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Nature

- it concerns the proposal of the World Health Organisation to ban the use of “foreign ingredients” (particularly flavourings) in the manufacture of cigarettes.

To put it simply, the claim is that it is these “ingredients” that cause many problems – not least the fact that they attract and encourage impulsive smoking.

So what about products made from 100% pure tobaccos: premium cigars, the occasional natural Turkish or Virginia cigarettes, and pipe tobaccos.            
A pipe certainly cannot be smoked impulsively; what with the whole routine of selecting a pipe from your collection, filling it with your favourite blend and lighting up – without thinking about what you’re doing? No way!

And what about your favourite blend?
My own experience through many years behind the counter is that the more natural tobacco in the blend, the more satisfying it will be for the consumer. By law, the original “English” blends contained no “foreign ingredients”. For various reasons many of these blends no longer exist, but several of the exotic ingredients such as Latakia or Perique, and the myriad of Virginias matured to different degrees form the basis for to-day’s premium pipe blends – but now with the inclusion of a little “Cavendish” to enhance the aroma.
Coincidentally, this is exactly what I have experienced over the last year (or two) chatting with the Wesley’s tobacco customers.
Tastes are changing.                           
Many pipesmokers are moving away from the relatively bland, aromatic blends and asking for more satisfying tobaccos.
Our article in June last year highlights the efficacy of natural matured Virginias and other full-flavoured tobaccos in increasing the satisfaction from your pipe tobacco and combating the problem of “Tongue Burn”.
We suggest for example: “mix some No 15 or No.58 in with your No.43”, or “try adding one of the other more natural blends to your current tobacco”.
This will do, but experience has shown that “mixing” tobaccos just before smoking doesn’t necessarily give consistency in flavour. The tobaccos should rather be combined early in the preparation and allowed to integrate for some time before smoking.

This is exactly what we have done with our new Houseblend “No.46 - Full Gold”. Starting from scratch we have combined one of our most popular imported aromatic Burley tobaccos with some richer matured Virginia tobaccos prepared in the English style.
Try it – maybe after a meal – we’d love to hear from you.

The law says that I can’t invite you to try No.46 with my compliments, but my birthday falls in this period, so I’m offering all of our pipesmokers a special price on CG Pipe Cleaner Spray

You could also visit any Wesley’s to buy a 7g pack of the new addition to our Houseblend range.
It will be there soon.

Colin Wesley
No.242 August 26 – September 8, 2010

You can read previous articles from "Across the Counter" in The Library.