And the most ridiculed while in production. Many of us were poked at for loving ketchup and vinegar when we spoke of McClelland.
MClelland Cellars
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Not sure why that's a bad thing. More than 50% of my cellar is C&D. Many of my high grade pipes are dedicated to individual C&D blends.
Ridiculed or not, when we started smoking, it was out of production and talked about like it was amazing. So if we wanted to try it, we HAD to pay premium.
Nothing is wrong with C&D per say, but I think most would agree it is a poor substitute for something like Christmas Cheer or Frog Morton.
Exactly.
Now that you are smoking, wait until you see blend not highly sought after go out of production and see what happens. Even Christmas Cheer that was annually released in July would be on online shop sites well into February when I would buy up several tins during the IPSD sale. Frog Morton, seldom talked about, suddenly became tge second coming when discontinued. Don't buy into the hype, it was mainly lack of availability that conjured the majority of the love.
Don't blame you for wanting to try it. Open up your wallet and buy some. I think one or two people have some for sale on this site right now. There are numerous sources for purchasing it if you don't mind the cost.
While C&D makes a lot of great products, it is a piss poor substitute for the McClelland Virginias. That doesn't make C&D unique, if you're a McClelland fan boy, everyone else is a piss poor substitute. Saying Sutliff 515C is a near replica is like buying a hamburger from McDonalds, spraying it with steak sauce and telling someone now you have a replica of a Morton's Porterhouse.
I think the point is, the available blends of today are destined to be the unicorns of tomorrow.
At which point I will understand if someone new to the hobby wants to try some and has to pay extra to get it. Instead of going on about how I wouldn't touch it if it was "anything above retail"
*My* point is that not all of have tried it. So get out of here with the pretentiousness of having smoked it when it was around and having hoarded enough to not have to buy it for its marked up prices.
Wow! You just revealed Morton's secret!
Jesse, I’ve seen his bike.
A unicorn could never muster that thing.
I think we're already unicorns.
Nobody loves you until they've lost you. About the only parts of McClelland's production that anyone mentioned were the Frogs, the Cheers, and Dark Star. H&H Anniversary Kake got more attention. And nobody talked about C&D, except derisively, until they really upped their game with a few outstanding blends and the small batch products.
When the news got out that McClelland was closing down, there was a general gnashing of teeth and a rending of sack cloth. All these people who never gave them a second thought were wailing like their families had been massacred. Geezers tried to commit suicide by leaping off their lawn chairs.
People lust after what they can't have, whether it's McClellands, Esoterica, or some other hard to find blend. Since it's scarce it must be miles above all else. Suddenly it's the stuff of legend when a few months before it was the stuff of yawns.
The insanity over Esoterica is another case in point. People get tied up in knots because they think it's the GREATEST tobacco on the face of the earth. It must be. Otherwise why would it be so hard to get. So when there's an Esoterica drop it becomes a frenzy, not unlike piranha feeding on a cow. But it's not that hard to get when it drops, IF you're willing to call B&Ms and not rely on a few
Back in 2006 nobody was talking about Esoterica. Then German's missed a few shipments and the panic hasn't quit since.
I loved McClelland's matured red Virginias, which nobody else can make, and I stocked up on them. But I didn't ever get too deeply into McClelland's other product line, even though I knew months in advance of the announcement that they were closing up. I bought tins of McClelland this and that because it became now or never. But I didn't buy a lot of it, just enough to satisfy my curiosity and have a couple of extra tins down the road.
And much as I love McClelland Virginias, I'm not spending $80 to $125 for a tin of it. It's not THAT good. Nor is Esoterica THAT good, but people will drop hundreds of dollars on a bag of Penznace or Stonehaven because they've bought into the fantasy BS brought about by it's unavailability. There are other producers of fine Virginia blends, like Sam Gawith, Gawith & Hoggarth, and HU, just to name three, and you can buy those at regular retail.
With the exception of McClelland's Grand Orientals, I didn't think their English/Oriental/Balkan offerings were particularly good. I recently gave away the tins of the Frogs that I had sitting in one of my bins. I'd tried them and had come to realize that I wasn't ever going to actually smoke them. They went to a fellow I know who likes them, and he sent me a pound tin of Haddo's Delight from 2011, which he doesn't care for and I really like. Money and value didn't figure into it. Having what you like to smoke did.
All that said, if you want to satisfy your curiosity, rock on.
What blows me away is the recent
”Sold Out” listings of McClelland blends of old Green Label blends.
For the past few years these blends could hardly catch market prices.
Yep, as someone who has smoked a lot of McClelland, you can say that.
And having smoked multiple Esoterica blends I can agree with you about Esoterica.
But I'm not going to sit here and tell people who haven't smoked Esoterica how I won't touch the stuff if it's above retail because I already have a closet full at home. Why would I? What good does that do? It is pretentious and makes other people feel silly for spending the money to try something they never have.
A bit of Christmas Cheer, 2015 & 2020 left. At one point I’d had a fairly nice size stash. But, I decided to sell it off and concentrate on blends that are readily available. ?
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McClelland got a lot more reputable after they went out of business.
Like @Chasing Embers said, there is a lot of equally excellent stuff out there that is reasonably available (if not outright readily available). I say this as someone who has a number of tins of Christmas Cheer and Frog Morton Cellar and was smoking a pipe for at least several years before McClelland closed up shop. They were a great company, but with plenty of equals.
I don't understand the problem. If someone wants to get together with some friends and pitch in and buy one of these to try, then go for it. I too have all I want of Esotericas, nor would I pay above retail. But yet, I think that paying $200 for an Esoterica is more pretentious than having had the foresight to pick up some from a B&M for retail.
Nothing wrong with buying a hard to find. And, I don't think Sable is saying that people shouldn't. Something is getting screwed up in the dialog.
Exactly.
At the same time, those who missed out on McClelland didn't miss anything super magical. If Samuel Gawith Full Virginia Flake went out of production today, it would probably be even more legendary than the McClelland Virginias. FVF is almost universally praised among Virginia smokers as an excellent VA flake, more so than McClelland blends were praised when they were in production.