every time I see someone promote or trash it - I have to do the one coin A/B testing. ? still cannot determine the fuss over it.
It used to be really good and aged very well, but then STG took it over. I still have quite a few tins of the older stuff aging, but I was buying 20 tin lots when I stocked up on the new STG stuff also. The new Escudo just isn't the same. It's not horrible, passable as a VaPer, but the new stuff doesn't deserve the hype of the older recipe.
It is still being bought out by those who hear about how well the old Escudo ages.
See... pipesmokers are attracted to notions of antiquity... if someone put drenched mediocre tobacco in vinegar and branded it as McClelland Christmas Cheer, it would sell out in seconds. Their sinuses all burning and their tongue all coated in vinegar, saying... mmmmm... this is what McClellands was like in it's heyday.
Just like someone put a cherry aromatic out there with the brand "Hobbit's Weed" and it sold like crazy. Like it or not, pipesmokers are some of the easiest to market to. Very few actually smoke a tobacco in the here and now... they smoke in the hype of distant past or a fantasy world, or they smoke in what the tobacco might age to become one day with cellaring. Pipesmokers grasp the "Folklore" before they actually rely on their own tongues.