What are they putting in C&D tobacco?

Brothers of Briar

Help Support Brothers of Briar:

This site may earn a commission from merchant affiliate links, including eBay, Amazon, and others.
Well, that's like saying champagne only truly comes from a small area in France. Maybe C&D only uses pure Poche, but I'm skeptical.
That was an interesting article. What caught my eye was the varieties of leaf used in the varieties of perique-processed products including Virginia and dark fired burley. Recently Watch City Cigar offered a blend of tobacco containing oriental leaf processed as traditional perique.

Anyway, the style, feedstock or mixture of periques used by C&D in the early 2000s (even if it originated in Louisiana) was of a more peppery, rather than fruity variety. I tolerate and enjoy the fruity and not the peppery.
I found another article on periques: A Closer Look at Perique | Smokingpipes.com
 
With the new information that I am reactive to bright Virginia, I have revisited what I could try of my GLP stash.

Discarding everything that contained bright Virginia, I was left with.. only Quiet Nights. Upon reopening the jar after a few weeks, I found that the off putting smell I had initially experienced was all but gone. I'm no scientist and can't tell you how that works, but I'm glad it worked out that way.

Fast forwarding to the smoke.. what can I say? It's great. Full flavored, dynamic, checks all the boxes. Very pleased to have been so wrong about a tobacco.

With that said, I went back to all my C&D blends, and they still all smelled markedly unpleasant and vaguely of mildew. Maybe I should give C&D a fair shake and try a tin, as I've only bought their bulk blends up until now.

For now, I am open minded once again about GLP blends, and will perhaps try to pick up the others that contain no bright Virginia, give them a few weeks rest in a mason jar, and see how I like them.
 
Update to my original post:

I took a chance and ordered several tins of C&D blends, and am glad to report I have no problems with them whatsoever. I found no hairs in them, there is no bad odor to speak of after a few weeks rest in a jar, and they are mostly pretty good smokes.

I have seen a few comments before of people suggesting that there is a disparity in quality between C&Ds bulk blends and their tinned blends. I can only say that based on my personal experience, that is categorically true. All the bulk blends I have still smell and taste absolutely rank, to me personally. I don't know what accounts for this difference, but I am pleased to say that my previous comments about C&D were premature, and I will be buying plenty more of their tins in the future.
 
Most of my experience with C&D blends is with bulks. I haven't smoked much from their tins except when someone was passing around a tin at a pipe club meeting. I haven't experienced the things you describe. It is possible to develop an allergy to tobacco; it happened to me when I used to blend tobaccos at home. Got a terrible rash from handling the tobacco so long.
Chernobyl-Hand-zpshre9tgwc.jpg
 
Top