MisterE":ld0uxaw5 said:
A little of "all of the above" actually.
It´s a very good Virginia/Perique blend in ribbon cut form. Similar blends to it incluse Peterson's Irish Oak and GLP Stratford. It´s very Perique forward so I wouldn't consider it a mild Vaper á la Solani 633 or PS Luxury Navy Flake. Personally I love it, but not enough to invest in the going online price now. It's been three years since I last had it so Irish Oak is a good enough substitute for my budget.
The blend was discontinued when Dunhill moved it's blending operation from Murray's to Orlik. Because of that, existing stores of it is dwindling, hence the elevated prices you see. Collectors go for it because of it's future resale value. If you take what the original Balkan Sobranie has become worth in death, you can see why. If I were forced to choose, I would have chosen to discontinue something like Royal Yacht long before Elizabethan Mixture, but that's just me.
I was spoiled by the original Dunhill Eliz Mixture so I thought Murray's version was rather bland by comparison. There are a lot of Va/Per blends and IMO many are better than either the Murrays or the Orlik versions of Eliz mix. But once gone they're apt to become myths. It's undeserved. I think we never had as many great Va/Per blends choices in the old days of lore as we do today. Please patronize the great tobacco makers (esp the wonderful small ones) that really appreciate the biz.
Personally, I really love GL Pease Fillmore and McClelland St. James Woods among others. Fillmore in particular reminds me of the some of Rattray's when they were made in Perth.
Dunhill hasn't made tobacco since the late 70's. They haven't been a private company since 1967. They have been a subsidiary of very large tobacco companies or a luxury goods company since. So they are not a player in any of this despite what the tins say.
It was Carreras-Rothman that owned the Dunhill tobacco brand, and Alfred Dunhill ltd, when in the early 80's (30 years ago!) they consolidated pipe tobacco manufacturing in Belfast, for virtually all of their brands, at their manufacturing plant called Murray and Sons. Most of us saw that as terrible development. Murray's had very a different approach to pipe tobacco than did Dunhill. Incidentally, Dunhill chose CE McConnell to make them when they closed their tobacco plant. But CE McConnell was outside corporate Carreras-Rothmans so that changed when Carreras-Rothmans began consolidating manufacturing. It was a declining market that was the cause of all the consolidation and then finally manufacturing outsourcing. So we've been through four manufacturers for that brand. They're a long way from where they started.
In 1999 BAT - British American Tobacco - acquired the successor to Carreras-Rothman by then called Rothman's International. It was one of the largest acquisitions in history at the time. The Dunhill tobacco TM and blends still belong to BAT, and BAT retains all product and brand mgmt functions for these blends. Dunhill is a subsidiary of another luxury goods corporation altogether and has no control over the tobacco TMs at all. And has recently been re-writing their history to exclude tobacco anyway. Neither does Dunhill's current parent Richemont have any control over the tobacco TMs-
http://www.richemont.com/our-businesses.html
So the players are different than you think and they have been for a long time.
BAT pruned the Dunhill blend portfolio in Jan. 2007. They manufacture discontinued a number of blends at that time including Apertif, Durbar, Three Year Matured, and Eliz. Mix. At that time Orlik was a year into a supply contract to manufacture the Dunhill blends, and others, for BAT. So the blend did not go away with Murray & Sons. Murrays closed in summer 2005. Murrays was also a BAT manufacturing plant. Rather than make pipe tobaccos BAT decided to outsource manufacturing of their pipe tobaccos and close Murray & Sons. At the time BAT was still optimizing their manufacturing ops. That decision was publicized in Oct 2004.
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/northern_ireland/3957589.stm
(The old gent pictured lighting the pipe in that story is Richard Dunhill, Alfred Dunhill's grandson, and he's probably lighting a bowl of Nightcap.)
In Feb. 2007 BAT sold all
but the Cptn Black and Dunhill pipe tobacco TM's to STG/Orlik. A lot of brands went to STG/Orlik under this deal. Check the list on STG's site (URL at the bottom).
http://www.bat.com/group/sites/uk__3mnfen.nsf/vwPagesWebLive/DO6YLL7X?opendocument&SKN=1
In BAT's annual report to shareholders in 2007 they characterized that sale as 'disposal'. Pipe tobaccos are not a strategic interest of BAT's. But the market demand for pipe tobaccos turned around in about 2008, at least in the US. Even so I doubt that they'll bring it back. Still you can ask them.
Orlik (now only a brand name - they are a wholly owned subsidiary of the Scandinavian Tobacco Group - STG and I think they call themselves STG Assens) has product and brand mgmt control only over the ones they own and not the blends/brands they make under contract for BAT or anyone else. They do distribute two of the Dunhill pipe tobacco blends in Denmark. Does this answer the question about Orlik bringing them back?
http://www.st-group.com/
http://www.st-group.com/index.php/pipe-tobacco/complete-brand-list
