With so many people doing the winery vacation packages, wouldn't it be cool if there were places that you could book a weekend, where you could walk about the rows of tobacco, fine meals, scenic tobacco barns, aging casks of tobacco, fine dining, and quaint rooms and places to relax with smoking permitted anywhere on the property? I could see small blender/growers, specializing in a fine single leaf Virginia, with a few oriental blends on the side. Something like a McCrannies. Having done a couple of winery vacations, I think it would be a great idea to visit a place where tobacco is grown, packaged, and aged. A place with a bar/coffee shop, and a small pipe and cigar shop, maybe a few hand rolled cigars to expand the interest.
You could wake up and watch the growers top the plants, gather leafs, roll cigars. You could walk into the shop and buy an aged Virginia and a new pipe to relax on the rocking chair on the porch or set in the coffee shop and enjoy a cup. Ride a bike through the trails in the field, a fine meal, and rest in a B&B style room. Taste testing blends, years, and learn about flue-cure verses flake or air cure or natural aged leaf.
Then you could pack up and drive to the next small tobacco farm to experience a different grower/blender.
We've been kicking around the idea of using a few acres of family farm land in the Western NC mountains to do something similar. We could just buy out our allotments and just start farming new crops of Virginias and a few orientals where we used to grow burleys. But, with the frugality of much of this new wave of pipe smokers and the restrictions on new blenders entering the market, it just seems a pipe dream. I know that wine is also strictly regulated, but it may be the limited consumers of pipes and cigars in comparison to wine drinkers that may be the biggest obstacle. But, it's a dream. And, it's a shame that we don't see more small production single leaf blenders entering the market. As of now, we are limited to the few brands that we have and their cased and/or blended Virginias focused more on creating a "consistent" product verses what McCrannies is doing with single crops.
:::Sigh::: Anyways, it would just be nice to see what is happening in beers and wines start to happen to tobaccos. It would be nice to have something closer to the wine market happen to tobaccos, instead of being stuck with so many Boone's farm varieties of choices on the market. Pipe dreams... ::
You could wake up and watch the growers top the plants, gather leafs, roll cigars. You could walk into the shop and buy an aged Virginia and a new pipe to relax on the rocking chair on the porch or set in the coffee shop and enjoy a cup. Ride a bike through the trails in the field, a fine meal, and rest in a B&B style room. Taste testing blends, years, and learn about flue-cure verses flake or air cure or natural aged leaf.
Then you could pack up and drive to the next small tobacco farm to experience a different grower/blender.
We've been kicking around the idea of using a few acres of family farm land in the Western NC mountains to do something similar. We could just buy out our allotments and just start farming new crops of Virginias and a few orientals where we used to grow burleys. But, with the frugality of much of this new wave of pipe smokers and the restrictions on new blenders entering the market, it just seems a pipe dream. I know that wine is also strictly regulated, but it may be the limited consumers of pipes and cigars in comparison to wine drinkers that may be the biggest obstacle. But, it's a dream. And, it's a shame that we don't see more small production single leaf blenders entering the market. As of now, we are limited to the few brands that we have and their cased and/or blended Virginias focused more on creating a "consistent" product verses what McCrannies is doing with single crops.
:::Sigh::: Anyways, it would just be nice to see what is happening in beers and wines start to happen to tobaccos. It would be nice to have something closer to the wine market happen to tobaccos, instead of being stuck with so many Boone's farm varieties of choices on the market. Pipe dreams... ::