Murray's vs. Orlik

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ftrplt

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In the latest (Winter 2009) P&T magazine, Fred Hanna and Tad Gage (pgs. 21 and 58 respectively) write that they both think the Orlik DH tobaccos are closer to the "original" blends than the Murray's. Although I smoked many an "original" DH blend (Standard Full, NC, EMP, Durbar, London Mix., etc.) back in the 60's & 70's; I have no recollection of their "taste," other than that I enjoyed them extremely well!! :D I have yet to try an Orlik DH, they are all "resting," as are my Murray's! So.....For you that have smoked the Murray's and Orliks, what are your opinions? :?: :santa: :pipe: FTRPLT
 
I've never smoked the originals so take what I say with that in mind.

IMO the Orlik stuff was better than the last few years of the Murreys stuff. the earliest tins of Murrey stuff I smoked was very good. The later stuff was always way to wet. The Orlik was a great improvement.


The pipe world is full of parrots. When a 'big name' piper says something, it must be true and must be repeated as truth. I think that's how the Orlik stuff got such a bad rap...
 
ftrplt":6aw4luxe said:
In the latest (Winter 2009) P&T magazine, Fred Hanna and Tad Gage (pgs. 21 and 58 respectively) write that they both think the Orlik DH tobaccos are closer to the "original" blends than the Murray's. Although I smoked many an "original" DH blend (Standard Full, NC, EMP, Durbar, London Mix., etc.) back in the 60's & 70's; I have no recollection of their "taste," other than that I enjoyed them extremely well!! :D I have yet to try an Orlik DH, they are all "resting," as are my Murray's! So.....For you that have smoked the Murray's and Orliks, what are your opinions? :?: :santa: :pipe: FTRPLT
I've been going through three tins of London Mixture, and an early tin of Westminster, which, as some may recall, I blended to satisfy my desire for the OLD LM. The three tins of LM are an old Dunhill blended one, a Murray's one, and a later Orlik distributed one. The differences are remarkable, and far more severe than age alone would explain. And, the Orlik version is not at all like the old Dunhill version. Not at all.

I'm not through with my exploration of these four tins, and I'll write something up after a few more bowls of each. I've also got a few other Dunhill blends that I want to explore in a similar fashion.

I love my job. ;)

-glp
 
Sir Greg of Pease...I had hopes you might jump in on this!! Thank you!! And..I await your further comments. My gut feeling (and that's all it is, just an educated guess) is that it is practically impossible to "carbon copy" an old blend. I grew up "priming" tobacco in North Carolina (40 damn acres of it!!). Crops changed from year to year; one year's leaves were never exactly like another's. The BS 759 I last smoked several years ago was not the same as what I smoked in the 60's; still pretty dern good, but not the same!! :pipe: FTRPLT
 
glpease said:
ftrplt":d1snuweh said:
I love my job. ;)

-glp
And we all, of course love, that you love it.

I am sure I am speaking for the group, but I for one would be more than interested to hear your thoughts on the matter once you have worked through the tins (and those following perhaps). The recent comments of F. Hanna and T. Gage were, I think, perhaps a bit shocking to some. Please do let us know once you've written something up on the matter.
 
GP,

I'm also looking forward to a report on your findings. I've only been a brother pipe smoker for about ten years so I really missed out on some of the now more famous blends but I'm very thankful for whats available today. I'm also thankful that I have Five tins of Westminster from mid 07' in my cellar.....
 
ftrplt":5df67mzv said:
Sir Greg of Pease...I had hopes you might jump in on this!! Thank you!! And..I await your further comments. My gut feeling (and that's all it is, just an educated guess) is that it is practically impossible to "carbon copy" an old blend. I grew up "priming" tobacco in North Carolina (40 damn acres of it!!). Crops changed from year to year; one year's leaves were never exactly like another's. The BS 759 I last smoked several years ago was not the same as what I smoked in the 60's; still pretty dern good, but not the same!! :pipe: FTRPLT
You bring up a couple of very interesting points. That tobacco changes from year to year is something we cannot ignore. Through careful selection and blending, it's possible to deliver a fairly consistent product, but some amount of change is inevitable.

But, what irks me is when a blend is changed dramatically without regard for the tradition of the blend. The Sobranie blends are an excellent example. When Gallaher's began manufacturing them, they were fairly true to the originals, but, over time, they were changed. A lot. In the white label blend, the Latakia content was systematically reduced from about 50% to 35% - no doubt a cost-cutting measure. I recall buying a tin in the late 1980s, and wondering what the heck had happened to the stuff. I had not bought any in a few years, and this new blend was very different. Yes, it was still good, but it was NOT the same, and the differences were far more than could be explained by agriculture.

Most who smoked it regularly did not notice the differences, because the changes were made gradually over time, allowing customers to become acclimated to the "new" formula. My several year lapse resulted in my noticing this as an abrupt change. This precipitated a "research" project of finding as many "vintages" of the stuff as I could (and, at the time, aged tobaccos were not trading like platinum, and could be found fairly easily), and investigated them. Years later, I was able to read internal memos (at one time, publicly available) that documented the focus groups, the ingredient changes, and so on. This was clearly not just some idle phantasm of a possibly faulty memory. They'd really mucked things up...

Latakia is expensive, so they wanted to leave a few more quid on the bottom line. Personally, I'd have rather paid a little more in order to have what I wanted; even expensive tobacco is a cheap luxury when you think of cost per hour of pleasure, and in the 1980s, it was even more so!

All that to say that the 759 you smoked in the 1960s was really quite different from that which you smoked a few short years ago.

Cheers,
Greg
 
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