Watch City's "Rouxgaroux"

First order with company - terrific service, thank you! - and this famous blend truly does stand out!! It's a uniue powerhouse of flavor, that is just excellently blended and brought together...remarkable stuff!

Luckily I was able to grab 4 oz !!! I was looking forward to this release. This blend was surprising to me . Upon the charring and false light it was a little unremarkable. I thought “is this it?”… well I was wrong. Yet another awesome blend by Watch city. So tasty . The smoke evolves through the bowl. While maintaining that beautiful sweetness from the Virginias with an underlying spiciness during the experience. It truly saddens me to know this blend has a finite life . It’s a must try while it’s still around.

The bag notes were sweet raisin and figgy goodness, had a very pleasant vinegar scent that permeates throughout. I can tell there was a lot of care and love put into this product. It smells very rich, and almost takes you back in time. This batch will age beautifully no doubt. I took an immediate sampling of the goods with my Missouri Meerschaum short stop taster pipe. The flavors start out with that raisin bran sweetness on the char. The sweet and sour vinegar keep things tantalizing. towards the half way point of the short stop, it had taken on notes of spices, like pepper and cinnamon, with an oaky finish. Shit is good, and it will only get better, no wonder it is renowned. Very glad to have gotten to experience this classic before it's gone.

There’s a reason this sells out in twelve minutes—Rouxgaroux isn’t hype; it’s the perfect Va/Per. Some reviews call it mild or understated, but that misses what makes this blend so special. It’s not trying to shout—it blooms. This is what I imagine when people talk about a Virginia/Perique blend coming to full fruition. Balanced, refined, and mature right out of the tin—yet you can tell it’ll age like a dream. It’s not a “power” blend; it’s a complete one. Rouxgaroux doesn’t dominate—it draws you in. Each bowl feels deliberate, patient, and deeply satisfying. It’s flavorful rather than spicy, with a quiet richness that feels true to its Cajun name. For my palate, it’s among the very best modern VaPers I’ve smoked.

Very nice! So glad I got some!

Well I can’t add much on top of what the majority has already said. I am grateful that I got the opportunity to at least try it and feel fortunate at that. IMO it reminds me of Viprati but smoother very good VA/Per

Very Good VA/PER--love the Smell of that vinegar when I open the jar. Finally got my hands on 4oz of this stuff this year and I'm so glad I didn't wait. Thanks Ernie

If you’re looking for a mild Virginia blend with a whisper of Perique, run screaming in terror from the Rouxgaroux! If you seek tobacco bursting with expertly blended flavors, this is a VaPer without equal, imho. Woody, floral, tangy, toasted, earthy, peppery, and not with an insignificant dose of nicotine, Rouxgaroux will satisfy in more ways than one. The mouth watering notes of deep red wine and vinegar gently tickle one’s tastebuds with every puff, and it never grows tiresome. This is a “must buy a pound twice a year” tobacco that towers above nearly, if not all its competitors.

Fabulous stuff! Very similar to the upmarket VA-Per blends from McClelland. 10/10!!

You can tell right away that Ernie put time into Rouxgaroux, sourcing quality leaf, applying his casings, playing with aromas, arranging and rearranging the chords. The man is an artist. These tobaccos are all very nice, expertly blended to form a smooth, flavorful harmony. You cannot dispute the quality. I was troubled, however, by the blend's overwhelming acidity. The tin note is almost pure vinegar/acetic acid. Acetic does something very interesting here, besides acting as a preservative/antimicrobial. It adds a feeling of significant strength and body without coating your whole mouth in tar and nicotine the way stronger blends do. It's rather brilliant. (Cheers to Ernie, I have not seen this done before. He's the Heisenberg, a.k.a., Walter White, of boutique micro-blending.) The acid makes the smoke feel "fuller", adding weight and texture, giving it such a substantial mouthfeel without blowing out your palate. Dousing your tobacco in vinegar is something of an acquired taste — every single puff tastes like it has salad dressing on it, and it does ghost the pipe — but it is not a gimmicky innovation. Vinegar has been used in pipe tobacco for a long time, having featured prominently in many of the "codger blends" cherished by generations of Americans in bygone eras. Look to Cringle Flake, for example. Sutliff uses vinegar as a flavoring agent in that one, paying homage to blends from the 1800s which used it as a preservative. I was not a huge fan of Cringle Flake the first two or three times I tried it, because I couldn't wrap my head around the notion of vinegar in my pipe, and I'm still not wild about it today. But Sutliff uses a lot less vinegar than I find in Rouxgaroux, so Ernie is up to his old bold tricks again. Maybe my pound came from the bottom of the stock, but it is *f u l l* of vinegar. Just one bowl left acid burns on my tongue. This is not the classic tongue-bite, but genuine epithelial damage from concentrations of acid too high for my body's preferred pH levels. The burns were not deep and they didn't last more than a day, but it was still rather startling to wake up in the morning and see my tongue in such a state. The Virginia blend has some great nuance, definitely something to ponder and contemplate. The Perique was a bit on the lighter side for my taste, and I kept finding myself wishing for more. We don't get a components list with Rouxgaroux but I detect some light Cavendish in the mix, which is a good choice, a nice support to the main characters. Overall, it's a sophisticated, eccentric, wild-man type blend, which, I am learning, is what we should expect from Ernie Q. Despite the burns, I like it. I'm going to play around with a few approaches to solving the acid problem, then I'll really be able to enjoy it. I'll start with filters, balsa, charcoal, meerschaum, etc., and I'll experiment with drying time. When I break it down into smaller jars for aging, I'll leave a couple unsealed for a day or two to see if I can get some of the acetic to dissipate or evaporate. When I have some news I'll revisit and update my review.