RED RAPPAREE & SAMARRA

Some tobacco mixtures, no longer extant in their original form and having been farmed out to successive outside manufacturers, have prompted profound memory-shift in their erstwhile smokers. What might be called a migration of remembered sensations, if you prefer.

Memory is odd that way. What one person remembers about a taste or smell may focus particularly on a characteristic that someone else's nose elides over entirely.
[A rose is not a rose is not a rose is not a rose.]


Rattrays Red Rapparee is one such blend.

I smoked several tins of it in the late seventies and early eighties. It was quite good. I do not remember it with any sharp detail, yet others do. But they all remember differently.

Accordingly they have described it as:

1) A nice mild-medium mixture.
2) Quite gentle, medium English - smells delightfully oriental.
3) Medium English blend at its best.
4) Medium Oriental blend.
5) A complex, mid-strength blend. -
6) A fine all-day smoke.
7) A nice full blend.
8) A hefty English blend at its finest.
9) A fairly stout English blend.
10) An end of the day blend, an outdoor smoke.

Terms used are spicy, sweet, musty, robust, fragrant, wonderful, perfumed, Oriental, pungent, dense, rounded. Classic. Kaleidoscopic.

In addition to being compared to that other famous Rattray blend, Black Mallory, it has been likened to Balkan Sobranie, Dunhill 965, Dunhill London Mixture, Dunhill Standard Mixture (Medium), Samuel Gawith's Squadron Leader, and several of Greg Pease's mixtures (including Samarra).

Lament and keen for what Red Raparree used to be is intense, poetic, lyrical, nay even tragic and melodramatic, among the tribe with wooden objects in their face.

Makes me wish I had smoked it........ Oh wait, I did!

Meh.



On the other hand, I smoked a pipe-full of G. L. Pease's Samarra this morning.
Medium strength, aged red Virginia with Latakia, Turkish, and a touch of Perique. Sweet, spicy, and well rounded. The Latakia and Turkish are in perfect equilibrium.
It was extremely good indeed.

It did not remind me of anything in particular, not even of the bowls I had last year. Something else. I cannot put my finger on it.

TOBACCO INDEX


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