In a discussion thread about Grousemoor, @UB 40 made the following comment:
“When it comes to wine nobody would rant about different nuances in taste from year to year. Try some of Chateau Latour, Chateau Margaux or Chateau Haut Brion through the years. And even once bottled they change some for the better, some not so.
“Tobaccos and its ingredients put into „sauces“ are also a product of nature, they change in a similar way. Still the rants are going on. And of course the old mixtures, that aren’t available to most of us are considered the best. Praised like heavenly Ambrosia in the Olymp of smoke.
“Every few weeks people are nagging that Hoggarth/ Gawith isn’t doing a good job any more, rusty tins, no sauce, wrong recipes, going commercial …
“Every fresh tin of G/H I opened in the small spaceship of my daily tobacco consumption really has been an experience on its own, not found in so many other choices. Each reminding me of an art in tobacco blending, with skills grown in centuries that might be forgotten in a few decades.
“Maybe we tend to dismiss the things we can get, than to accept and appreciate the qualities ’and now, and here.’”
I’m wondering if @UB 40 is really onto something.
Given how over the last 20 years or so we’ve lost Syrian latakia entirely, seen Yenidje go from commonplace to rare, and watched as any number of blends shifted from one manufacturer to another (and another…), I’m wondering if it would all make much more sense to look at each year’s iteration of a tinned blend not as the continuation of an unbroken chain of recipe and familiar flavor but more as simply the most recent vintage of that blend, the current interpretation of a certain style.
I used “tinned blend” above because I feel that if unerring consistency—for years if not decades—is desired, then bulk aromatics should be your choice, much like bulk wines that highlight consistency as a strength. (Stokkebye’s Nougat tastes exactly the same today as it did when I smoked it as North Sea in the 1980s, when it was the most popular “house” blend sold at Tinder Box shops nationwide.) Yet in vintage wines, individual vintage-distinct character seems to be the hallmark of some of the finest bottles. Maybe it would be helpful—and perhaps less frustrating—to look at tinned tobaccos in the same light.
“When it comes to wine nobody would rant about different nuances in taste from year to year. Try some of Chateau Latour, Chateau Margaux or Chateau Haut Brion through the years. And even once bottled they change some for the better, some not so.
“Tobaccos and its ingredients put into „sauces“ are also a product of nature, they change in a similar way. Still the rants are going on. And of course the old mixtures, that aren’t available to most of us are considered the best. Praised like heavenly Ambrosia in the Olymp of smoke.
“Every few weeks people are nagging that Hoggarth/ Gawith isn’t doing a good job any more, rusty tins, no sauce, wrong recipes, going commercial …
“Every fresh tin of G/H I opened in the small spaceship of my daily tobacco consumption really has been an experience on its own, not found in so many other choices. Each reminding me of an art in tobacco blending, with skills grown in centuries that might be forgotten in a few decades.
“Maybe we tend to dismiss the things we can get, than to accept and appreciate the qualities ’and now, and here.’”
I’m wondering if @UB 40 is really onto something.
Given how over the last 20 years or so we’ve lost Syrian latakia entirely, seen Yenidje go from commonplace to rare, and watched as any number of blends shifted from one manufacturer to another (and another…), I’m wondering if it would all make much more sense to look at each year’s iteration of a tinned blend not as the continuation of an unbroken chain of recipe and familiar flavor but more as simply the most recent vintage of that blend, the current interpretation of a certain style.
I used “tinned blend” above because I feel that if unerring consistency—for years if not decades—is desired, then bulk aromatics should be your choice, much like bulk wines that highlight consistency as a strength. (Stokkebye’s Nougat tastes exactly the same today as it did when I smoked it as North Sea in the 1980s, when it was the most popular “house” blend sold at Tinder Box shops nationwide.) Yet in vintage wines, individual vintage-distinct character seems to be the hallmark of some of the finest bottles. Maybe it would be helpful—and perhaps less frustrating—to look at tinned tobaccos in the same light.
