French Tobacco Recommendations

[mso489]

I'm having difficulty digesting that France, with its historical tobacco pipe industry, has limited choice of pipe tobacco blends. Semois from Belgium is certainly a pleasing choice to me, but you don't have to go to Europe to get it these days. Austria and The Netherlands have some pleasant pouch blends which I have received as gifts, and some, like Borkum, seem better than the same brands in the U.S. But that France, with its cultivated pipe industry in St. Claude, should have a spare pipe tobacco market is puzzling. 'jay, let us know how the St. Claude blend goes, when you decide to try it.

 

[armonts]

It is because of all these shit laws (in all cases), the minority that imposes its loie that everyone follows as sheep ...

Since you can not smoke a pipe anywhere except in your garage and it takes time, forcing sales of pipes and tobacco fall. :roll:

The remaining fans complain but it does not interfere trade.
However, before there were all kinds of pipes everywhere in France but only 3 or 4 brands of tobacco always a little identical on the basis of "scaferlati corporal" more or less strong.

(Apart from all aromatic imports)

 

[lestrout]

yo mso
The late, great Bob Runowski told me at Morley's that the raison behind the disparity of a great country with an enormous history with carving pipes having such a paucity of pipe tobaccos was that the French government owned the pipe tobacco industry, and the moribund bureaucrats never rose to upgrading the level of the the product line. After all, they had no competition. Now, before anybody leaps all over this as another political screed against 'liberals', Bob, I believe, was a firm South Philly Democrat and struck me as a pretty stereotypical 'liberal'.
hp

les

 

[PaulTheScandinavian]

Recently I had received some few pouches of Italian domestic' blends (e 6,50 50gr)and those have lots in common taste and flavour-wise with the abovementioned French blends although I'm finding the Italian' cut is somewhat coarser.

 

[jaytex1969]

Les, your post was partisan free until the last sentence.
Most all agree that government is usually inefficient, regardless of "sides" chosen.
Your last sentence, however, veers into YOUR partisanship.
I agree, it's very odd that France has such an undeveloped pipe tobacco culture. If we're not careful, the "state sanctioned reduced nicotine smoking product" will be all we have available soon enough.

 

[jpmcwjr]

There was, a year ago, this shop on Rue Washington, not far from the Champs Élysée. Never got there when it was open.

 

[hoosierpipeguy]

I'd say save your money and purchase another tin of the Potlatch that's on sale. Once you have the tobacco from France, the memory of it coming from there won't overcome crap flavor.

 

[lazar]

It's the kind of tobacco you'd smoke while standing beneath a street lamp in the fog, if standing beneath a street lamp in the fog was all you had to do...

Nice noir-ish description. ;-)

 

[armonts]

lestrout :

" he raison behind the disparity of a great country with an enormous history with carving pipes having such a paucity of pipe tobaccos was that the French government owned the pipe tobacco industry, and the moribund bureaucrats never rose to upgrading the level of the the product line. After all, they had no competition."

..........................
That's right, it was the SEITA state thing, which became Altadis and privatized in 1995 and a subsidiary after the Imperial Tobacco group (English).

But from 1976, and from the common market, they were crushed by mass-produced and more-sold American products.
And currently with state taxes that drive up the price of tobacco monstrously to discourage people (the poor ...) it's suicidal for producers and importers. :?

 

[mso489]

To accentuate the incongruity. consider the quality of French factory pipes, with so many brands -- Chacom, BC, Villiard, Genod, and many more -- all tastefully designed, expertly drilled, carefully finished and fitted. Dollar for dollar, franc for franc, euro for euro, they are right up there with Italian and Danish pipes. France established briar as the premier pipe material, and most of the classic "English" shapes of pipes originated in France. I like to think French pipe smokers can arrange for friends from adjoining countries to bring in "personal use" tins, tubs, bags, etc., of blends in permissible amounts, or to bring them home as tourists -- but I don't really know if that works or is permitted. The magic of telling other people what to do in their lives is enchanting, with many rationalizations about the great good you are doing the oppressed citizenry.

 

[virginialover]

Not to worry, the French with their Révolution française invented Marxism/communism before it was cool. They implicitly know what's good for them and the rest of humanity. :D

 

[mso489]

I like France, in general, despite my unending unsuccessful efforts to learn their language from high school through late in my working life. But it is true French academe has hatched some awful influences. Jean Paul Sartre was one of their primo intellectuals for much of the 20th Century, and was involved with the French resistance during World War II, but along the way, as a professor of philosophy, some of his students, when fledged, became the core center of the political cadre around Pol Pot and the Killing Fields in Cambodia. I think the romantic passions of French intellectual life bred some truly bad seed, who loved ideas and killed vast numbers of decent living people.

 

[armonts]

It's quite true, it seemed to start from a good feeling at the time, but we see in the long run that all these rectifiers wrong are not better than the others, when he does not are not worse as soon as they have power .... :roll:

 

[virginialover]

Common sense dictates that anybody promising you equality at the expense of somebody else is a snake oil merchant. Freedom doesn't belong to the state to give, it naturally belongs to the individual. Those nihilists/charlatans also known as Marxists will use you own capacity for empathy against your own existence and ultimately the whole society and civilization. The advantage that present and future generations have is that they can still study factual history, if they choose to do it. The crimes committed during the French and Russian revolutions, Mao and Pol Pot should at least give birth to some questioning even in the dullest of minds.
The France I knew and liked is no more, for the past 40 years, there was a conscious or unconscious push to bring to fruition the ideals drawn in 1789 at an accelerated pace. Hiding behind La République and abusing Liberté, Égalite et Fraternité to a level that only a professional Marxist could reach.

 

[armonts]

yes, but it allows some to take the money from those working, the middle class, to distribute it to others in various forms of ways to buy their ways to the elections.

 

[virginialover]

armonts: "yes, but it allows some to take the money from those working, the middle class, to distribute it to others in various forms of ways to buy their ways to the elections."
Modern social democracy in a nutshell. I think that Churchill would probably revise his saying about democracy if he were still alive.

 

[armonts]

No doubt, but here in France we copy the Americans since the 60s, except that it is with 10 years late and when you have changed and stopped doing a stupid we are here we start! :?
At the moment everything is prohibited because of minorities, and we are taxed everywhere for the benefit of multinationals, the rich are getting richer and the workers are getting poorer.

We went from one extreme to the other.
( Here all the media are oriented and it's good to criticize Trump or Putin but some people laugh and wonder in silence if they are not right ... :laughat:

 

[virginialover]

I was there in the early 80's, you're taxed for the benefit of minorities, your rich are gone and those multinational companies are the expression of the new work order, where liberalism has become the sum of most evils between the market and production. True capitalism would allow any failed enterprise to die, instead, the state is pumping tax payers money into failing companies or projects. To think of it it reminds me of the economical system behind the Iron Curtain, ideology was more important than actual results. Of course, failure and poverty would ensue at the expense of the worker and average citizen. What you call the rich are just the new apparatchik with the European Union being the best example as a Soviet Duma 2.0.
On a brighter note, the last time I visited Paris about 6 years ago, I was there in the Jardin du Luxembourg savoring a Saint Claude nondescript pipe with some Saint Claude tobacco on one of those metal chairs. The orchestra was playing some French classical music in the gazebo. It was warm and sunny, and then two other pipe smokers sat, we weren't close really, each one minding their own business. No words or nods were exchanged during this time and yet it felt right, like a jump in time. I knew then that I was living a moment that in all likelihood will never happen again, whatever my travel destination.

 

[armonts]

It's good to have benefited, must jump on the occasion when they arise !