What Makes A Bigger Difference? Where It Is Grown or How It Is Cured?

[mikethompson]

I was curious as to the extent of which where a tobacco is grown affects the end taste, as opposed to how its cured.

Say if I had a certain blend, would a keen palate be able to discern where the tobacco was grown? Would that matter at all?

 

[rajangan]

I was curious as to the extent of which where a tobacco is grown affects the end taste, as opposed to how its cured.

Say if I had a certain blend, would a keen palate be able to discern where the tobacco was grown? Would that matter at all?

I don't think you would able to tell unless if you specifically familiarized yourself with those tobaccos. For example, U.S Connecticut shade wrapper vs Ecuadorian Connecticut shade wrapper. Not because geography (soil, climate, sun inclination) has no influence, but because there are too many other variables.

Edit: The possibility that you could then identify the origin of something you had never smoked, say burley grown on the same two farms as the Connecticut wrapper, is unlikely.

 

[rajangan]

Edit: The possibility that you could then identify the origin of something you had never smoked, say burley grown on the same two farms as the Connecticut wrapper, is unlikely.

Unless if you knew that on one farm they heated the barns with wood, while the other didn't; or one farm pile fermented the leaf after and the other didn't. Things like that.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Which tobacco?
I know this is still a thing with cigar guys, because there is such a narrow flavor profile for most cigars. But, Virginias are so processed before it’s ready for the pipe that I’d lay money on not being able to tell. Heck, most are then cased before they really start to press or process.

Wines used to heavily rely on terra for marketing until the French blind taste test, where France was blown out of the water by California. But, even wines now add so much acids and tannins to their recipes that the public’s taste is now skewed against the more natural tastes. French wines now have a “footy” taste to them, and the public is swayed against the natural terra “off flavors.”
Add in the way they blend them for consistency year to year And terra is out the door. Now, it’s all who has the best recipe, instead of the quality of the fruit alone.

But, give it a try, if you can find farmers to supply you with raw leaf, which you probably wouldn’t enjoy to begin with.

But, you’d have to develop a taste for natural leaf, and shake off all of the preconceived Notions that manufacturers have given us with everything they do to fool us into this idea of consistency.

 

[rajangan]

ARS-GRIN (USDA Agricultural Research germplasm seed bank) has several thousand tobacco strains on hand, which arrived from many different source countries.

I have grown 8 different Virginias, (in the same geographical location with the same fertilizer), and I could probably have been able to tell them all apart if I could see the leaf, or was not smoking them in blends. One was Russian, two Ukrainian, three American, one Canadian, and one Colombian. The Russian and Ukrainian ones were more similar to each other than the rest. The Canadian tasted like Canadian cigarette tobacco. Whether someone grows the Canadian Virginia Delgold in Canada, New Zealand, or Ohio, it is going to be discernably "Delgold-ish" vs "New Zealand-ish", or "Ohio-ish". This tells me that genetics is an important variable, and offers a reasonable theory why tobaccos with the same name, eg "Virginia", are different from country to country. Its not terroir. They have been changed either by breeding, or genetic drift and poor pollination control.


You see this in action with supposedly "Cuban seed" cigar leaf as well as in the Balkan countries. There are dozens, if not hundreds, of different oriental tobaccos. This probably isn't the result of Portuguese, Dutch, and Spanish explorers and traders bringing an equal number of separate strains to the old world. With all these strains, it's handy to dumb it down with generic terms, but we are missing the big picture. You can clearly tell Bursa, a tobacco from the Marmara region, apart from Izmir which is from from the Izmir region (go figure), because they are altogether different tobaccos.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

To add...
Just growing one season with say... Cuban seed in say... Alabama. You are not going to get huge difference that first year. It will be very Cubanish, if I follow along with how Cuban farmers prep the tobaccos.
But, after say... a few years of me cultivating my own seed, it will most likely start to take on some different characteristics that make it less Cubanish.
This is why cigar companies that start Cuban seed in Nicaragua and whereever start to see more differences in their tobaccos.

lI have been awed by semois grown in the US, as it really is difficult to tell a difference... if even possible... probably because the curing is so simple also. But, if I cultivated my own seeds here, I might start tasting more differences. How long, I have no idea.
Tobacco is a very fast adapter to its environment, but that doesn’t mean that you’ll get something totally different from just planting the same seed everywhere.

I think cigars are just more susceptible to noticing these slight differences because of the simple curing process and everyone’s notion of the intended flavor profiles.

As said, with pipe tobaccos they spray the shit with so many masks that hardly anyone know what a pure Virginia is going to taste like.
If I told you that SG’s FVF is not an unadulterated tobacco, but C&D (who many think is lower quality) may just be a purer product because they don’t case it as much. Which would start many fights on here.

 

[rajangan]

If I told you that SG’s FVF is not an unadulterated tobacco, but C&D (who many think is lower quality) may just be a purer product because they don’t case it as much. Which would start many fights on here.

Good thing you didn't say that.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Good thing you didn't say that.

Wines are the same way... commercial California wine companies got so much fame for beating the hell out of France, making French wines seem like toilet swill (which it is) that they flooded the market with so many cheap wines that when a small boutique vineyard actually makes a wine without adding sugars and crap that the American market rejects it, hell the world market rejects it.
Same with tobaccos. Pipesmokers see the name brand companies that they have relied on, because they dominate the market, as being the status quoe, and when small batch farmers put out a handmade twist, the pipesmokers throw up their noses because their tastes have been tainted by SG, MacBaren, PS, GH&co, and all of them.
People actually even believe that Peterson is actually making the new rebranded Dunhills. They actually believed that Dunhill was involved with making blends before that. When, it's really just a few places making all of this stuff with different labels and packaging that has them duped.

Then, when a company puts out a truly natural (or more natural) Virginia, guys will throw up their noses like it's a lesser quality. When they are actually preferring the cheapest shit SG or STG can find and sell under many different names with many different flavors sprayed, soaked, or pressed in.

Hell, I'd say most on here prefer artificial flavored shit as opposed to anything close to real tobacco. OK, beat me up, ha ha.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Try finding just one truly dry wine where ever you are. A dry wine is the closest to a natural wine that you can get, because to make it sweeter, they have to back sweeten and add flavors. Unless you live in a cosmopolitan area with a true vinter, and not just a retail store that has lied to you or marketed themself as a vitner, you'd have a hard time ever tasting a true wine nowadays. That's something the Wine Aficionado magazines won't tell you, because of who pays their bills.

 

[rajangan]

Try finding just one truly dry wine where ever you are. A dry wine is the closest to a natural wine that you can get, because to make it sweeter, they have to back sweeten and add flavors. Unless you live in a cosmopolitan area with a true vinter, and not just a retail store that has lied to you or marketed themself as a vitner, you'd have a hard time ever tasting a true wine nowadays. That's something the Wine Aficionado magazines won't tell you, because of who pays their bills.

We have a local store that specializes in true natural wines. (not just organic) They have a range, from minimal interference, and cultivated yeast to completely wild fermented stuff. A lot of it is from Eastern Europe. I can think of three vineyards in BC that are on that level; Okanagan Crush Pad, Sperling, and Off the Grid.

I know what you mean about commercial tobacco, and the culture that surrounds it. I remember when I first joined the forum having my mind blown that people think crystals on tobacco are due to some esoteric thing called "quality", whatever that is.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

I remember when I first joined the forum having my mind blown that people think crystals on tobacco are due to some esoteric thing called "quality", whatever that is.

Yeh, not so much on the crystals, but I remember getting into many heated discussions about quality on here. Still, the power of illusion that marketing creates is a powerful thing. On a whim in a doctor's office a few years ago I picked up a Car magazine that has the top ten cars that costs the least to maintain because of less mechanical problems and overall owner satisfaction, and Kia beat the shit out of Mercedes. But, when you bring it up in conversation men will fall back on all of these excuses from tainted polls to calling it outright lies, because their perceptions are so skewed by marketing.
BMW is another. It was a piece of crap that preppies in the 80's started importing for mere "style" points with their buds, because they owned a European car, which costed mere pennies there, and way more here because of importing the pieces of crap.

There is so much brain damage done in this country by marketers and peer pressure. It's easy to see how most Americans can't tell fact from fiction when it comes to anything.

Just look at people drinking Seltzers and seltzer alcohol. What the hell is wrong with people? I am pretty sure that someone could find a way to sell boxes of rancid meats to Americans, with the right marketing campaign.

 

[Casual]

Hell, I'd say most on here prefer artificial flavored shit as opposed to anything close to real tobacco.

Count me in. I have gravitated to many Mac Baren blends because of the processing. I don’t know anything about tobacco sourcing or quality, and probably wouldn’t know it if I tasted it. But I do taste a difference in their hot pressing, and their obviously sweetened blends, and I like them. Mac Baren Scottish Mixture is great, but if you took the sweet out of it, I probably wouldn’t smoke it.

I also like semois, so perhaps I‘m not a total philistine.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

Count me in. I have gravitated to many Mac Baren blends because of the processing.

There is nothing wrong with that. My posts just stand with my arguments concerning the OP. I do like MacBarens, and Stokkebyes. But, the problem comes when we start debating quality, naturalness, and things like terra.
Hell, I've been know to imbibe in a Vanilla aromatic or two.

But, I also know that these things 99.9% of us tastes in our pipes is artificially enhanced. I also have problems adjusting to things like GLP's or D&Rs Virginias, even if I know that they more natural. In MY brain, I know that these are "more natural" products, but I have to adjust my taste buds also.

 

[Ahi Ka]

+1 for New Zealand-ish tobacco

 

[cosmicfolklore]

+1 for New Zealand-ish tobacco

But, is it Kiwi flavored?

 

[rajangan]

+1 for New Zealand-ish tobacco

There is going to be a lot more of it in the future as imported tobacco becomes more scarce.

 

[Richmond B. Funkenhouser]

I thought they can't have tobacco in New Zealand..

 

[rajangan]

I thought they can't have tobacco in New Zealand..

That's Australia.

 

[mso489]

Somewhere there is a professional, or several, who may have attuned their senses of taste and smell, and have knowledge of the origins and processing of each blend they assess who might hit the bullseye on several single leaf or even blends. Jiminks here might have a range of tobaccos he knows to this degree; he's far more advanced than most of us. Then there's the year of the tobacco crop, the rainfall in the particular area, and other variables. Not to be sour grapes, but I don't think I'd enjoy pipes as much if I were engaged to this degree on these technicalities, but for some, it might be the crowning glory.

 

[sablebrush52]

Seems that the answer is how tobacco is processed that makes a bigger difference. "Natural" tobacco flavors tend toward being very subtle and all the casing, cooking, smoking, steaming, sweating, flavoring, fermenting, hot pressing, topping, etc, etc, is added to make it palatable.

Whoever does the better job of processing the tobacco it uses gets the nod. And while "natural" may seem the higher or more noble goal, the reality may be that for most the result of that is a resounding thud.

Three cheers for your natural and unprocessed nearly tasteless and moldy leaf. Now, pass me that processed stuff.

Which is funny, because I'm the opposite with most of the food I eat. Not about the mold, not a fan of moldy food, but about the amount of processing. And I rarely eat out anymore because of the amount of salt and other crap added to basic foods.

I remember the 1976 Judgement of Paris very well. Nobody was surprised but the French. Granted, the French wine being exported to the US at the time was their swill as the French wine industry considered Americans largely ignorant about wine so why waste the good stuff on them. And, Americans liked the swill just fine because it had a French label on it.
But, anyone with a palate who tasted that swill against a good California wine of that period could tell who was offering the better product.
California wines went up against the best the French could offer and massacred them.