Mac Baren's Original Choice

Original Choice tastes like there might be some quality tobacco in there underneath all that fruity nonsense, but I'm still unable to find it in my heart to give this blend even 10%. The strawberry-banana-grenadine topping is simply ghastly. I don't mind the odd aromatic, but this stuff is like a whole year's worth of Friday afternoons when I was 10 years old. Like the package says, it won't bite your tongue, but the fact that this garbage cost good money will definitely burn your ass. About the only thing this absolute crap has going for it is the fact that I can send it to the landfill with confidence that its corrugated cardboard packaging will biodegrade. Fuck.

RATING: 8%

(Image from www.tabakplus.ru.)

Escudo Navy Deluxe

Smoking a bowl of Escudo is like sticking a delicious blowtorch in your mouth and holding it there for 50 minutes. Cigar aficionados will sometimes talk about a cigar’s “finish,” i.e. the duration and quality of its flavour as it lingers on the palate. Escudo doesn’t have a finish per se—it’s more of a plum-and-pepper tattoo on the inside of your face. Those who enjoy a full-bodied smoke will undoubtedly find it quite satisfying, while those who wish to taste or smell anything other than Escudo for the rest of their lives will be disappointed.

RATING: 92%, but there’s no going back.

(Image from tobacco-club.net.)

A Month of Ill-Fated Consumer Products #4: The Smokeless Cigarette

Back in the 80's, medical science confirmed what everyone who wasn't a complete moron should've known all along: secondhand smoke is bad. Around that time, Camel introduced Premier Lights, which worked by "heating and aeresolizing" the tobacco rather than burning it, and purported to reduce "biological activity." I've never tried one personally, but I'd bet a Canadian twenty that Premier Lights did indeed reduce "biological activity," since a smokeless cigarette sounds about as stimulating as a fuckless porno movie.

RATING: Gimme%

(Image from tobaccoproducts.org.)

General Onyx Snus

General Onyx comes in a fancy can and the little snus packets inside are arranged in the shape of a star. It's a "white portion" snus, meaning the little "teabags" are made out of a slightly less porous material so they (supposedly) leak less and keep longer. It also has 50% more nicotine than General Regular. Pretty much everything about this snus is fantastic except the taste--it's got the notes of pepper, citrus and salt common to most General products, but it has an underlying soupçon of burnt rubber or road tar that I don't like at all. Since there are only about 5 snus users in the whole world who don't live in Sweden, and none of them read this blog, I guess I might as well be writing this post on a sticky note, sealing it in a bottle and throwing it into the bay, except Dallas doesn't have a bay. Fucking Dallas.

RATING: Fancy 90%, Taste 20%

(Image from www.snuffexpress.com. They also make a General Onyx Carbon edition, which is like $40 a can and is packaged by the same people who make parts for Porsche. I think this is appropriate, since it tastes strongly of something you'd scrape off the underside of a car.)

Marlboro Snus

Snus is a little teabag-shaped, tobacco-filled object that goes between your upper lip and gums in order to give you oral cancer along with the lung cancer you're already going to get because you can't stop smoking cigarettes. It's a must-have for men who want to not be able to breathe through a toothless mouth in 10-50 years. Unlike Swedish snus, which exudes the manly flavours of smoked fish and pain, Marlboro snus is cloyingly sweet, offering testimony to the perpetual adolescence of American taste.

RATING: An unsurprisingly addictive 20%

(Image from http://klotband.files.wordpress.com.)

Natural American Spirit Perique Cigarettes

Most pipe tobacco blends that claim to have "perique" in them actually contain anaerobically fermented green river burley, and the reason there isn't enough real perique to go around is because somebody's been putting it all in cigarettes. The good news is, they're the best cigarettes money can buy. You have to kind of smoke these like a pipe or cigar to get the full effect of the perique--if you haul on it like a sailor, it just tastes like a strong cigarette. But all the classic perique notes are there: cracked pepper, plum, cream, and that weird "silver" taste that's impossible to describe non-synesthetically. I wish I loved broccoli and exercise as much as I love tobacco. Damn.

RATING: 95%

(Image from www.sweetmedicineshoppe.com, but don't let the name fool you, kids, it's not medicine.)

GLP's Westminster

Certain tobaccos impart distinct flavours to their respective blends. Virginia is toasty, grassy or lemony; burley is nutty and often sprayed with fruity essences; "oriental" or "turkish" tobaccos vary considerably, but often taste floral, citrous, or leathery; perique is piquant, and tastes like stewed fruit, salsa and chrome; latakia--the most distinctive "condiment" tobacco of all--smells like road tar, burning camel shit and funeral incense, and tastes like it smells, except saltier.

Westminster is a full-bodied English blend comprised of virginias, orientals and Cyprian latakia. Compared to the rarer Syrian latakia, which has a smoky transparency and a hint of overripe pomegranate, the Cyprian leaf has a darker, almost opaque quality and a slight mustiness. I think I prefer the Cyprian, although the fullness of either can be off-putting. The virginias taste like toast. The orientals taste like a petting zoo full of goats and llamas. It smokes very cool, and the flavour is consistent throughout the bowl, although I usually end up tossing the last 1/4 (bad for the pipe, I know, but it tastes like wet ass). Overall, Westminster has more balls and nicotine than Esoterica Tobacciana's Penzance, another notorious Cyprian heavy hitter. If it's cased (i.e. flavoured) at all, I can't tell.

Some people (English people, I imagine) can smoke an English blend all day long. I like one once in a while, on a cloudy, chilly day when I'm feeling nostalgic and/or a little sad. Don't ever smoke Westminster indoors with other people around unless you like making lifelong enemies. In fact, you probably shouldn't even smoke it while you're on the phone.

RATING: a bittersweet 80%--Don't smoke latakia, kids, unless you really want to smell death.

(Image from smokingpipes.com. Also, that petting zoo is in Houston *cough cough*.)

Haddo's Delight

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Reiner's Long Golden Flake

Reiner's Long Golden Flake is one of the most expensive tinned tobaccos in production. It looks fantastic, sort of like a leather belt coiled inside a gold-coloured paint can. LGF is made of various virginia tobaccos, louisiana perique (that's French for "prick"), and a little bit of white burley. Its flavour is predominantly grassy and a little bit citrous, while the perique stays in the background with a salsa-and-pine-sawdust kind of thing going on. It's also quite sweet, even for a virginia blend, which makes me wonder if the burley isn't flavoured ("cased," in pipe lingo) with something. It won't bite your tongue, even if you puff hard. Basically, it's so gentle that even a 15-year-old could smoke it. Worth every penny.

RATING: 90%

(Just kidding--15-year-olds aren't cool enough to smoke! Image from www.smokingpipes.com, which is also where I bought the tobacco.)