Tobacco blends..up or down?

[bassbug]

I've been reading about the discontinuation of several blends over the last few days here and it got me wondering.
Being a complete newbie, I certainly have no answer, but maybe some of the more established pipe smokers here can help.
Overall, if we compare today to lets say 1980 or a bit earlier...a span of 40 years, more or less, do we have more blends available today? Less? About the same number?
Just to be clear, I'm referring to the number of different blends, not the number of companies.

 

[kanse]

More blends, absolutely.

Pipe smokers are obsessed with tasting 'new' blends and tobacco companies invest in that.

 

[downinit]

I would guess that there are more blends but fewer pipe smokers. (Not to mention the war on smoking)

 

[warren]

Easy answer, more blends today, many more. The internet has made formerly unavailable blends available. Forty years ago I was restricted to what my wee brick and mortar carried and a couple of mail order vendors.

 

[blendtobac]

There are more blends now that ever, but this will be as big as it gets unless they repeal the deeming regulations. For now, we have ceased all development of new blends, and there are other companies who have done the same.
Russ

 

[toobfreak]

Pipe smokers are obsessed with tasting 'new' blends and tobacco companies invest in that.

Not me. I've found that pipe tobaccos all fall into a number of categories, and everything within each is a variation of the theme. Once I find something I really like, I pretty much stick with it! Why would I keep buying new blends that mostly disappoint me when I could be smoking a known quantity? So yeah, there are blends I've never tried yet, but sooner or later I eventually try a few new ones here and there.

For now, we have ceased all development of new blends

But the personal experiments go on . . . .! ::

With even just 20 or 30 different tobaccos (I have far more) the possible combinations are virtually endless.
But yes, I DO think the deeming regulations will eventually be cut back.

 

[madox07]

My dilemma here is how far did we stray from the original? I mean, I agree with you guys - there are so many blends to choose from now days, that often times it is frustrating that you cannot try them all. I guess this is the curse of modern consumerism extending to pipe smoking as well. But all these blends ... some better than other, makes me wonder how far have we drifted from the original blends, the elden blends of the Victorian era, the blends smoked in the 19th century hills of west Virginia, you know the originals - the plain and simple. I don't know why, but I have this feeling that due to a suffocating variety of blends some really good stuff got lost along the way. What do you think?

 

[kanse]

You mean original blends as in, original recipes? Or leaves kept as unaltered as possible?

As far as virginity of leaves go, there are quite a few blends out there that provide rawer experience, Mac Baren HH line and GL Pease being one of the few. I imagine Daughters and Ryan could be accounted in that group as well.
As far as recipes go, blending, as any other art, improves with age, I think modern blenders know far more than the blenders of the past. If there has been a best blend out there, it's probably available today.
Only thing that I imagine we have lost is maybe some varietals that vanished with no trace. There is Syrian Latakia that we lost. Blenders lacking things to blend is an issue to me, although not too tragic.

 

[madox07]

I don't mean virgin leave ... I am sure that as a perishable good, if somebody managed to preserve it over the long years, it must be very expensive and tasty - but I was referring more to recipes.
As far as recipes, I am not sure I agree with you

As far as recipes go, blending, as any other art, improves with age,

This is like saying impressionism is better than neoclassicism. The only thing that changes over time is the consumers' taste. I do agree that we make more complex blends today, but is that necessarily a good thing? What blend did, for example, Arthur Conan Doyle smoke? Can I find that blend today? And more importantly would I appreciate that blend, given my modern smoker tobacco consumption preference?

 

[seagullplayer]

There are so many more options today, I agree that being online has changed everything we do.
I am confident that by 1980 my father or grandfather had never even walked into a tobacco shop.

Anything they smoked or smoked with came from the grocery or drug store.
And neither lived to see the advent of the net.

 

[thesmokindragon]

+1, more today than ever ~ Having a great love and appreciation for the bacci, growers and blenders that make us these magical elements, I hope the future is bright for the tobacco industry

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I am one of those who was a slave to cigarettes at one time for decades, so I have no intentions of ever being chained to one brand, one smoke ever again. I want diversity and diversity is what pipe smoking is all about.
If I hadn't of been on this forum chatting with tobacconists, people in the industry, farmers, etc... I wouldn't have ever learned that the whole recipe being the same argument is bunk. The recipe was probably never consistent even back in "the day" whichever day you are thinking of. Tobacco is a natural crop, with variations from year to year in flavors. Casings are meant to standardize the variations in flavors from crop to crop, add carbohydrates to make the blend burn better, and add a brand flavor to the blend. So, the tobacconist probably shifted the recipe and altered it from batch to batch to get consistency to their trained palate.

So, what do you mean the recipe is not the same?
Add in, that I never taste the same flavors from the same tin, from time of day to which pipe I use, to what I had to eat that day, my mood, the age of the blend, how long the tin has been open, and I add to the question, how would onbe know that a recipe was the same?
I used to drink Sun Drop as a kid, loved the acidic citrus flavors. It was my favorite soda. Then, I moved across the state and they don't sell Sun Drop here, so I drink Mountain Dew. But, when I go home, I always stop and pick up a Sun Drop, and after adjusting to Mountain Dew, Sun Drop always burns me like battery acid, but I give it a try. Then when I get used to drinking coffee without any citrus sodas, and I stop and buy a Sun Drop, it is bland, but too sweet to me.

So, when I hear folks say that "Blah Blah Vaper" is nothing like it was forty years ago, I just have to laugh. Sure, sure, you can say whatever you want, but I am not going to bank on the total objectivity of your taste buds.
Ever changing casings, flavors shifting crop to crop, and the subjectivity of human physiology, I have to laugh a little when folks say that So-and-So blend is not what it used to be.
Sure, sure, I understand that some blends may not be even close to what it used to be. But, honestly, what does it matter? Even if you had a tin from the era that you enjoyed that blend the most it would still change with age, your mood, what you've become accustomed to tasting, and even what pipes you smoke now compared to back then.
Nope, I want diversity. And, luckily enough, with pipes, you get it, whether you want it or not. Honestly, if someone is looking for exactness, cigarettes is about the only tobacco product that I can think of that knows how to suck all of the juices out of tobacco, mix the juice with casings, and then rehydrate the juiceless pulp of tobacco that is left to make a product that is exact every time.

Just my $0.02

 

[kanse]

madox07

It might not be better if you put them next to each other.

But nowadays art on it's own encompasses a far more diverse and advanced area than it used to.

We have both impressionism and neoclassicism, techniques and ideas that came out during the prominence of those eras left a mark on art. There are far more good artists out there than there used to be in the past, and there are quite a few outstanding ones as well.

Same can be said about tobacco, as the time goes by, things change, but the essence of every great creation remains and new generations have a way to improve on it.

An English blend is not a new creation, at the core it's still what it used to be, a mix of certain species of leaf, we kept the skeletal structure but improved on it. There is a freedom to explore and add twists to smoking, and develop new nuances in taste that were foreign to previous generations.
I'd bet if one had a large number of blenders of the past sample some modern creations they'd be far more impressed,

Than for example if we bought some coveted old blends to new blenders and have them do a blind sample.

 

[toobfreak]

Anything they smoked or smoked with came from the grocery or drug store.

And why not? That is where your cigarettes, pipes, papers, cleaners, lighters, matches and anything else you needed came from. My uncle smoked his entire life and probably smoked the same OTC stuff that whole time and with only a handful (2-4) cruddy, cheap pipes that were seldom cleaned and never waxed, buffed, polished or reamed. You ran a pipe into the ground, threw it away and bought another.

 

[mso489]

I'll echo the other posts. Yup, this is the historical high water mark for numbers and variety of blends. We've lived the golden age of pipe tobacco. Now we start pioneering mixing our own "blends" for variety and excitement with whatever is left on the market, and/or growing our own. It's with great sorrow I hear Russ report on the suspension of developing new blends, this from one of the distinguished artists in the craft. Like Matisse packing away his brushes. Since I smoke moderately, glacially, I can probably enjoy opening tins for five or ten years, but I will likely buy a tin, pouch, can, or baggie from time to time ... if and as available. You all-day puffers with your fifty pound bags, keep 'em cool and gently humidified. I may buy a few more stores of condiment leaf to jazz up and improvise whatever I can find otherwise.

 

[toobfreak]

It's with great sorrow I hear Russ report on the suspension of developing new blends

Well, that was, after all, the real intention of these regulations, yes? These companies have no choice. I mean, things might turn around but there is a thing called hysteresis, and since the time the deeming regs were announced till now, companies had to plan to cope and adapt. So there will be casualties.
But the good news I suppose is that the new administration did not come in buoyed by lobbyist money from Reynolds, etc., and is not owing any "favors." They will be looking at things strictly from a pure business POV of what is best for jobs, the economy, people and so on, so there is hope.

 

[madox07]

Hey guys, don't get me wrong, I am all for diversity. In fact, I am quite grateful for living now days for a number a reasons, as opposed to two centuries ago; however consumerism is not one of those reasons. I guess that this is the major issue I am trying to get across here. I suppose that the opposite of consumerism is tradition - or at least this is the first term that comes to mind (some may argue that the antonym of consumerism is frugality or thriftiness - but I think that the -1 correlation for the term is non the less tradition). Yes, tobacco blending is an art, and the blend itself is the product in this artistic medium. Now I am not trying to convince anybody that what is art for me is the only form of art, or that if you do not fit into a certain definition of art you cannot call that art. Yes we have blends, good blends, complex brands, perhaps so many more blends that are better tasting that those of a 100-200 years ago. But let's not forget about consumerism, and its effects on the tobacco industry. I am not going to talk about cigarettes, which contain the crapiest tobacco there is. As far as pipe tobacco the market is filled with a lot of crap. In comparison with the entire pipe smoking population we are a small community. Most of the pipe smokers world wide have never heard of those fine blends we discuss every day. I was reading a post on a facebook forum the other day about a Pakistani smoker who can only get Black Sail pipe tobacco at his local store. Now I am not going to comment the quality of that particular brand, but I am going to say that when it comes to aromatics there is a huge number of brands and blends in circulation that are plain horrible, filled with chemicals. Tobacco manufacturers have, thus, adapted to impoverished markets, and I don't think there is any room for art blending over there. Similarly, tobacco manufacturers cater to rich markets such as the US and Europe, with hundreds of great brands, containing complex flavors and quality tobacco, that we rightfully perceive as art. But this art is accessible only to a few, and overall art or not the whole thing is still a business that has evolved and bent to the rules of consumerism.
So in this whole diverse confusing portfolio of pipe tobacco, I ask myself where are the elden brands. Ever since the European colonists have settled in the new world and borrowed the smoking habit from the natives, they have been smoking with a pipe. Since we are smoking pipe for well over 400 years, I would imagined that the first smokers were smoking something good otherwise, us, their ancestors wouldn't be smoking pipe at all today. So going back to the art analogy, sure I appreciate modern photography, abstract paintings, the impact of modern advancements on all sorts of artistic mediums in the present; but if I want to see a Greek nude, I can visit a museum in London, Berlin, Paris, New York, wherever and have access to this intellectual enjoyment as well. Due to modern consumerism, I don't think I can say the same about pipe smoking. Sure, I love my new pipes, and the good tobacco I fortunately can afford from my local tobacco shop, but ... where is the tradition that contains the elden blends? Yes an English blend is an English blend, we did not re-invent the wheel, but we sure made a pretty shiny one ... Do I make any sense? Call me conservative, or nostalgic for the past, and I will admit to both ... or just maybe, I have a few gaps in my knowledge of tobacco history that created skewed expectations.

 

[madox07]

* correction, to be read "us, their descendants" ... I got a little bit excited, lighting up a bowl now :puffpipe:

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I'm not even sure that we can prove that tobaccos used "back then" even still taste the same today. Virginias weren't even cultivated until the time of the Civil War. Which burley was the main one used in pipes back then? And, burleys are the most finicky with flavors.

 

[woodsroad]

If the same ingredients used tobacco blends even 10 years ago aren't available today (and they are not) then how can you even begin to expect that the end product should remain constant?