Mike never said there wasn't any quality tobacco being produced. He said the Virginias available at the time failed to meet McClelland's standards.
McClelland's Leaf Went Where?
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Right, didn't realise they said they knew they'd close a good few years before it actually happened.
I'm still puzzled by some reactions here though, of people questioning other people's life decisions.
Not clear what you mean, didn't suggest anything fishy, just stating the obvious that if you have a 3-5 year process to get something on the shelf then you know if you aren't putting something on the shelf 3-5 years in advance. Say you just made a whisky that needs to sit in the barrel for 15 years, if the warehouse gets hit by a meteorite today you know now that in 15 years this drink it not hitting the shelves.
Cornell & Diehl Eight State Burley has some Oriental added to it that came from a blender that operated out of Kansas City.
I don't think anyone here is lashing out angrily, feeling "screwed out of our vote". We are simply discussing pipe tobacco related subjects on a pipe tobacco forum. Isn't that what we all love to come here to bicker about?
I wonder if any of their remaining stock ended up in house blends at Deibel's in KC? Probably wishful thinking ...
the best argument for his point is that companies do that all the time. Best argument against that is they really didn't have anyone to care if they pissed off.
Here's what Mike McNeil said back in early 2018...
The McClelland Tobacco Company is closing after 40 years. We want to thank all the retailers and pipe smokers whose support and efforts to spread their appreciation of our pipe tobaccos have taken us from a very modest beginning in Grandpa McClelland’s basement in the Fall of 1977 to a company with a worldwide reputation of quality.
We’ve made our pipe tobaccos–Virginias, Oriental mixtures, Aromatics, etc.–from the highest grades of leaf and stripped tobaccos because of their basic richness and natural sweetness. That has been the beauty of McClelland and that is now the problem. We can no longer access tobacco of the quality we need. The time-honored labor-intensive process at the farms are disappearing. The aging of leaf over several summers to mellow is largely a thing of the past. We need old school methods at every stage before manufacturing to make it possible for McClelland to draw from the leaf the flavors that have been our hallmark.
Without the supportive infrastructure our government used to provide, a small company such as ours cannot continue. We might have limped along with lesser leaf but nobody would have been happy with the resulting products and we would have been ashamed of them. We’ve sold down all of the inventory that we have been able to produce with the finest leaf.
We want to thank you, our customers, and thank our great employees—friends who have been so capable and conscientious—and thank our leaf suppliers who have made an extraordinary effort to search out the finest leaf possible for us for 40 years. We will miss McClelland and our daily contacts with our friends in the pipe community. We feel privileged to have been part of this wonderful world of the pipe for so long. The finest people we know have been, and are, pipe and tobacco people. We hope to keep up our contacts as we move on to our next phase of life. We wish everybody good luck and good fortune.
The McClelland Tobacco Company is closing after 40 years. We want to thank all the retailers and pipe smokers whose support and efforts to spread their appreciation of our pipe tobaccos have taken us from a very modest beginning in Grandpa McClelland’s basement in the Fall of 1977 to a company with a worldwide reputation of quality.
We’ve made our pipe tobaccos–Virginias, Oriental mixtures, Aromatics, etc.–from the highest grades of leaf and stripped tobaccos because of their basic richness and natural sweetness. That has been the beauty of McClelland and that is now the problem. We can no longer access tobacco of the quality we need. The time-honored labor-intensive process at the farms are disappearing. The aging of leaf over several summers to mellow is largely a thing of the past. We need old school methods at every stage before manufacturing to make it possible for McClelland to draw from the leaf the flavors that have been our hallmark.
Without the supportive infrastructure our government used to provide, a small company such as ours cannot continue. We might have limped along with lesser leaf but nobody would have been happy with the resulting products and we would have been ashamed of them. We’ve sold down all of the inventory that we have been able to produce with the finest leaf.
We want to thank you, our customers, and thank our great employees—friends who have been so capable and conscientious—and thank our leaf suppliers who have made an extraordinary effort to search out the finest leaf possible for us for 40 years. We will miss McClelland and our daily contacts with our friends in the pipe community. We feel privileged to have been part of this wonderful world of the pipe for so long. The finest people we know have been, and are, pipe and tobacco people. We hope to keep up our contacts as we move on to our next phase of life. We wish everybody good luck and good fortune.
Well, it's certainly nice that they let the humor-impaired use the computer every now and then.
Whether they knew they were going to close a few years in advance nobody but the McNeils know. What we do know is that by the time they did close they had used up almost all of their stock. The trade was knew at least 6 months before the public announcement.
As for people publicly questioning their decision, chalk it up to curiosity from the newbies, an unrealistic sense of entitlement, poor boundary awareness and self centeredness from longer term smokers.
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