Hey, fellas! I go to St. James Parish to hand select barrels of Perique 2 to 3 times a year. I know many of the farmers in St. James, and have visited their farms and seen their crops and been in their homes. I have seen the process, through many various stages. I’ve stripped leaf at Poche with Mark Ryan and the rest of the workers. I’ve helped roll bunches, called “cah-rahts”, to be packed into barrels. I’ve helped with turning barrels, a particularly laborious process which is done multiple times throughout the year that the tobacco spends in the barrel. Making Perique is hard work. Most people wouldn’t do it. It is hardly surprising that manufacturers don’t make their own Perique when one sees the process and the constant attention and troubleshooting involved to keep from having quality issues.
Perique is not made anywhere outside of St. James. There’s a product from Brazil called Arapiraca, which is sometimes compared to Perique but it is not that similar. Someone here said Perique is a marketing term. Perhaps, in the same way that Chocolate, or Wool or Steel are marketing terms. These are terms to communicate what materials are used in a product, what the end user can expect the product to be like. Perique is a specific tobacco type and quality that is produced through a specific, unique and labor intensive process and the results of this process are totally unlike anything else in tobacco, that I’ve ever seen.
A few other points worth noting:
Mark has one small barn where he processes Dark Fired Kentucky in barrels, under extreme pressure, like Perique. The results are totally unique and the sole customer for this product is a very well known cigar manufacturer. There is none of this Dark Fired that is used in Perique and it is not called Perique. It is called Cajun Black. Years ago, McClelland used some in a handful of blends.
The crop grown in St. James Parish is not enough to fill demand and this has been the case for decades. Not just the last few years. Mark Ryan found that back into the 20’s and 30’s the accounting books at Poche Farms show that they were supplementing St. James leaf shortages using Dark Air Cured from TN, KY or Canada, depending on the availability and quality available. The vast majority of pure St. James Perique is being used in American Spirit Perique cigarettes, due to exclusive contract with one processor. It’s been that way for a long time. Years. What is available for use in pipe tobacco currently, is often, though not always, comprised of a blend of St. James leaf and leaf from TN, KY, of Canada. The imported leaf used is very similar to the St. James leaf, which is basically a Dark Air Cured type. Not Dark Fired, Dark Air Cured.
The blending is done at the end of the Perique process, once the two products are nearly indistinguishable. Again, I’ve personally seen all of this. St. James is wet, hand stripped, rolled, packed and pressed into bourbon barrels separately from imported leaf which goes through the same process. Once they are in very nearly the same range of aroma, flavor and color, they are blended together into a barrel, pressed down under many tons of pressure and then capped for about 3 months. None of this blending practice is new or recent.
Lastly, Latakia is produced by hanging small, oily tobacco leaves over a smoldering fire that must be maintained for 5 to 6 months. This is an incredibly wild process. Dark Fired is usually done in 14- 16 days and that is a very stressful and sleep deprived time for the farmers and their families. 5-6 months is just wild.
These kinds of extremely labor intensive tobacco processes are the reason that both Latakia and Perique are in short supply. If anyone could do it, that supply problem wouldn’t exist.
