically in the first quarter of the bowl. Typically, I expect the sweetness and the richness to develop as the smoke progresses with a blend like this, but this one's really powerful right from the jump, and there's a reason for that I think.

Distinct Virginia Grades Add Sweetness

This year, in addition to some TA-2022 Virginias with 13.53% sugar and some TBFO-19, crop year 2019 with 10% sugar, which are some grades that we've seen before from Jeremy and crew, they've added some GA-JRL-19, which are 2019 crop year Red Virginia grades from Georgia. Those Red Virginias are 17.72% sugar. That's not a crazy amount of sugar. It's certainly not the highest we've ever seen, but this particular leaf was a tobacco that really surprised me. The sugar is not as high as, for example, some of the grades of Brightleaf that Jeremy's been able to source in the past couple of years. However, the perceived sweetness feels even more pronounced than some of the highest sugar-content Virginias I've ever tried. You have almost none of the citrus character that I think I typically associate with some of the sweeter Virginia grades.

When I saw that we were adding that Georgia leaf from 2019 at 17.73% sugar to Carolina Red Flake this year, I was like, oh man, this is really going to be special. And again, everything that I have tried with that Georgian leaf in it over the past year has blown me away.

Sweetness with Medium-Plus Body

I'm smoking Carolina Red Flake 2024 in one of my favorite Virginia pipes, a Lovat by J. Alan. It's one of the pipes I reach for the most, and I think it's the perfect size for a flake like this. I'm getting a little bit more into the bowl here now. I'm getting a lot more bready character. Some of these Red Virginia grades give me a sourdough bread kind of vibe, and that is definitely coming through now. The sweetness and the richness are amping up a whole lot. There's a touch of warming spices on the palate and through the retrohale, and there's lots of smoke volume. It's very dense on the palate. This is a medium Virginia that I think is an all-day smoke, but it does have, in my opinion, just a hair over a medium-plus body.

It's remarkable what a technically single-component blend can be with just a couple of different really nice grades. Congratulations everybody. We made it all the way to autumn again, better known as Carolina Red Flake season. If you've never had a chance to try it, this is a great place to start. If you've been following the Carolina Red Flake saga for many years, like most of us have, this is not one to be missed. It's a really nice twist on a blend that's already pretty much everybody's favorite. See you guys next time.