Russ’ Lakeland Brindle

[misterlowercase]

...and also,

...or another Dokken cover band, jeesh.

Hilarious!

:lol:
Good one.
But hey,

ain't nuthin' wrong about Rokkin' with Dokken!

 

[foolwiththefez]

Russ, thanks for the answer. This thread got me super excited and then super disappointed very quickly. Any chance at you trying another Lakeland style blend anytime soon?

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Yes, yes, American blenders are creative, and I didn't mean to insinuate that. I just had rather encourage their creativity over making something taste like a dead codger blend or even an unobtainium. I am always looking to taste new things, explore new tastes that I've never had before. Making things that are supposed to revive something just invites those of us that will get upset when a guitar riff in a cover of Stairway to Heaven was off just a smidge, even if it is an improvement in many people's eyes.

 

[misterlowercase]

In some cases the solution is simple,

take the example of my above complaint regarding DS.
I smoke and enjoy Dark Star but only as an every now and then indulgence because I must "enhance" it to fit the favored strength for my personal palate and physical chemistry, by adding a bit of burley and a little SP snuff, the body is broadened and the N is deepened, I just like the stouter side of things and often cannot derive the fullest satisfaction from mild stuff --- all too often a blend will say: love me or leave me, take me the way I am or don't take me at all, in which case it just ain't worth the hassle --- in Dark Star's case it is worth the added hassle and prep time because when modified to fit me, it becomes a lovely thing.
In the past, many makers would have varying strength levels for the same blend, yes it's a bit of "retro vision" but there are also cases where certain things are tried 'n true and just plain work --- like the Mild/Med/Full variations did,do, and would work...
...it's very beneficial to the maker because they are expanding the appeal of the blend across a broader range of diversified folks, and because it is essentially the same blend with only minor tweaks to achieve the various strength levels, it would seem to keep production costs down too...
McClelland could even play around with the name a little bit and put a clever twist on things, like Dark Star (mild), Darker Star (med), and Darkest Star (full), dunno if that's actually clever or not, but creative juices are needed in marketing of the contemporary tobacco industry on a whole as well, not to mention the generally universal sorry state of tin art.
And, they could even leave it uncut and release it as a plug!

Perhaps that could be called Dark Star Supermassive! :P
Yep,

I'd like to see such an application become reality.
I'd be laying down a hypergiant amount of those tins if so!
::

 

[cosmicfolklore]

D&R does this with some of their blends, sort of like the John Cottons too.
...give me the Death Star version. ::

 

[misterlowercase]

...give me the Death Star version.

Hellyeah!
That's what I'm talkin' bout right there!
Love it.
For sure I'd buy Death Star!

 

[misterlowercase]

D&R does this with some of their blends, sort of like the John Cottons too.

Many many of the Olde England blends were like that, dating back to the 19th century!
One of the more famous examples:

...and I still ain't smoked the new Capstan and I don't think I ever will,

I'm still disgruntled that they did not release the brown label Full strength!
The range was left incomplete.
Jeez.

:?
That's kind of like reading Moby Dick up until chapter 132 and then just stopping and never finishing it...

:

:​

" Oh, immortal infancy, and innocency of the azure! Invisible winged creatures that frolic all round us! Sweet childhood of air and sky!

How oblivious were ye of old Ahab's close-coiled woe! But so have I seen little Miriam and Martha, laughing-eyed elves, heedlessly gambol around their old sire; sporting with the circle of singed locks which grew on the marge of that burnt-out crater of his brain.
Slowly crossing the deck from the scuttle, Ahab leaned over the side, and watched how his shadow in the water sank and sank to his gaze, the more and the more that he strove to pierce the profundity. But the lovely aromas in that enchanted air did at last seem to dispel, for a moment, the cankerous thing in his soul. That glad, happy air, that winsome sky, did at last stroke and caress him; the step-mother world, so long cruel - forbidding - now threw affectionate arms round his stubborn neck, and did seem to joyously sob over him, as if over one, that however wilful and erring, she could yet find it in her heart to save and to bless. From beneath his slouched hat Ahab dropped a tear into the sea; nor did all the pacific contain such wealth as that one wee drop. "

THE END​

:

:​

 

[buroak]

..well, all that stuff disappeared, the UK tobacco industry collapsed, there's a massive vacuum there which simply cannot be filled, but the demand is so large and intense that there is enough interest and motivation to try and replicate some of the "golden oldies" as close as can be expected because they still linger on in many memories, haunting us, and yet still calling our names even after all these years...

I largely blame the NHS (National Health Service) for the collapse of the UK tobacco industry. Being an American, I am really not placed to know why the UK tobacco industry collapsed, but that is my hunch. When "we're all in this together" those with so-called bad habits must be rehabilitated and set on the path to a long (but not too long) life of low medical costs. Parentetically, I suspect misterlowercase can pull some kind of Foucauldian something out of my post.
Whatever the reason, the UK tobacco industry did collapse - a damned shame. I agree with misterlowercase that large demand drives the desire for resurrection of dead UK blends. The number of customers is not large; rather the demand is large because a small number of consumers have very intense preferences. I am one of those consumers. My preferences are not purely driven by taste, but also by the sense of history wrapped up in an old mixture. Matches are good, true resurrections are great. Consequently, I will be an enthusiastic purchaser of STP recreations. At the same time I would have liked to smoke Lakeland Brindle before its disappearance.

 

[misterlowercase]

I largely blame the NHS (National Health Service) for the collapse of the UK tobacco industry. Being an American, I am really not placed to know why the UK tobacco industry collapsed, but that is my hunch. When "we're all in this together" those with so-called bad habits must be rehabilitated and set on the path to a long (but not too long) life of low medical costs. Parentetically, I suspect misterlowercase can pull some kind of Foucauldian something out of my post.

I'm more of a Derridean at heart!

https://philosophynow.org/issues/8/Textual_Intercourse​

Yeah,

someone will no doubt write a book about it all at some point, the subject may even become a major field of study due to the immense sociological impact that the tobacco industry had upon Britain in the 20th century, and I'd love to see the same academic study of briar pipes eventually come into perspective too, with the same intense discipline inwhich all the old clay pipe stuff is researched and wrote about in the UK.
I don't have any answers as to why the collapse occurred, but my gut tells me that the embrace of EU policies had a lot to do with it, amongst other things.

BACK in the early 1970s, before we all became edgy about the effects of smoking, it was said that, with one tax cheque a year, John Player and Sons paid for Britain’s National Health service.
Those were the days when smoke-filled pubs were still the norm, and likewise smoke-filled lungs, as we tried out the newly-launched John Player Specials in their pristine black and gold packs, or reached for something with an extra kick, like Richmond in their brown or blue packets that, unlike JPS, still bore the traditional sailor emblem that had been at the heart of Players’ marketing strategy since the 1920s.
http://www.nottinghampost.com/tobacco-industry-played-vital-Nottingham-s/story-20965749-detail/story.html

see also:

http://pipesmagazine.com/forums/topic/imperial-to-close-factories-in-uk-and-france
The companies had been on a downward spiral for years as smoking rates continued to decline and political forces extracted more flesh and social perception had mutated to a degree of hostility against them.
When Murray, Sons and Co. shuttered their factory in January 2005, there was only a loss of 63 jobs (according to wikipedia), a very far cry from the days of yore when the tobacco companies employed hundreds upon thousands of people over there.
I am fairly certain though, that we can trace the disappearance of the UK stuff from off our shelves here in the USA to this:

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Tobacco_Master_Settlement_Agreement
There is really no pleasing the anti-crowd...

Since the states settled their lawsuits against the major tobacco companies in 1998, our annual reports have assessed whether the states are keeping their promise to use a significant portion of their settlement funds – estimated at $246 billion over the first 25 years – to attack the enormous public health problems caused by tobacco use in the United States.
http://www.tobaccofreekids.org/microsites/statereport2016/

...and it all went downhill from the MSA,

leading eventually to us having nothing at all available from the UK,

I'm not really sure how this affected the companies bottom line and I'm unsure as to how big of a market share those companies may have had here, probably a mere sliver I'd guess,

and they were practically forced to pull out of our market under threat of financial extortion,

and the "glory days", what was left of them, came to a rather abrupt close,

but then an amazing upswing happened and here we are in the midst of a sort of renaissance!

The number of customers is not large; rather the demand is large because a small number of consumers have very intense preferences. I am one of those consumers.

I am too.
People like us tend to cellar deep instead of wide,

at least from my experience and in my case, recently arriving at codgerville and knowing what I like and liking what I know.

“Contrary to what phenomenology — which is always phenomenology of perception — has tried to make us believe, contrary to what our desire cannot fail to be tempted into believing, the thing itself always escapes.”

― Jacques Derrida

 

[misterlowercase]

...and it all went downhill from the MSA,

leading eventually to us having nothing at all available from the UK *

ERRATUM
* we do actually still get stuff from both Gawith houses and JFGermain,

so that statement was inaccurate.
They were very small fish and survived the maelstrom,

and their baccies continue to remain in rather high demand amongst many pipesmokers.

 

[buroak]

A Derridean or not, yours is a far more thoughtful account of the UK tobacco industry's demise. Thank you for that.
By the way, I enjoyed the Nottingham Post article.
Thank goodness the Gawiths and Germain survived, though I have yet to smoke a Germain tobacco.

 

[misterlowercase]

Overread on another forum,

I think the discussion may be relevant here.

Another reason I buy from P&C
:
Because they outsource production to Sutliff, rely on their apparently shoddy QC, and are then willing to replace a low cost product?

One of the many reasons I don't buy from P&C.
:
Ummmm.....what???
A vendor comes on a pipe forum and offers to replace a defective (I wouldn't even call it defective, personally) product, and you're bashing them for it??
I don't get it.
I think it's pretty common knowledge that H&H production is outsourced to Sutliff. Isn't it?
P&C sells a *LOT* more stuff than just their house blends.
:
Oh, stop it. I didn't bash P&C. I merely suggested that offering to replace an outsourced product that exposes weak quality control is no justification for buying from P&C. And is it common knowledge that H&H outsources to Sutliff? Apparently not, since the person I originally responded to wasn't aware.
That said, I think there are reasons to be concerned about some of what P&C is up to. Remember that P&C is owned by Scandinavian Tobacco Group and some of their recent tobaccos look like suspicious attempts to wrest market share from other producers by using their role as a major vendor. P&C has consistently gone after the market share of other producers by trying to piggyback on long-established brands by offering products with similar sounding names. The Mid-Town Series goes after the whole Middleton range, for example. Chatham Manor after Carter Hall, Chestnut after Walnut, Derby Club after Kentucky Club, Prince Andrew after Prince Albert, Sweet Cask after sugar Barrel. Don't even get me started on the shameless attempt to grab a share of the Lake District tobaccos with Lakeland Brickle. The Lake District tobaccos are some of the world's most profound regional classics and P&C's silly attempt to copy that style is just sad.
The latest maneuver--discontinuing the sale of Presbyterian Mixture (for poor sales, they say) and then offering a cheaper "match"--is the most glaring show of irresponsibility yet. It shows the colliding interests of producer and vendor. Presbyterian Mixture, of course, is not produced by STG, but rather by a small German manufacturer.
So, yeah. I'm no more a fan of P&C's business model than I am of the modified piracy of vendors in the stalls in China who sell Abibas sweats and Niki shoes. But I wasn't bashing them for offering to replace the tin.
:
So isn't capitalism all about gaining market share? Should I boycott all Chevy products because they are trying to wrest truck market share away from Ford? To expect a company to forego growth and attendant profits is naive. I purchase the product that I value the most. I've tried some of the Mid-Town blends, I don't find them to be better than their namesakes -- so I don't buy them. Others don't have that view preferring instead the P&C versions to the namesake, should those consumers be denied? Should we be "concerned" that P&C is trying to provide for those consumers?
OTOH I really like most of the Marquis Line and I don't care about which factory is used, particularly since P&C readily makes good on the random quality escapes.
The good news is that each of us is free to make a choice of vendors, manufacturers, blends etc. based on what we individually value.
:
You don't get it, and please don't misconstrue my argument if you don't understand it.
Should you boycott Chevy for trying to wrest market share from Ford? Of course not. But it would be a different issue if Chevy marketed a truck called "Ford Ranger" as P&C (Pirates and Counterfeiters) have done with their Presbyterian match. Would "Fjord Ranger" be ok?
P&C's practices are parasitic. They do not try to build their own brands by offering a quality product and then building recognition of their unique products by spending marketing dollars. Instead, they try to latch onto the accrued cultural capital of other products through a series of homages (Fusilier's Ration, White Knight, Black House) or through wink, wink plays on names--Mid(L)-Town Series. They do this--and they make sure to mention those other blends in their own blend descriptions--in an attempt to associate themselves with these other products. Those associations are important in the world of search engines and key words.
That's not creativity. It's disingenuous.
There's an old joke that in Chinese universities, they don't teach Engineering. They teach Reverse Engineering. Welcome to Pirates and Counterfeiters.
I have no respect for it. If you do, knock yourself out and buy away. P&C lost my business years ago when they were incapable of getting my simple orders correct, so they're not losing any business from me in their current iteration.
In the business I work in, theft of names of regions is a major issue, and one that has led to massive legal battles (Champagne, most famously) and to increasingly strict regulation of Protected names to stop unscrupulous producers from appropriating these things. Of course, there is no such regulation in the world of pipe tobacco, but it sure would be nice.

See also:

"American Fakeland"

Since most of the blends we most associate with the Lakeland style are presented as flake, and since I suspect Pipesandcigars didn't have time to mess with a flake, they pressed this one into a vacuum-sealed bag for a rough-and-ready crumble cake presentation, and voila! American Fakeland Crumble Cake!
http://www.tobaccoreviews.com/blend/4296/hearth-home-lakeland-brickle#review40621