Categories: Food & Wine

The Marlboro Virginia Blend: Chain Smokers Rejoice!

The distinctive, gold-trimmed platinum box is the first deviation from the signature Marlboro design. Even the top of the box bears the blue leaf stamp to the right rather than across the middle, as displayed on soft packs. Aside from the black “MARLBORO,” the rest of the lettering is burgundy.

The cigarette itself looks like…a cigarette. No fancy changes besides the platinum band at the base of the filter.

I purposely smoked two Virginia Blends before I even read the descriptive marketing phrases on the cigarette box. I wanted no power of suggestion clouding my mental capacity to judge the new addition to the plethora of Marlboro smokes. Unlike most consumer products, the absence of cigarette commercials eliminates their suggestive power over the cigarette smoker. So it was easy to experience the difference this single leaf blend purported.

To my delight, the flavor and inhalation were both smooth and mild. My lungs were not arrested by the typical asperity that normally impedes the smoking experience. As a habitual menthol lover, I am used to an extra amount of crystallizing lung pressure. Even with the brown sugar laced Marlboro 27s, I get that extra hacking the morning after; therefore, I was ready for some harsh ingredient to mar any chance at a deep drag.

Not so.

Upon lighting the third grit, I fancied a glance at the burgundy message on the back of the box: “VIRGINIA LEAF. 400 years ago perfected in Virginia–now grown around the world. Today, hand-selected Virginia tobaccos make our only single leaf blend unique. Enjoy the crisp, mellow taste and easy finish.”

There it is, in the last sentence. The power of suggestion exposed: “…crisp, mellow…easy.”

You have to be a connoisseur of flavor, of taste, to know what “crisp” means in terms of things not baked to a “crisp” in an oven. I am not inclined to believe I have the capacity for this nuance of crispness. However, I connected immediately to the “mellow” and “easy” descriptions. The mellowness fits the experience properly, as does the “easy finish.” Any chain smoker can attest to a certain roughness of a full flavor cigarette, a harshness that accompanies the pleasure of the addiction. It’s just part of the need for a good cigarette. It’s the missing element in smoking lights and ultra lights, which void all flavor, leaving a hardcore smoker unsatisfied to the last drag.

Marlboro Virginia Blends satisfy the full flavored expectation and, also, mellow out the roughness that gets a little old, even to the veteran chain smoker.

My wife, a smoker since she was a teenager, smoked a Virginia Blend that I lit for her. She hadn’t seen the pack and its suggestive message. She paused after a couple drags and said, “This is good. This is better than the reds.”

Usually, we both smoke the red Marlboro 100s. While I greatly enjoy the other newbie to the Marlboro family (Marlboro Smooths), my wife will only choke down a menthol if we’re short on change days before the next paycheck.

“Do you mind?” she asked honestly, for she rarely takes my cigarettes from me.

“Not at all.” With that, my first box of Virginia Blends disappeared!

The only drawback I see with the Virginia Blends is the illusion that they may be less harmful a cigarette, maybe causing those who wish to quit more reason not to quit. Maybe that was the intention of the Phillip Morris company. Who knows. I enjoy my nicotine habit too much to fret over sinister plots to keep us addicted.

As I said in my other cigarette article on Marlboro Smooths, smoking is not something any of us should be doing. It is a nasty, stinky, gratuitous habit. We who smoke are awful role models to the next generation of youth who should do as we say not as we do. Furthermore, for those of you reading this who cherish the thought of three extra years tacked on to your life, don’t smoke. Don’t come back to it because of my little article touting some new brand. Stay away and relish your freedom from this addiction. Leaves more grits for me!

On the other hand, if you are a proud smoker well over the age of thirty who is not a quitter, happily entrenched in your self-destructive behaviors, then go get yourself a pack of Marlboro Virginia Blends and enjoy the “crisp, mellow taste and easy finish” this new cancer stick has to offer!