Cigar Leaf and Red Virginia: What Are They Exactly?

[cobguy]

I just wax my own thighs ... you'd never know the difference! :mrgreen:
You might not get a reply to your PM.

You've never seen my waxed thighs! :rofl:

 

[jitterbugdude]

We all smoke Latakia but only master blenders and tobacco farmers will know the name of the woods they burn to prepare it.

Nonsense. The woods are commonly known. Why would a "master blender" have anymore special insight than anyone else?

a number of years back one of the cigarette companies thought that it would be a heck of a lot cheaper if we were to grow Turkish and Oriental tobaccos in the US. So they got seeds from a lot of the varietals, brought it back to the US and planted it and what they wound up with was Burley.

This is true but it only confirms the fact that if you want to grow Turkish you have to grow it like Turkish. It doesn't mean Turkish cannot be grown here. It has been successfully grown on large scale production, the first major company doing so in the 1920's in California.

I just suspect that they would all taste different to one and another.

Any differences would be so subtle that no- one would notice them especially when you add casing or topping to it.
A few years ago I grew Samsun-Maden here in the States. I traded some with a guy in Turkey that grew the exact same variety. With the exception of my leaf being noticeably bigger there was absolutely no difference in the taste.
A lot of the pipe smoking world runs on hype. Hype sells!

 

[mawnansmiff]

"With the exception of my leaf being noticeably bigger..."
Well it would be wouldn't it, it was American after all :wink:
Regards,
Jay.

 

[jvnshr]

You've never seen my waxed thighs! :rofl:

I am sorry, but is this pipesmagazine forum? :rofl:

 

[jvnshr]

Nonsense. The woods are commonly known. Why would a "master blender" have anymore special insight than anyone else?

Jitter, how many of us will know this? You are just one in a million that went that far. A master blender or a farmer would know because they are dealing with it professionally.

I have tried several times to make Latakia. All attempts have failed. For starters no one knows what variety of Turkish was used for Syrian Latakia. The Shek-el-bent variety is just an unsupported rumor that keeps getting circulated via the internet. Cyprian Latakia is pretty much known to be a Smyrna type tobacco although there are some that say it is actually Yayladag.
With that said, the main flavor constituent (from burning the wood of Pistacia Lentiscuc)of Cyprian Latakia is Mastic, comprising about 90% of the creosote. Other minor contributors are Myrtle and Stone Pine.
With that in mind I've tried spraying Smyrna with Mastic Oil. The result was not good. I've smoked Smyrna in a smoker. It tasted like Dark Fired Tobacco. I've also sprayed tobacco with Cade oil aka Juniper Tar. I did this based on the fact that Syrian is smoked with the wood of Juniperus Oxycedrus aka Juniper. It did not taste good.
My last experiment (not yet conducted) is to smoke some Turkish with Mastic Gum. My thought is that the heat would melt the mastic and it would be absorbed into the leaf. I do not have a lot of faith that this will work though.
The trick would be to import some Pistachio wood and burn that in a smoker. The problem with using a smoker though is you need to have some way of adding water (constantly). Without water the leaf turns super crispy dry.

Just for the info, the post above was written by Jitter few months ago.