With so many others having folded or sold, just saying...
At Least There's Still K&K...
- Thread starter jbfrady
- Start date
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Kohlhase & Kopp. They produce many brands, but they're not necessarily one of the biggest They make several Cobblestones, HU, Robert McConnell, Rattray's (I believe), Fribourg & Treyer, etc. They also just released Per Jensen's new line.
Okay fine, maybe somebody murdered the Kohlhase, but they didn't kill the deputy...
They're now only Kopp, and they make a ton of blends under the different labels they bought over the years. Their quality used to be pretty good, but it's slipped, like everywhere else.
I get that. The decreased demand has certainly created a slump, but their price and quality still seem reasonable for the modern market.
Wasn't that what Humphrey Bogart told Ingrid Bergman in this scene from Casablanca?
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I see what you did there.........Kopp = deputy.
Now that there’s a thread about this, anyone notice since Kolhase left Kopp the increased availability in certain blends? Example: McConnell’s Red Virginia, Scottish Cake, Marlin Flake, Etc. Those seem to be always available where as before they were a few times a year kind of occurance. Anyone notice any changes? I purchased all of the above and was wondering.
A lot of K blends have been changed. I've posted several reviews on this forum of blends that have been changed in the last few years by this company for those who have not seen them. They aren't the only company who has done this: Esoterica and several of the San Gawith blends like FVF and SJF are different now. For one reason or another, e.g. availability or price, the red Virginia in many blends has been replaced by orange Virginia. And Peter Heinrich's Dark Strong hasn't had DFK in at least three years.
Likely, most of them, because the Virginia base that gets flavored changed around 2020. One of my last purchases was a bag of Dunbar from 2020, and both the topping was off and the underlying blend, which was harmonious, had a really discordant quality. Picking through the component leaf I found a tough stringy Virginia that hadn't been in earlier editions, and which looked similar to the leaf that K&K had introduced into some of the HU blends when they started tasting off. I was aware of the substitutions picking up steam after 2018, but Germain's had seemed pretty solid. Then blam. Same with Tillbury, same with Dorchester when I sampled them.
Of course, that base blend will have been changed since, so maybe it's less bad, or maybe even better, if different. I'm no longer buying it, so who knows at this point. I wouldn't be spending any serious money on Esoterica at this point, not that I ever had to.
I did not like the changes. Fortunately for me, I have enough of the "good" stuff cellared that I don't care.
The reality is that there are widespread changes going on as sources for leaf change. A lot of growers have moved on to other crops. Manufacturers will do what they can with what hey find. That said, they will also do what they can to save a few pennies and that shows up in the smoke.
New smokers won't know the difference. Long term smokers will talk about how tobaccos started really going downhill in the 1990's and how most of today's stuff is crap.
Bottom line, if you're enjoying what you're smoking, that's what matters.
Of those I have tried: Dunbar, Dorchester, Tilbury and Stonehaven. For the first three, it's the lower quality Virginia and weaker toppings, especially true of Dorchester and Tilbury. For Stonehaven, the topping isn't the same nor are the constituent tobaccos, which lack the depth that the pre-2021 versions had. That includes the burleys. My guess is that since the Virginias were changed in these blends then they likely were changed in their other blends.
So what you're saying is... the $500-per-bag going rate on tinbids may not be a direct reflection of quality... 🫠
Yep. More a reflection of popular delusion and the madness of crowds. I wouldn't pay a plugged nickel for any of it that's newer than 2020-21.
As P. T. Barnum said, "There's a sucker born every minute." and, "Every crowd has a silver lining."
Joking of course. Still, I can appreciate that answer
