Learning different tobaccos / "Pure" Blends

[itsnotuitsme]

When reading reviews about tobacco, i'm amazed by how well some people are able to divide the blended taste into its separate parts and tell minor ingredients distinctly apart.

I would like to undertake a little learning in that direction. My plan is to find some good blends, that ideally only have one component or are blended from different tobaccos of only one variety. I'm interested in your recommendations.

Also if you know about other alternatives to build up a taste, i'd like to hear it.

Thanks in advance

 

[canucklehead]

Smokingpipes.com has single component blending tobaccos in bulk, available in as small as 1oz portions. It is the easiest and least expensive way to acquaint yourself with the flavours of individual tobaccos.

 

[canucklehead]

To expand on my previous post, I would start with 1 oz of each of the following:

-red Virginia
-bright Virginia
-stoved Virginia
-white burley
-dark burley
-dark fired Kentucky
-perique
-latakia
-Turkish/Oriental
-unflavoured black Cavendish
-cigar leaf

It's also a good way to figure out which tobaccos suite your personal body chemistry and smoking style, and which ones may bite or irritate.

 

[Brewfan]

I'd say you only need to single out Virginia and Burley. To me, at least, condimental tobaccos (Latakia, Perique, etc.) are a bit more obvious when you know what the two common bases taste like, and most likely would be unpleasant if smoked straight.

 

[Chasing Embers]

I never put any effort into identifying individual components as I simply enjoy the overall composition. That being said, the blending tobaccos mentioned above would be a great way to go. You may even enjoy some of them better by themselves.

 

[Chasing Embers]

I'd say you only need to single out Virginia and Burley. To me, at least, condimental tobaccos (Latakia, Perique, etc.) are a bit more obvious when you know what the two common bases taste like, and most likely would be unpleasant if smoked straight.

I love perique by itself.

 

[OzPiper]

I love perique by itself.

I ordered 2oz of Sam Gawith’s blending Perique from an Aussie online store.

The owner contacted me to ask if I intended to blend with it.
He was concerned I might be foolhardy enough to smoke it straight

 

[Chasing Embers]

I ordered 2oz of Sam Gawith’s blending Perique from an Aussie online store.

The owner contacted me to ask if I intended to blend with it.
He was concerned I might be foolhardy enough to smoke it straight

Did you smoke it straight? It's nothing like you find when it's blended.

 

[OzPiper]

Did you smoke it straight? It's nothing like you find when it's blended.

Not yet.
Still summoning up the courage to do so
Might try this weekend in a small porcelain pipe

 

[mso489]

To simplify this starting out, you could begin with pouches of Amphora Virginia and Amphora burley. These are probably blends of several of the Virginia or burley varieties but would define the genres.

From there you could go to small samples of the C&D blending tobaccos mentioned in the earlier post. Most of these tobaccos smoke well by themselves depending on your taste. I like single leaf Virginias and burleys as well as cigar leaf and unflavored Cavendish. Cavendish is a process and not a tobacco variety, and I believe it can be made from either Virginia or burley and maybe other tobaccos as well.

 

[Chasing Embers]

Not yet.
Still summoning up the courage to do so
Might try this weekend in a small porcelain pipe

Lots of stone fruit and earth. Cigarish in strength and body.

 

[OzPiper]

Lots of stone fruit and earth. Cigarish in strength and body.

Good to know.
I think the lot I got is still youngish (not sure how old) but I tried some in a home blend and it was peppery.
I've jarred the rest. Hopefully it will develop some raisiny, plummy notes

 

[AppalachianPipe92]

I'd say you only need to single out Virginia and Burley. To me, at least, condimental tobaccos (Latakia, Perique, etc.) are a bit more obvious when you know what the two common bases taste like, and most likely would be unpleasant if smoked straight.

I've got some good perique that is actually really enjoyable on its own. I was pleasantly surprised

 

[bullet08]

At first, I wanted to do that. And certain tobacco are easy to recognize pretty fast, like Latakia. Some you'll just get used to like burley. Some are hard to recognize at first, but stands out later like VA. Other than just smoking a lot, I'm not sure what to do about it. And some description are not exact match, but close enough to identify them like Oriental.

 

[sablebrush52]

When reading reviews about tobacco, i'm amazed by how well some people are able to divide the blended taste into its separate parts and tell minor ingredients distinctly apart.

I would like to undertake a little learning in that direction. My plan is to find some good blends, that ideally only have one component or are blended from different tobaccos of only one variety. I'm interested in your recommendations.

Also if you know about other alternatives to build up a taste, i'd like to hear it.

Thanks in advance

Buy blending tobaccos and try smoking them. That's how many super tasters have learned to distinguish the different components in a blend. It takes some time to figure this out, as there's a sort of alchemy that happens when you combine components. They interact to support each other in ways that taste differently than the individual components. So I also played with combining some blending tobaccos to see how they interact.

Another factor are the flavorings that are often used in different blends. I'm not referring to heavy toppings such as may be used with aromatics, but very subtle applications that are not meant to bring attention to themselves.

 

[canucklehead]

Lots of stone fruit and earth. Cigarish in strength and body.

I love the combination of dark oily maduro cigar with perique, but I need a little Virginia to lighten it up a bit and give a little sweetness.

 

[Chasing Embers]

I love the combination of dark oily maduro cigar with perique, but I need a little Virginia to lighten it up a bit and give a little sweetness.

I often soak it in dark rum to add some sweetness.

 

[bullet08]

Damn. I forgot what gives that wonderful horse shit smell in Haddo's Delight. Burley and Perique, I think.

 

[rmbittner]

To expand on my previous post, I would start with 1 oz of each of the following:

-Turkish/Oriental

To expand on your expansion…

Orientals can be tricky these days. There are a number of varietals (I couldn’t begin to say how many), and each one has a distinctive flavor profile—Izmir, Yenidje, Basma, Smyrna, Drama, etc.—which can range from spicy to acrid, sweet to floral. But often they aren’t featured individually in blends but rather are combined and identified only as “orientals” or “Turkish,” due to the current scarcity of some leaf. (There are a good number of blends these days that will give you a very solid understanding of the general “oriental” flavor profile: McConnell’s Oriental and Oriental Square blends, Presbyterian Mixture, Rattray’s Red Rapparee, and GLPease’s Charing Cross, which, for me, is an acrid-oriental forward Balkan. “Acrid” may not sound appealing, but it’s a delicious blend.)

If the OP would like to go deep and explore individual oriental varietals, it isn’t easy going to be easy these days. I don’t know how many could be found and sampled individually. As for mixtures, though, GLPease’s Embarcadero is a Virginia/oriental blend that features Izmir. McClelland’s Frog Morton on the Town featured Basma…but we all know the costs of acquiring McClelland blends in 2023. Beyond that, I think it will take some investigating.

 

[Doctor Chopper]

I love perique by itself.

Why does this not surprise me?!! Both that you have smoked it straight and also that you like it!