Overseas Backy

[spartan]

This may be heresy here... but as it's my first post I don't have a choice but to make an impression.
If I were interested in finding a pipe tobacco that is Chinese, or Russian, German Etc.... Is there a place that specializes in overseas backy?
I understand if something gets thrown at me while yelling something to the affect of "AMERICAN BACKY ONLY!"
Just curious on the rest of the Worlds take on Pipe Tobacco. Even though as a new pipe smoker I still have yet to circumvent the Americas this may be a bit far-reaching, but you can't blame me for being ambitious...I hope.

 

[lordnoble]

Actually, most tobacco blends come from other countries. So I guess a little clarification is needed. Are you asking for different styles of tobacco similar to different styles of food or are you looking for tobaccos that originate in other countries?
-Jason

 

[yuri66]

Just a suggestion with regards to Baccy from the asian markets, they tend to put other things in their tobacco that is not necessarily the best thing to be touching, let alone be smoking. If you run a black light over most asian Baccy, you will see that it is luminescent, which is showing that there are other chemicals and such in it.....yes you can do that also to US or European Baccys and find some luminescences in it but there is a huge diiference in the amount of it.... just a thought, probably not worth two cents...but you have it.

 

[spartan]

I was asking about tobaccos that originate in other countries. I've seen the online retailers group up the tobacco by brand name and all that, but I was looking for something that grouped it by where it came from first?

Or maybe an interesting article someone has come across on the matter?
@ Yuri66...............looks like i need to go get a black light now eh? /sob

 

[papipeguy]

You'll know if its a Chinese blend if you get the urge to smoke another bowl 15 minutes after the first.

 

[lordofthepiperings]

Well Mac Baren is a company from Denmark and Peterson's tobaccos are blended by a German company. Not sure if that's what kind of information you were looking for or not.

 

[spartan]

Helpful, but I guess I will keep looking around the internets. Thanks all.

 

[schmitzbitz]

I may be running down the wrong path here, but are you speaking of the constituent leaf in a blend? If so, you'll find many blends advertise the use of African and South American leaf, and then of course, there is whole "Oriental" family, none of which take root in the U.S., but certainly make it into U.S. blends.
Conversely, what you may find is that while a blend originated somewhere, it is now being created by one of the larger houses (C&D, MacBaren, Orlik, etc) - a prime example of this is the Japanese blend that was produced by MacBaren, expressly for sale on the Japanese market, Motoyama.

 

[keeper]

There's a blend here called Greve Gilbert Hamiltons Blandning, which is made by Swedish Match. I haven't seen it available in the U.S. I smoked it once, and wasn't really impressed.
You'll probably have a hard time getting overseas blends in the U.S. without it being imported by a retailer. My understanding is that you can no longer send tobacco by mail to the States, even between individuals.

 

[spartan]

I'll give some of those a try then.

 

[nemrod]

@keeper: Do I detect another Swede, eh? Hamilton's blend is a rolling tobacco though and you're right about it not being anything special. Calmar Nyckel, while also an OTC rolling baccy, is better but still not on the same level as "proper" pipe tobacco blends. I don't think either of them are actually produced in Sweden (disregarding the fact that the tobacco most certainly isn't grown here), but I could be wrong about that.
@spartan: All tobacco producers do is prepare and blend different kinds of tobacco in various ratios and combinations (along with different flavours in the case of aromatics). A German producer making, say, an English blend might use Virginia from the US, Burley from Brazil and Latakia from Cyprus. Sure, it's blended in Germany, but the tobacco the blend consists of certainly isn't from there. What this means is that it's pretty irrelevant where the tobacco is from, what matters is who made the blend, which is why it's sorted by brand and not country of origin, and what tobacco is in the blend.

 

[keeper]

Nej. Amerikansk invandrare. Still quite new here.