There is one blend I'm not especially fond of -- but won't turn down if it's otherwise slim pickin's. Here's the list:
There's only one blend, since I began puffing in 1976+/-, that gives me the heebie-jeebies:
As a teenaged boy, I was clambering over the rocks and dusty hillocks deep in southwestern Oklahoma (we were near the tiny town of Reed with its shuttered, Quonset Hut post office; Reed is now considered a "ghost town," although a handful of people live on farms dotted around). My buddy and I were hunting rattlesnakes to contribute to the annual Mangum, Oklahoma, Rattlesnake Derby. We had a single homemade catchpole that was one yard long on a good day. As he and I neared the top of a small rise, I heard a surprisingly loud steam kettle noise. I saw the biggest damn rattler I'd ever witnessed, just then uncoiling itself on the rocks a couple of feet away. I glanced at my buddy with our catch pole. I looked at its 3' length and considered that rattlers were said to be able to strike twice their length. The rattler glaring at me for disturbing his peace was near to six feet long if an inch. My buddy later said I became a rapidly diminishing dust cloud as I turned and hightailed it. And that's what Borkum Riff Whiskey reminds me of: it may not look like a rattler, but it sure bites like one.
(The pic isn't me... it's just offered for illustration to those unfamiliar with Western Diamondback rattlers.)
