Next morning update: after gentle rehydration overnight I was able to try some of the toasted mixture. It smells, in short, bad. Theres an overwhelming scent of dried grass and stale dope leaf. Theres a subtle hint of sweet VA in there, but it comes with a burnt note. Admittedly, in the pipe it tastes fine, relatively speaking. Much like it did before but noticably milder and somewhat bland. I might pass it off to a mate who smokes cigs which seem to be made of similar tobacco, heh.

I feel that the temperature was just too high, perhaps a lower temperature might allow the sugars to develop without burning and leeching the important oils from the leaf.