Tobacco Lost, Tobacco Found

It is an unfortunate truth that available pipe tobacco blends constantly change. Lost forever are old, revered tobacco blends. New blends go on sale.  Then suddenly become hard to find or disappear. Old blends lost, new blends found is the constant we live with today.

Hundreds of old pipe tobacco blends dating back to the late 1800s have completely disappeared. Their owners closed or sold while some just vanished. Others decided to go out of business (I’m looking at you McClelland) and refuse to sell their recipes.

Some companies changing owners or manufacturers meant recipes changing, and the current blends only vaguely resemble the original blends. It is common for company  “bean counters” to look at profit/loss margins and eliminate blends just because. Mergers are also an enemy of pipe smokers. Old established companies get swallowed up by a conglomerate that decides to stop making most of the blends. Would you be surprised that the decision to stop producing some blends are made before the first offer is made?

My personal take?

Progress and growth of a tobacco company is not always good for the pipe smoking community. Sometimes maintaining a high level of quality just isn’t feasible so companies just stop making a blend. And sometimes blends stop selling enough to be profitable.

Disclaimer: Some of the information in this post may not be 100% accurate but is based on my understanding of the facts. In other words, I may not have the full story or may just be speculating based on stories I have heard.

The Loss of McClelland

I personally can’t remember ever meeting or talking to the McNiel’s, owners of McClelland. The story I kept hearing though was that they were having problems acquiring the high-quality tobacco needed to make their blends. That, combined with the fact that they were just ready to retire, led to them closing McClelland.

I don’t know why they decided to not pass on or sell the blend recipes. My theory is that since sourcing the quality of tobacco they needed was impossible, they didn’t want anyone else trying to replicate the blends. I understand this. All the blends made under their label was their legacy. Having an inferior blend associated with the McClelland name was not something they wanted. I respect their decision.

Look at the Dunhill blends as an example. When Dunhill decided to get out of the tobacco business, they sold the recipes. After 1981(?), Dunhill blends were made by Murray. Some old timers I know say that the Murray blends were not the same. People who smoked and liked the Murray blends hate the current blends made by Orlik but with Peterson on the label.

Getting back to McClelland. I smoked through a bunch of Christmas Cheer and Holiday Spirit. I enjoyed all the Frog Morton series and still have a 100g tin of Frog Morton Cellar, unopened. Unfortunately, I didn’t explore more before the closed. It was only later that I stumbled on to four tins of McClelland’s Master Penman and tins of Piper’s Choice Black Tie, and several others. Except for the Frog Morton Cellar and two tins of Master Penman, those blends are now lost to me. One of these days I will have to smoke what I have left.

Making pipe tobacco is a business

Since tobacco was first “discovered” by Christopher Columbus and taken back to Europe, it has been a commercial product. Even before that, indigenous tribes used tobacco for barter and gifts as it was used for medicinal and religious purposes.

By the 1600s, tobacco was used as a cash crop and the first tobacco shops in England were opened in 1614. The first American tobacco company opened in Virginia in 1730. As we all know, the purpose of a commercial business is to make money by selling what the customers want.

I will speculate that what people were putting into pipes or rolling into cigars in the 1600s was at the other end of the spectrum compared to the thousands of blends and cigars available since 1900. (Cigar smoking can be traced back to the Mayans as far back as 2500 BC.) New varieties of tobacco were discovered and new processing methods developed over the centuries.

Follow the money

To make money, the companies would engage in one-upmanship when it came to blends. The goal was to create blends that would outsell the competitors blends. That is why hundreds of blends sold in the early 1900s started disappearing before World War II. Anyone remember Seaport Flake, Tuxedo, Old

Briar or Ogden’s Midnight Flake? I imagine if they were better blends then we would still find them available much like we do with Prince Albert, Granger, Gold Bond or Half & Half.

My maternal step-grandfather’s daily blend was George Washington, a R.J. Reynolds blend. In the mid-1970s a decision was made to reduce their pipe tobacco portfolio and George Washington was one of the last blends to be cut. I was once told that it came down to either George Washington or Prince Albert had to be eliminated, and Prince Albert won the coin toss.

Most recently we have seen tobacco manufacturing companies like Kohlhase & Kopp split into. Kopp has kept the pipe tobacco side of the business while Kohlhase is pursuing the cigar side. Other companies are in the process of downsizing their portfolios if rumors are to be believed.

The biggest recent loss must be the result of Sutliff and Mac Baren being bought by the Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG). The vast majority of Mac Baren and Sutliff tinned blends were discontinued as well as all but a few of Sutliff bulk blends. This has also impacted the local and regional tobacconist who produced their own blends from tobacco bought from Sutliff.

Is there any good news?

Under the Obama administration, the FDA introduce deeming regulations with the intention of crippling the cigar and pipe tobacco industry by making it harder to introduce new products and by increasing the excise taxes. On the one hand, taxes went up. Better news is the deeming regulations are on hold.

Companies rushed various new blends into production before the published compliance dates. Tobacco companies like Cornell & Diehl and tobacco shops like The Country Squire, Watch City Cigars and Ken Byron Ventures, to name a few, have continued introducing new house blends. Of course, these are shops which used Sutliff as a source for their blending tobaccos and are now scrambling to find new suppliers.

Additionally, we have seen an increase in the number of European blends being distributed in the U.S. Eighteen different HU tobacco blends are available as well as eight blends from Kopp (six Caribbean Blue blends and two limited edition blends). It leads me to hope they will eventually expand their distribution.

© J. Gibson Creative Services. May 15, 2025