Oriental vs Balkan...

[badbriar]

What would you say is the difference between an Oriental blend and a Balkan Blend?
Should get a good variety of opinions here!

 

[Tate]

In to see from more experienced members. I always figured a Balkan is just an English with high Oriental content where an Oriental doesn't necessarily need to have those English components.

 

[Chasing Embers]

No concensus. They're all marketing terms for latakia blends though smokers have anecdotal categories for each. Being an oriental itself, all blends containing latakia are oriental blends unless you're referring to straight orientals or blends containing orientals minus the latakia.

 

[mingc]

What would you say is the difference between an Oriental blend and a Balkan Blend?

Whatever the marketing department says it is.

 

[badbriar]

Whatever the marketing department says it is.

yeah - what I thought!
Interesting that some blenders have both in their series of pipe tobacco blends

 

[yanoJL]

I've always considered "Balkan" to be an Oriental forward blend, and a marketing ploy to capitalize on the popularity of the fabled Balkan Sobranie.

 

[Auxsender]

My $0.02:

Balkan = An English blend that has Latakia AND other “oriental” tobaccos.

Oriental = Contains “oriental” tobaccos but does not contain Latakia.

 

[ThermionicScott]

I reckon that using "Oriental" to refer to a Latakia-free blend is a newer thing. Lots of older English blends used "Oriental" or "Turkish" in their name or description to cover the Latakia content, such as Robert McConnell's "Original Oriental" blend or my tin of Dunhill "London Mixture", described as "Medium cut matured Virginia and Oriental Tobacco".