Pipe tobacco blend types.

Smoking pipes tobaccos are carefully treated and blended to achieve aroma shades which aren’t available in other tobacco products. Lots of smoking pipes tobaccos are blends that contain basic ingredients of variously cured Burley and Virginia tobaccos which are enhanced by spice tobaccos, among them many Oriental or Balkan varietals, Latakia (a fire-cured spice tobacco of Cypriot or Syrian origin), Perique (uniquely grown in St. James Parish, Louisiana) or blends of Virginia and Burley tobaccos of African, Indian, or South American origins. According to the tradition, a lot of American blends are made of American Burley with addition of sweeteners and flavorings. Sweeteners and flavorings are added in order to create a "fragrant" flavor.  And "English" blends in their turn are based on natural Virginia tobaccos amplified with eastern and other natural tobaccos.

There are three main types of smoking pipe tobacco.

The English blends don’t include man-made additions. These blends tend to contain Latakia a Syrian strong and smoky ingredient.

For a novice starting his adventure with pipes it still today is common to tell about some old myth about Latakia, namely that it gets its personal taste from camel dung. Tobacco is supposed to dry hanging on rafters inside of primitive buildings heated by burning camel dung in a stove.

Normally at least Virginia and/or Burley, perhaps also some Oriental tobaccos are with in the English blends. Often but not always the English blends also contain a very strong, peppery tobacco called Perique. It is only grown in certain restricted areas of Louisiana. Actually Perique is not a special species of Nicotiana like Burley or Virginia but an old method of fermentation. The process is very arduous. Tobacco is put many times under a high pressure that makes it ferment in its own juices. Gradually and arduously out of this comes a very special tasting, strong and spicy tobacco, added carefully in some blends. Perique gives the typical flavour and bite to many of those mixtures, called English. It might be added that the well-known Tabasco also comes from Louisiana. In fact, there indeed exists certain similarity with Perique and Tabasco.

Aromatic is the second type of the main blends.

By adding some natural or artificial flavours in the blend we can get often especially for a non-smoker deliciously smelling tobacco. Usual additives are e.g. vanilla, chocolate, various berries, fruits or nuts, rhums. whiskies, liqueurs, etc. Often the tobaccos in the group of aromatics are specially fermented using a process called Cavendish

A certain weakness is usual with these aromatic blends, namely they do not smoke as dry as the English. They may make pipe wet leaving certain gunk in them. One cannot smoke a pipe to the bottom so that only dry ashes were left after smoking a bowl. Instead of dry ashes out comes a wet dottle perhaps even a cm or more high in the shape of the bottom part of the bowl.

Virginia is the third type of the main blends.  There are lots of various types of Virginia. Very often  Perique is included in a lesser amount. They usually press Virginia blends and sell them in flakes. They are aged very well and one should puff them slowly not to get tongue burn.

All pipe tobaccos are either a blend of different types of tobacco (90%) or, and there a few of these, one type of tobacco that has been treated or processed in some way. The flavor, aroma and burning characteristics of a pipe tobacco are a combination of the types of tobacco used, the way the tobacco was processed and the cut of the tobacco(s) used. There are several ways of cutting tobacco leaves that have their own characteristics:

Flake: This sort of tobacco is pressed into a brick and then rubbed into flat flakes of different size. It must be cut into smaller pieces before you start smoking. As a rule this sort of tobacco is cool burning (but for Gawith Balkan Flake, Krumble Kake and some other), and almost all of them are pure Virginia's.

Ribbon cut: Tobacco that has been pressed then cut into long, thin ribbons. It is not as long or as fine as shag cut. Shag cut is very similar to cigarette tobacco in cut. This can be Virginia or Oriental.

Cube cut: Tobacco that has forced through a sieve, grate or chopped into small pieces that are often square. Typically, cube cuts are Burley tobacco.

Curly: This is tobacco leaf spun into rope and sliced. Typically it is very slow burning hence it is cool smoking.

Shag: Tobacco which has been very finely long cut. In Edwardian times it was considered a poor quality tobacco. Today, it is not. An example is McClellands Shag Cuts, Baker Street, 221, etc. Most shags have a high proportion of Virginia in them as Virginia tobaccos have long leaves that allow this cut.

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