Naturally I immediately remembered a pipe tobacco that was probably never even sold there: VOORTREKKER, manufactured by Theodorus Niemeijer in Groningen. It was a medium ribbon-cut Maryland, with a fairly mild taste. The label had a picture of a Boer wagon train on the veld. Hence the flash of memory.
It was what the Dutch call Baai Tabak: plain ribbon-cut air-cured tobacco, primarily Maryland, with some other leaves added to balance the taste.
BOXER
South African tobaccos tend to be mostly flue-cured with air-cured leaf added to temper, with some pressure to meld the components before slicing or shredding. So it is doubtful that the elderly gentleman had smoked anything like a Dutch Baai Tabak.
What he probably smoked was BOXER, a bright ribbon-cut product made by Leonard Dingler LTD.
Leonard Dingler (pipe tobacco and snuff) goes back to the early part of the twentieth century or before, and was family-owned till purchased a few years ago by Swedish Match - which today announced intent to sell the company to Phillip Morris.
The Boxer line includes Piet Retief, Best Blend, and Mild Gold.
Swedish Match also makes Black & White, Giraffe, and Nineteen O'Four.
Other South African pipe-tobaccos are Assegai, Fox, Horseshoe, and Jock.
Unfortunately, I can only guess what Boxer tasted like - though, as it is the most popular of South African pipe tobaccos by far, the other pipe tobaccos probably offer alternatives that relate to it - circling around the standard, as it were.
Based on descriptions I have heard it could be a mostly flue-cured ribbon-cut cake with a mild top-dressing. A substitute here in the US would probably be a mixture of forty to eighty percent shredded medium Virginia flake, with the rest fire-cured, Burley or Maryland, Cavendish, and Black Virginia. Again, just guessing.
The South African gentleman might also like an English flake from Samuel Gawith, or even a plain Dutch Cavendish - one without the whorehouse reek so typical of many popular pressed 'Ollanders.
TOBACCO INDEX
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7 comments:
Regarding tobacoo the gentleman might like Mac Baren's Symphony. It is a cool mixture of Virginias and aged Burley with very mild casing. The tobacco is harmonious, and undemanding. A broken flake with a pleasant exchange between the sweetness of the flue cured, and the nuttiness of the aircured. Slightly sweet.
Note: only when fingers slip are there three o's in Oom Paul. Normally, two o's are sufficient.
The pipe is named after Paul Kruger - fondly nicknamed 'uncle' (oom) Paul by the Afrikaners.
Hmm, I wonder what they'd call a pipe named after Paul Krugman?
To be honest Boxer tastes like dried veld grass. It is horrible and cheap - thus smoked almost exclusively by poor workers in the form of hand rolled cigarettes. Jock also falls into this category.
Fox is much better albeit a bit too strongly flavored for me. Nineteen O'Four is about the best of the lot mentioned here - smooth and cool to smoke, relatively cheap and available in a wide variety of flavors. Black & White and Assegai are not that readily available so I have no experience with them but they seem to fall into the higher priced class.
Dried veld grass? Yowza. Not surprising, though. Plain tobacco, minimally cured, shredded or ribbon cut - that seems to be the norm in many areas.
In the Netherlands, at one time, there were "blends" that consisted primarily of shredded cigar tobacco. Mediocre stuff that wasn't good enough for even the local cigar factories. Interesting to smoke, smelled rasty, and eventually gave one a cough that sounded like you were hacking up a hairball. Such things were, of course, VERY popular.
Cost less than of a pouch of Baai Tabak. Only half the price of Sail or Amphora.
In GB a tobacco was sold called Afrikanner Mixture,
Everyone to his own taste! I've been enjoying my mix of FOX and RUM & MAPLE for many years! Tried a lot of others but nothing that I really liked. I bought a tin of RIDGEBACK once, and gave it away after 2 or 3 bowls.
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