Nah, no prob.
That's true, though not universally so and mine haven't. I can still taste a dish and pick apart its ingredients, something a lot of professional cooks can't do. Frankly, I often wish my senses were a little less acute at times.
Premium: A Quality to Ponder
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That's true, though not universally so and mine haven't. I can still taste a dish and pick apart its ingredients, something a lot of professional cooks can't do. Frankly, I often wish my senses were a little less acute at times.
Bless Ernie, he tells it like it is, not like all those used car salesmen leading the deluded around.
I bet that can be fun and also a pain in the ass, at some point. Fortunately mine are limited to “good” and “not good.”
I stand corrected. Unfortunately I was too young to have enjoyed that era of pipe tobacco where there were true “luxury” blends.
If there was an audience for them in the 70s, there should be one now. Perhaps there are just so few pipe smokers today that the percentage who would buy a “premium” blend simply number too few to be of interest to most blenders.
Someone mentioned Semois. If that can be successful today maybe other extremely high quality meticulously processed minimally cased blends could be as well. I know that would catch my interest.
That still doesn’t answer Cosmic’s original question.
My great grandfather grew his own and air cured it under the porch. He obtained choice tobacco plants from a famous botanist. I was never told what ones. Connecticut does grow the finest wrapper leaf in the world though because of the red clay rich soil in the Hartford area. Elder relatives (nonsmokers) have told me they tried it as children puffing on his pipe and it was terrible. Of course they were children and probably puffing on dottle and ash so who knows ...
I can't really add much more than what others have said, but I do think there IS a premium market for pipe smokers. But it isn't in the tobacco, but in the pipes themselves. That is where serious money is laid down; where there are objective standards to measure quality; where there is a sense of collectability and permanence; where there are artisans that are highly respected and live on the reputation of their craft alone. Those all seem like the kind of elements one would need to buttress a "premium" or, perhaps better stated, luxury market.
If I'm understanding Cosmic correctly, the real thing you are driving at is:
1. Why isn't there something equivalent to the sommelier in pipe tobacco consumer culture and marketing? Cigars have something similar, more or less, as do many other categories of food and drink consumer goods. So, why doesn't pipe tobacco have anything similar in its own consumer culture?
2. If such a thing did exist, would that mean more robust and "natural" tasting tobaccos with fewer artificial additives, beyond the obvious and necessary additives to make pipe tobacco safe, palatable, etc.?
If I understand that all correctly, I would say it is because the pipe tobacco market is still too small and niche. To try to carve out a small and exclusive niche in an already niche market that already costs considerable amounts of money and time, may be too daunting for would-be entrepreneurs to pursue.
If I'm understanding Cosmic correctly, the real thing you are driving at is:
1. Why isn't there something equivalent to the sommelier in pipe tobacco consumer culture and marketing? Cigars have something similar, more or less, as do many other categories of food and drink consumer goods. So, why doesn't pipe tobacco have anything similar in its own consumer culture?
2. If such a thing did exist, would that mean more robust and "natural" tasting tobaccos with fewer artificial additives, beyond the obvious and necessary additives to make pipe tobacco safe, palatable, etc.?
If I understand that all correctly, I would say it is because the pipe tobacco market is still too small and niche. To try to carve out a small and exclusive niche in an already niche market that already costs considerable amounts of money and time, may be too daunting for would-be entrepreneurs to pursue.
It all comes down to popular taste and your taste, cosmic, is evidently not popular. Simple as that in my mind.
Cigars, wines, etc are apples to oranges comparison. This is self evident. Most pipe smokers enjoy aromatics and many will pay top dollar for esoterica blends and McClelland blends flavored with ketchup (lol)
. This forum does not represent but a fraction of the world wide pipe smoking community and you are only one member on this forum.
I enjoy the wide variety of flavors offered by pipe tobacco. I just had a “Padron Anniversary” yesterday and while it was good I prefer the wide range of tastes offered by pipe tobacco. I would hate for that to change. Let cigars be cigars and pipe tobacco be pipe tobacco.
This is the way and I have spoken
Papamique
Cigars, wines, etc are apples to oranges comparison. This is self evident. Most pipe smokers enjoy aromatics and many will pay top dollar for esoterica blends and McClelland blends flavored with ketchup (lol)
. This forum does not represent but a fraction of the world wide pipe smoking community and you are only one member on this forum. I enjoy the wide variety of flavors offered by pipe tobacco. I just had a “Padron Anniversary” yesterday and while it was good I prefer the wide range of tastes offered by pipe tobacco. I would hate for that to change. Let cigars be cigars and pipe tobacco be pipe tobacco.
This is the way and I have spoken
Papamique
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Not sure that I'm the best judge of premium tobaccos, but it sure is marketed as such these days. Well, it's more so marketed as limited. I correlate the two because saying "we only have x amount of this special leaf" depicts premium in my mind. But as you said, most of these blends are heavily cased or topped. If such a leaf was that premium, would it not be a great smoke either on its own or blended with other premium leaf?
I've got what I consider premium tobaccos/blends. These tobqccos are good fresh, and even better as time goes on. The quality is undeniable. I'm sure many would disagree with some of my choices and that's okay. There's really no standard to go against, though some may say there is (and there may be).
I've got what I consider premium tobaccos/blends. These tobqccos are good fresh, and even better as time goes on. The quality is undeniable. I'm sure many would disagree with some of my choices and that's okay. There's really no standard to go against, though some may say there is (and there may be).
I can taste it.I don't want this to go undiscussed. What do you know about FVF's sauce?
Exactly! I do not understand saucing a tobacco that is so rare. Casing is used to keep blends tasting the same as tobacco changes from year to year. Or, to add a dimension or some shit. But, not all tobaccos are cased.
Even though, so and so has said that “all tobaccos are cased,” that doesn’t mean that the statement is not full of shit.
McClelland’s Christmas Cheer was uncased. Jeremy on a C&D Instagram post states a list of C&D’s uncased blends which included Opening Night and Virginia Flake, as well as others that just escape me at the moment. D&R had a few. GLP has a few of his early blends. And, I don’t case my own, except for my first two years when I didn’t know any better. Anyone who thinks that tobacco is unsmokable without a casing is a moron. Why would we even have had thousands of years of tobacco smoking? Why just smoke tobacco? Casing is an industrial thing. Hell, I’m setting here smoking uncased tobacco as I write. Phhht…
And, I’m not saying cased tobaccos are bad. Hell, I even smoke the occasional aromatic. I even like some casings. I’d just rather experience a pure tobacco every now and then. Would you be happy with corporate hamburgers for the rest of your life? Wouldn’t you like a homemade hamburger occasionally.,, or a gourmet hamburger every now and then?
People like to get ripped.
I do. People want flavors that go beyond what tobacco alone can do and will buy what most pleases them. Look back at the history of British blends and you will find that the vast majority of them contained added flavorings, sometimes very subtle, other times not. That didn't necessarily completely sublimate the underlying tobaccos, just added a different "something" to them so that the actual blend is the sum of its parts.
One of my favortie bends is/was St Bruno and I can/could taste the differences between the Ogden made product's tobaccos and the base that MacBaren uses. The topping, and it is a significant topping, doesn't disguise or hide that. And while I like both versions I prefer the Ogden's because that tobacco base was smoother, richer and more complex than what MacBaren uses, so the interaction between the tobaccos and the flavorings is a different result.
This article today reminded me of this thread
www.wsj.com
The New Gardening Status Symbol: Upscale Compost
A humble staple of agriculture goes artisan, with hand-harvested seaweed and manure from eucalyptus-eating goats
www.wsj.com
hey that is the good shit. Literally it is.Context is everything is such matters
another issue is there isn't a quality one could call premium. Not like with cigars. The wrapper has to be a certain way that can't be faked or fudged. Pipe tobacco can be manipulated and fixed and doesn't have to look perfect. If you can't tell by opening the tin and looking it reduces the ability to put the "official rubber stamp" on it. Not that it can't be done, but it's harder to do on a market level and probably a higher financial risk. In a way to the consumer almost all of it is luxury or premium. Though I still think certain leaf is going to end up costing a lot more or disappearing and at that point there will at least be premium pipe tobacco as far as price point is concerned. At the moment aged is the closest thing or as I call it old.
Alright, just drop the word premium. Some people seemed to get hung up on it. However, a quality Virginia single crop, maybe one all red, and another golden, or color cures to represent each of the brightleaf crop genres, Ukrainian yellow, Canadian gold, etc... Something similar to what McClelland did with Christmas Cheer.
Ummm, a sealed tin would do it for me. You'd have to buy some really expensive equipment to make your own sealed tins. Unless of course, you are saying that you don't trust whatever company handled this. Then, in that case... just don't buy any.
If you make your own flakes it’s exactly what you’re talking about except it’s way way cheaper than buying commercially produced tins. Here’s a link from Whole Leaf dot com. All Tobacco Leaf - Organic Tobacco Leaves - https://www.leafonly.com/tobacco-leaf/organic-tobacco-leaf
I really don't care for flakes or plugs, but I do already make my own homegrown blends. So really, I have my own premiums. I just posted to see what others thought of the idea. I was pretty sure that the forum is really full of cheapskates, ha ha, so I knew it would be interesting conversation.
At the least that would pique curiosity. I'd buy some without caring if I found it a good smoke or not.
I talk about food for a second. Some foods are more about how they're processed and some are more about raw quality of the main ingredient. A taco doesn't need the same pedigree as a steak to be really good. Doesn't say anything bad about it but it's easier to call a steak a premium high quality steak and get wide consensus on it. With the taco it's much more about personal taste. And yes you could do a premium taco but it's not as easy to sell that idea. Pipe tobacco in many ways is closer to the taco. Which doesn't mean there can't and won't be premium top of the line pipe tobaccos but it's not as natural and instant of fit as it is with cigars. Oh and back to food I can look at a picture of a steak and get a great idea of how good it is and how great eating it will be, a taco not so much. Pipe tobacco is the same way it's not as easy to confirm the quality level without explanation. Or in other words it's a bigger gamble business wise.
I don't get the analogy... unless you're talking about a blend. Blends are inevitably always lower quality tacos. Single leaf is the steak.
However, I did have some really good tacos at the Margarita Grill. They were basically top choice steaks, grilled and served on tortillas. That's what a taco should be. People using hamburger meat and seasoning packs are just pond scum to me.
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