The Crap Shoot

A Perth-blended, cutter-top tin of Rattray’s 7 ReserveWhen it comes to vintage tobaccos, most people seek out the marquee names–the vintage tobacco equivalents of Bogart, Bacall, Flynn, or Davis. The hunt has led to prices spiraling into the stratosphere for tobaccos like Balkan Sobranie, 759, or Sullivan and Powell’s Gentleman’s Mixture. No doubt in the future we’ll see the same scramble for G.L. Pease’s Stonehenge that we see for his Bohemian Scandal. People seek out the legendary.

Me? My tastes run to the more obscure. Personally, my favorite vintage tobacco is Rattray’s 7 Reserve. My love is as blind for this tobacco as Bogie’s was for Bacall in Casablanca. A mature Virginias-based blend with condimental latakia, 7 has that tangy sweetness with just a trace of latakia’s signature herbal smokiness, and the fairly recent is almost good as the original, Perth-blended version. I know that because of the lucious leaf from the tin you see at the top of this post.

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Ducking the Nicotine Hammer

Yesterday morning, while I was in New Jersey, I enjoyed a bowl of very old Scottish Rattray’s No. 7 in my 1921 Dunhill Shell Prince with my coffee. This is a luxury for me since I am not allowed to smoke at home. However, with a smoking room at my hotel, I was able to have a pipe as I prepared for the day.

Love at first puff rarely happens to me. However, when I had my first bowl of this old Rattray blend, I melted. I was visiting Fayetteville’s Tobacco Shop, and Justin - a great young man who works there - offered me a bowl.

He told me a story about a long-time pipe smoking customer who had recently passed away. The gentleman had a trove of wonderful tobaccos cellared. The shop bought the lot and sold most of it. This tin was a rare survivor of the sale, and that’s how that fine tobacco found its way into my pipe. When I left later that afternoon, Justin offered me a small zip lock bag to take with me. I have been slowly parsing the bag’s contents ever since.

As I smoked my way to the bottom region of the bowl yesterday morning, I noticed an old, familiar feeling. The nicotine hammer hit my head with that slight fuzzy, dizzy, nauseous feeling. I hate nicotine head, so I vigorously avoid nicotine-laden tobaccos. I can’t stand that sick feeling.

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