So I went looking for what MacBaren to buy and ended up buying 5 tins of Nightcap and 3 tins of Cut Blended Plug
It’s an inevitable problem, my own experience with properly storing blends is that they certainly change within 3+ years, let alone 20+, and not always for the better for my taste. So no matter how much one buys and how well one stores their tobacco, we will NOT be smoking what we like TODAY in 20 years’ time.
Two examples where I experienced the change in my hands, the first two blends I bought a pound of at once:
- Old Dark Fired went from crisp and woody to sticky sweet over 5 years
- StBernard went from bright, grassy, spicy to bland and sweet
There used to be a time I chased natural sweetness in pipe tobacco, now I am not, I find enough sweetness in most blends. Been smoking a pipe for about 15 years so I’d think my palate is pretty good, so blends should reveal more complexity to me, unless they themselves change for the worse over time.
So yeah, that’s the inevitable problem, the direction of travel for pipe tobacco is that it’s ever more niche product where it stops making financial sense. I honestly put my faith in cigars for the long term future, I think cigars will be just fine for a long time. I love cigars too, but there’s more variety in pipe tobacco.
Edit: just had a super ripe banana as my kids won't eat them after they go black. It was, of course, super sweet, but I prefer them when they're just right as they're more nuanced, it sparked a thought that this is how I perceive some (not all!) aged blends I've had.