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The samples we get usually include a couple kilos of strips (whole leaf thrashed, which is how it comes when we buy 200kg cases; think big pieces of leaf, minus major stems), some shag-cut loose, and some (6 or 8) rolled cigarettes (which I think they just do on a little cigarette rolling machine like you can get in a tobacconist or, I guess, Wal-Mart). The first round of tasting really is just to exclude those things we know won't work, so we'll smoke some in a pipe and smoke part or all of one of the cigarettes. If we think it'll work, or we're otherwise intrigued, we'll smoke more in pipes. If we're seriously considering it, we'll process some of the strips into ribbon or flake in-house, so we have a closer sense of what the finished product might be like and how it might blend, but that's kind of a lot of work, so if we can easily exclude options early in the process, we do so (and, again, we like to smoke pipe tobacco, but this ain't the same thing; it can be an interesting process, but it's not how anyone would want to smoke tobacco).
More to your question though, I've never thought about the rolling papers. The cigarettes are a really easy way to separate what we want from what we know we don't want. Smoking that way isn't terribly pleasant, though.
Sykes
