Why Cellar and Age Tobacco?

I used to wonder what the hype was about as well until I bought a 3 year old tin of My Mixture and smoked it back to back to compare it to a newer tin. There is definitely a more refined taste out of the older tins. Im sold! I think that's the best way to tell IMO. Compare a new with an old and see how you like it.

I buy more tobacco than I smoke, so I age the tins by necessity. But yup, I know from experience, it improves.

Sometimes a little, sometimes like a transformation. If I were out of tobacco, I'd go ahead and pop that tin.

There are many reasons to cellar and age tobacco, and I would break them down as follows:
Why age tobacco:
1. Aging significantly improves the taste of virginia and oriental tobaccos. Latakia is muted through aging, and since I am not a huge Latakia maven that is not necessarily a bad thing. I love a good aged English blend where the flavours of the virginia and oriental tobaccos are heightened through fermentation while the latakia is more muted and smooth than it was when young. The impact of aging on burley and perique is more debatable.
Why cellar tobacco:
1. A hedge against general upward inflationary pressure on tobacco prices.
2. A response to the concern that existing state tobacco and sales taxes will be applied to internet tobacco sales by out-of-state vendors through the introduction of internet commerce legislation.
3. A response to the concern that tobacco taxes will rise in the future, as all sin taxes have a tendency to do (some may call this paranoia, but just because you are paranoid doesn't mean someone isn't following you)
4. A response to the concern that future legislation may restrict internet tobacco sales, thereby reducing access to a wide variety of blends.
5. A response to the concern that increased FDA regulation of pipe tobacco may result in certain blends being discontinued because they are no longer economically sustainable.
6. A response to a more general concern that one's favourite blends may be discontinued for reasons unrelated to increased regulation.
7. For pipe aficionados outside of the US, a response to the concern that future changes in their home country legislation and/or customs enforcement will make it increasingly difficult to import pipe tobacco across the border.

I agree with all that Peck wrote except.....the impact of perique is more debatable. I've had 20 yr old Vapers that were unbelievably good! Quote from GLP "Virginia blends with perique in them seem to have an almost immortal quality to them". Don't hesitate to cellar Vapers!!!

VAs can become sublime with age. Of course, some are better fresh and zesty. But aging won't make a good blend bad.
+1 on the Cumberland. 10-year old Cumberland is one of my favorite blends ever. I've had tin of fresh and it's not even close to the same thing -- much harsher, less fragrant, less sweet.

Jon11 - I agree with that, though some disagree and suggest it depends on the blend and what you prefer. Some suggest that in certain blends aging causes perique to become more "plumby" (if that is a word) or "jammy" (if that is a word) while others suggest that aging causes the perique to become more peppery or even bitter.

Do tobaccos purchased in bulk age as well as those purchased by the tin.

Do you store bulk vs tin tobacco the same way?

Bulk tobaccos age just as well as tinned tobaccos, if you put them in an air-tight mason jar, and leave them sealed. You don't want to jam pack the jars, though. Fill them about 90% or so, and place in a closet or a bin of some kind.

I buy a lot of bulk and tins, mostly to get me through lean $$$ months. But I have way more than I could reasonably smoke in 4-5 months stored up now, so now I am "aging" by default. But only a few things am I truly aiming to age on purpose. A few Virginia blends, and about 5 tins of Balkan.
About 5 months on can of Balkan Saseini did wonders for it in smoothing it, aged in the tin. I can only imagine that aged longer in bulk, or years in the tin, is only going to change it dramatically for the better.

I have gotten into the habit of buying closed tins with my bulk buys. This way i can age the tins and not even think about them While i smoke the bulk until they run out and then buy more with more tins and so on. I also take advantage when i can on sales thats if the sinister 6 don't get to them first then im just S.O.L.
I also have very little patients and very little time so my solution is to just stock up the cellar to the point were i couldn't smoke all of it even if i wanted to haha.

Dang Peck, you have that issue surrounded.
The only blends I age for the purpose of aging are Viriginas. I am still experimenting with aging Orientals, I had a bad experience with one that I aged, but it could be it was a bad egg when young.
I do not age my Latakia blends by choice, only for Peck's enumerated economic motivations. There are some blends where having a fresh tin for the Latakia's sake is much better than aged. Some like LEO or RRR are so weak in Latakia to start with it doesn't matter to me if it does fade. Of course weaker, aged Latakia favorites beats not being able to get old favorites every hand.

I forgot to add that I only aged Virginia blends I don't bother much aging aros and I don't smoke Latakia blends not my thing.

Hawke:
Conventional wisdom -- which I generally accept here -- is that three years is the minimum needed for a blend to really start to show some development. To me, six months is "fresh." (I recently was able to compare a new tin of a blend with a six-year-old version I smoked last year. It was like smoking two different blends: One "very good" and one "absolutely amazing.")
If you only smoke aromatics, aging will have very little, if any, effect. But if you enjoy non-aromatics, then you can expect to see significant changes with time. How much a blend changes depends on the blend, the "vintage" (since we're talking about an agricultural product that changes from season to season, year to year), and how well it's stored.
I've had blends that I thought had peaked after four years or so, due to the delicacy of some of the leaf. And I've had blends that were 10-30 years old that I thought I could have saved for another 10-20 years.
Why not mention some of the blends that you know "fresh." If I don't have an aged sample to send you for comparison, it's possible others here might. (I definitely get the "patience" thing!)
Bob

Tonight I will do just that I'll post all the blends I have and ask what the best aging time most have experienced with the blends.

I age all of my Virginia, Virginia/Perique and Virginia/Burley/Kentucky flakes. I have tins as old as 1997 and the difference is incredible. Virginia flakes will turn almost jet black after a decade or more. Escudo which is a Vaper becomes creamier and less peppery as the years go by. A vaper like Solani 633 does the opposite where the Perique becomes noticeably more peppery after a decade. I prefer to age my tobacco in their original tins, nothing like cracking a ten year old tin and marveling at the smell and taste of it.
I do age 5 different bulk blends, Stonehaven, Solani Silver Flake and Samuel Gawith Best Brown, Full Virginia and St James flakes. Solani Silver flake does come in a tin, but they are not vacuum sealed so it needs to be jarred when you get it.
If you have the resources then it would behoove you to start cellaring now. Prices will go up, states will want their cut from internet sales or they will just make it illegal to buy tobacco online and you will be stuck paying any state tobacco taxes( here in Florida the tax is 85% on the wholesale price), mfgs costs are always climbing and if the FDA gets involved then there will be plenty of blends that go the way of the Do Do.
All you have to do is look at what the rest of the world is paying for a tin of tobacco, Europe is about 30.00 a tin and this is what we in the states will be looking at sooner than later.

All you have to do is look at what the rest of the world is paying for a tin of tobacco, Europe is about 30.00 a tin and this is what we in the states will be looking at sooner than later.

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AMEN BROTHER...

Tobacco = $$$$$Moo. Cash Cow :wink: ...

The unfortunate part is that if it weren't for cigarettes, pipes would be normal recreational behaviour.
By my thinking people need to stop dying of lung cancer (cancer obviously connected by nicotine addiction, not random occurrences) before tobacco can be re-introduced as a normal consumer product again (free of special taxes and such, like coffee).
Sooo, after near total abolishment give it a hundred years or so. In the meantime, stock up!