Pipe Tobacco Review

Cornell & Diehl Good Morning

In response to the famous Dunhill (now Peterson) Early Morning Pipe, Cornell & Diehl released their own version of EMP at the Chicagoland Pipe Show “several years back” (Tobacco Reviews, 2020). Blended by Craig Tarler and Bill Runowski, the Good Morning blend is said to be a spot-on match to EMP. Some of you may have seen my ‘Pop-the-Top’ review of this blend on The Pipe Professor YouTube Channel a few weeks back. If not, feel free to watch the first impressions review of C&D Good Morning here. After smoking through ¾ of the tin, I feel I now have enough experience with the blend to give it a fair and just assessment. So, let’s go ahead and jump right in.

Info & Overview

Brand: Cornell & Diehl

Category: English

Blend Components: Virginia, Latakia, Orientals

Flavorings: None

Cut Type: Ribbon

Available Packaging: 50g tin

Price: $10.41 USD

Tin Date: 05/2020

On to the review…

From the Tin: Keen observers will note from my original impressions video review, that I had difficulty pinpointing specific descriptive attributes from the tobacco straight out of the tin. My hope was that as the tobacco had time to air out in the tin, something more would develop; and to my surprise, it did. After revisiting the blend over the course of a week, the tin note showed characteristics of heavy oak, burnt/charred wood, walnut, and dry hay. The tobacco is said to be ribbon cut; however, I was able to find chucks of flake tobacco throughout the ribbons. From the visual perspective, I would argue the blend is heavy on the Virginias when compared to its Latakia and Oriental counterparts.

Tasting Notes: Being hopeful that the tasting department for the tobacco would experience a similar positive uptick that the tin note did, I smoked C&D Good Morning in four different briar pipes and one cob. Unfortunately, the taste of the tobacco was overall dry and flat. As I stated in my YouTube review, the blend is nothing like Dunhill’s EMP. C&D Good Morning is very much a Virginia forward blend. In fact, there were several times I questioned if Latakia or Orientals were even present in the blend at all. The tobacco did show tasting notes of dry grasses, herbs, and smokey/burnt leaves with the overall strength of the blend being mild to medium. The room note was just “so so” and similar to the taste, reminded me of cigarette smoke, which I’m not a huge fan of. The tobacco did perform well, burning down to a nice grey/white ash. Overall, I enjoyed the blend the most in my Missouri Meerschaum Mark Twain as the corncob pipe added a nice supporting sweetness to the tobacco’s tasting profile.

Overall Impression: You may have guessed it, but this blend is not for me. When honestly reflecting on everything, I did have preconceived high hopes for the blend as it was supposed to be a Dunhill EMP match. Seeing as EMP is one of my all-time favorite tobacco blends (and I have smoked a lot of it), I can confidently say the current run/production of C&D’s Good Morning, is not even close to an EMP match. I’m not sure if something has changed with the blend over the years, but I will for sure not be purchasing any more in the future.

Tobacco Score: