Every occupation and subculture, be it medicine or video games, has its own jargon. Although specialized terms may help a given field's expert to communicate with others, clarity is more useful. In this spirit, here's the first in an occasional series defining the dreaded pipe tobacco jargon.
The two overall categories for pipe tobacco are Aromatic and English. Aromatic, strictly, means a pipe tobacco with added flavoring. English blends have no flavoring added; they rely on the natural taste of the component tobaccos. So, for example, a cherry-flavored blend is always an Aromatic; and that same blend of tobaccos, minus the cherry or any other added flavors, is an English blend.
As Alton Brown on Good Eats may say, picture two eggs. Fry the first in a pan (heating is a process, but doesn't add any flavors not already in the egg). Don't even add butter. Just fry the egg and eat it plain, to enjoy the pure eggy goodness. This is an English egg.
But scramble the second egg. Put in a nice pat of butter and gently mix the egg with some cream and, oh, some shredded Colby-Jack cheese. And put some chives and a bit of roasted red pepper in, too. Cook and serve up your Aromatic egg: The added flavors make this different from your plain old English egg.
The pan used for your eggs stands in for the processing of tobacco. Pipe tobaccos, depending on type, are dried, steamed, pressed, stoved or undergo many other processes--but the processing of the tobacco has nothing to do with the English or Aromatic quality of the blend; only the flavoring or lack of flavoring makes the difference.
Enjoy your Wild Cherry (Aromatic) or Bishop's Move (English). And never put an egg in your pipe. Unless it's hardboiled--but, to again paraphrase Alton Brown, that's another post.
There is a lot of debate about terminology when it comes to pipe tobacco. I think that it would be safer to divide the tobacco world into "aromatic" and "non-aromatic" if that's the distinction you want to make.
ReplyDeleteI agree that historically, English tobacco has had no additives, because there were purity laws in place. Those days are long gone, and in that time the term "English" has come to be used to describe blends with Latakia in them. A blend with more oriental leaf tends to gain the extra name of "Balkan". It's all very fuzzy, and people will argue endlessly, but I think you'd be hard pressed to find anyone that would use the term "English" to describe pure Virginias such as Rattray's Hal O' the Wynd or GL Pease Union Square.
Good points. Latakia, and Virginias especially, have almost their own classifications in recent times. And the more talk about tobaccos, the better! Thanks, Poliweb.
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