Official Announcement From McClelland's

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ray47

Lifer
Jul 10, 2015
2,451
5,610
Dalzell, South Carolina
released by Mars Cigars:
mars cigars & pipes

42 mins ·

As many of you know. McClelland is closing up their business. Here is the official announcement:

McClelland Tobacco Company
February 28, 2018

The McClelland Tobacco Company is closing after 40 years. We want to thank all the retailers and pipe smokers for their support and efforts to spread their appreciation of our pipe tobaccos, taking us from a very modest beginning in Grandpa McClelland’s basement in the Fall of 1977 to a company with a worldwide reputation for quality.

We have made our pipe tobaccos – Virginias, Oriental Mixtures, Aromatics, etc. – from the highest grades of leaf and strip tobaccos because of their basic richness and natural sweetness. That has been the beauty of McClelland and that is now the problem. We can no longer access tobacco of the quality we need. The time-honored, labor intensive processes at the farm are disappearing. The aging of leaf over several summers to mellow in “sweats” is largely a thing of the past. We need “old school” methods at every stage before manufacturing to make it possible for McClelland to draw from the leaf the flavors that have been our hallmark. Without the supportive infrastructure our government used to provide, a small company such as ours cannot continue. We might have limped along with lesser leaf but nobody would have been happy with the resulting products and we would have been ashamed of them.

We have sold down all the inventory that we have been able to produce with the finest leaf. We want to thank you, our customers, and thank our great employees/friends who have been so capable and conscientious and thank our leaf suppliers who have made extraordinary effort to search out the finest leaf possible for us for 40 years. We will miss McClelland and our daily contacts with our friends in the pipe community. We feel privileged to have been part of this wonderful world of the pipe for so long. The finest people we know have been and are pipe and tobacco people, and we hope to keep up our contacts as we move on to the next phase of life.

We wish everybody good luck and good fortune.
Mike and Mary McNiel

 

midwestpipesmoker70

Can't Leave
Nov 28, 2011
431
433
IL
Standing ovation :clap: I will greatly enjoy my cellared McClelland's blends over the next several years. I would say this is closure my friends. :D :puffy:

 

bluegrasspipe

Part of the Furniture Now
Jan 13, 2017
621
192
:clap: I am really happy I have more McClelland in my cellar than anything else. Cheers and thank you for all the great blends!!

 

herrpfeifen

Lurker
Feb 28, 2018
33
0
Now I'm just depressed again. I shouldn't be alone right now. Somebody please send me a tin of Samovar to keep me company.

 

cohibajoe

Part of the Furniture Now
Mar 2, 2018
722
1,165
Branchburg, NJ
Very Sad News indeed. I have been calling many shops the past 3 days..and I do not want to see the CC

bill....I will be fine and I know Trades and For Sale will be here.

 
Dec 24, 2012
7,195
456
Can someone explain this part of the statement to me:
Without the supportive infrastructure our government used to provide, a small company such as ours cannot continue. We might have limped along with lesser leaf but nobody would have been happy with the resulting products and we would have been ashamed of them.
What did the government do previously in terms of "infrastructure" that it stopped doing?

 

brian64

Lifer
Jan 31, 2011
9,604
14,672
What did the government do previously in terms of "infrastructure" that it stopped doing?
Probably related to the following statement posted in the OP on the other thread:
The removal of government price supports, the farmer buyouts, the demise of the auction system,
http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/mcclelland-were-just-going-to-close-the-doors

 

mso489

Lifer
Feb 21, 2013
41,210
60,433
A dignified statement and a heartfelt farewell: Brava and Bravo. I'll miss the gilded whale breaching in the moonlight and the old frog sipping wine in his grotto.

 

sablebrush52

The Bard Of Barlings
Jun 15, 2013
19,632
44,863
Southern Oregon
jrs457.wixsite.com
Without the supportive infrastructure our government used to provide
Yep, no more farm subsidies or price supports. Auction system gone the way of the dodo. Farmers are abandoning tobacco for more profitable crops.
I was chatting with a tobacconist this morning about the situation. They make a lot of their own blends and he was telling me how the quality of what he's seeing has been decreasing over the last five years, offering specific examples of components available to him that aren't what they used to be.

 

jpmcwjr

Moderator
Staff member
May 12, 2015
24,570
27,081
Carmel Valley, CA
Wouldn't it be nice if the remaining top blenders got together and contracted with some of the best growers to produce crops of very high quality, for which the blenders would pay a bit more, but they- and we- would have supreme tobaccos and blends available??

 

sweetbriar

Lurker
Feb 15, 2011
25
5
sad news. Of course I wish I had more McClelland's tins cellared, but will savour the ones I do have even more.

good luck, McNeils and thank you !!
sweetbriar

 
May 3, 2010
6,423
1,461
Las Vegas, NV
I'm greatly saddened because this year was going to be the year I was going to dive into McClelland's VAs. Also, Holiday Spirit is/was a Christmas staple in my rotation. That blend will be greatly missed. Glad that they stuck to their guns and closed the doors instead of putting out an inferior product just to make money. You don't see that kind of commitment to quality much these days.

 
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