While I still lack the appreciation of those nasty codger blends, I have been smoking mostly Stokkebye's Cube Cut, which is a simple half burley, half Virginia blend. I have an estimated 400 lbs in the cellar aging. I could, and sometimes still do pull out some of the 2013 blends to smoke. But, in all honesty, I really don't think aging tobaccos is as fantastic as it has been reported. Maybe they all just need a few more decades to age, ha ha.
But, meanwhile I can easily find a few pounds of a simple, enjoyable burley blend, and smoke it while these fine, expensive, hard to find Virginias and VaPers age more.
I had thought about making a post about how we've all been duped, but the forum is full of bright-eyed younger pipe smokers, intent that a few years makes their tobacco like nirvana, a transcendental experience. I was once one of them. I actually stopped posting for a while this year, because I just felt the forum was mainly a brainwashing tool for manufacturers to push out this idea that aging makes their products 100xs better, which it doesn't. Then add in the bullshit about the FDA putting a stop to new blends, which it didn't.
I have my stockpile. And, I am not about to go chasing after new crap that is exactly the same as everything else out there, like a 14 year old girls after a new boy band. It's absurd.
So, I just smoke, sometimes an aged blend, which is no better than the new stuff, but mostly these easy to get delicious blends. I'll let someone else go about shouting that "The Emperor Wears Has No Clothes." I also feel no debt or mandatory gratitude for tobacco manufacturers. I give them my money, they've got a LOT of my money, and that's it. I will let the bootlickers suck up to these companies THAT return absolutely no loyalty to us.
So yeh, even without smoking those crappy, aromatic, nasty codger blends, I am an old codger. Let the suckers chase the unicorns.