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Recently, Shane and I were tasked with a tedious and rather formidable project: listing all the component tobaccos and assigning strength, taste and room-note ratings for all 1335 tobacco blends we have on the site. No, we weren't being punished for some horrible infraction of the SPC Handbook. We were collecting information for the new Tobacco Locator tool. This tool is a really useful addition to our site and is a sister to its equally useful predecessor, the Pipe Locator. Our tobacco selection and pipe selection are so large that even though I navigate the site all the time every day, it can be overwhelming to keep track of. These two specialized tools pare down the thousands of options available to display only those items that fit your specific needs and tastes.
Located in the upper right-hand corner of the site, and visible from any page, the new Tobacco Locator button is ready to help you with your shopping at anytime. Like the Pipe Locator, the Tobacco Locator is designed to help you find the offerings on our site that best suit your needs. By selecting specific options from the drop-down menus, you can search the site in new ways, by selecting from eleven different search refining drop-down menus.
Here is how it works: start by clicking the Tobacco Locator button, which will take you to a list of parameters by which to search, located on the left-hand side of the screen. These are a series of drop-down menus including Recently Added/ Sale, Tin/ Bulk, Tin Brands, Bulk Brands, Cut (of the tobacco. ie: Flake, Ribbon, Cube Cut, etc...), Components: Include (the component tobaccos you want to search for in a blend), Components: Exclude (the component tobaccos you don't want in a blend), Family (the blend category, ie: Virginia, English, Aromatic, etc...), Strength (nicotine), Room Note (how what you are smoking smells to those around you), and Taste (body and intensity of flavor). Below these options, you will see a drop-down to decide how many tobaccos per page you wish to display in your search, and just below that there is a gray button that says "Find It!".
You do not have to use all of these fields, just the ones that apply to your search. For example, let's say I wanted to know what tobaccos had the highest level of nicotine strength, and were available in a flake, containing no Latakia. To do this, I select Flake as the Cut, Latakia for Components: Exclude and Very Strong for the Strength. Nothing happened. How come? Oh yeah, I forgot to hit Find It! Once I click the Find It! button, my search yields 2 results. The strongest flakes on the site which contain no Latakia are Cornell and Diehl Burley Flake #1 and Gawith, Hoggarth & Co. Dark Flake Scented. Cool! Now I know what to smoke when I get tired of being able to see straight.
Now let's try another one. I want to know how many straight Virginia Ribbon tobaccos there are on the site with a Mild Taste and a Very Pleasant Room Note. So I select Ribbon for the Cut, Virginia as Components: Include and Black Cavendish, Burley, Cigar, Dark Fired Kentucky, Deertongue, Latakia, Orientals and Perique as Components: Exclude. For Room Note, I select Very Pleasant, for Taste I select Mild and click on the Find It! button. This search yields 4 results: Low Country's Santee, Cornell and Diehl's Autumn Evening and Vanilla Cavendish, and McClelland's Pastry. Awesome! Now I know what to smoke when I forget to wear cologne!
The thing that makes this new tool so cool is that you can refine your search as much as you want. You can even make several selections under each search modifier. For example: you can select multiple tobacco components to include or exclude, or you can search for Flake, Ribbon and Cube Cut tobacco simultaneously. I use this tool all the time, and I hope all of you find it as helpful as I do.
Tagged in: Cornell and Diehl Gawith and Hoggarth Low Country McClelland Tips Tobacco Tobacco Locator
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Comments
Hey guys; the tobacco locator would help more if it allowed me to choose from the different types curing methods; any chance you could compile this and have a drop down for this on the locator as well? I need flue-cured. What i'm really after are the lowest levels of nicotine possible in a tobacco so having a drop-down revealing that aspect of tobacco, i'm sure, would be unbelievably helpful to many folks. Think and pray on it? thank you, kevin
@Kevin, Thanks for the comment. Since tobacco mixtures are made up of tobaccos that have already been cured, it could get pretty convoluted to try to categorize blends by the curing methods used on the blending components. Here is a breakdown of the curing processes used for each component: All Virginias are Flue-Cured. All Burleys are Air-Cured. After the Air-Curing, some Dark Burleys are treated over open fires to produce Dark Fired Kentucky. All Orientals (Turkish) are Air-Cured. After the Air-Curing, some Orientals are treated over open fires to produce Latakia. Perique is produced by aging Dark Burley in Whiskey Barrels under a great deal of Pressure. Black Cavendish is produced by pressing and steaming Dark Burley. As for Nicotine levels, this is addressed in the Strength category. In the tobacco locator, you will see that Strength offers the ability to search for tobaccos ranging from Very Mild (1 dot) to Very Strong (5 dots). I hope this helps to clarify. Cheers! Jeremy
Years ago I used to smoke Amphora Brown which is no longer available.
Is there anything similar available today?
Thanks for your time.
Would it be possible to add something like an "Aromatic Notes" category?
For instance: "Vanilla", "Rum", etc...for those of us who are *not* experienced connoisseurs, it might help us to choose a tobacco we might like; without having to buy 50 that we don't.
Years ago I used to smoke a mixture called "Crosby Square" which is long past and no longer available.
Is there anything similar available today?
Thank you in advance for your time and any assistance you may offer.
MY FAVORITE IS NIGHTCAP BY DUNHILL
Is Lane 1Q available?
@Allen W Thornton Always.
https://www.smokingpipes.com/pipe-tobacco/lane/1-Q/product_id/11757/bulk/
Jeremy and Shane,
Thank you for your work, the tool is fantastic! Might want to tell Mike too, not sure if he was the tech that implemented it though. Take care,
Justin Hart
@Sleightinmind That'd be our programmers, Greg and John. We'll pass it on, and thanks for reading!
Hey folks, I really enjoy using your pipe locator and tobacco locator. I'm sure you get a lot of requests to modify your search tools (I was in IT for over 30 years). It would be quite handy to see your tobaccos (both bulk and tin) by sales rank. That way we could get a handle on what others are enjoying. Would that be something you are interested in doing for us?
@Calvin: Your timing is excellent. Funnily enough, this dovetails nicely with some thinking we've been doing about the pipe and tobacco locators lately. We'll see if it makes sense to fold it in.
I used to buy PIRATE KAKE and BILL BAILEY'S BALKAN from you. Do you still carry these tobaccos?
@Stanley DeRusha We do indeed, Stanley.
Could someone please tell me when the G&H Sweet Maple Twist will be back in stock? Thanks
@James W We don't have an ETA on Sweet Maple Twist right now, sorry James. Best bet is to sign up to in stock notifications if you haven't already.
Dont think the tobacco locator is working properly, or perhaps its operator error? I checked aromatic / very pleasant room note / and search. The first tabacco listed, as well as many others, have 1 "one dot" rating under "note". I'm assuming the "dot" rating should show a much higher rating? What am I doing wrong?
@David Kupczyk Hey David. So 'Room Note' goes from Very Pleasent (one dot) to Intense (five dots), so it's kinda of switched around from the way you're probably expecting to see it.
Should the 'room note' and 'flavor' checkboxes be marked after you do a search? It seems they get cleared every time I do a search...
@Andrew Wolfe Looks like it's actually making the search using the room note (that particular query can be seen in the address) but it should not be resetting like that, no. We're looking into it now. Thanks for brining it to our attention.
@Andrew Wolfe That should be resolved now.
I like Frog Morton on the Bayou and Seattle Pipe Club Potlach. Can you recommend bulk blends that would be similar? Thank you
@Rodrigo Correa Yeah, of course. Just take the components (Virginias, Perique, Latakia, Orientals) and add them into the locator, like this:
https://www.smokingpipes.com/search/the-tobacco-locator.cfm?component=4&component=3&component=5&component=1&sortOpt=default&displayNum=24
Of those though, we think you might dig C&Ds Crooked Lane, C&Ds Awakened Elder, Kramer's Blend for Danny Kaye, and Captain Earle's Mystic Blend.
With the recent closing of McClelland, and things with Dunhill and potentially other sellers, it would be great if this tool allowed us to pick our favorite blends and it would find us similar products. I think the best way to impliment this would be when we go to a product, at the bottom it would list "similar products you may like" or something of the sort.
I presume discontinued products would be eventually removed from the site, eg Frog Morton. So it would be great to still be able to do a search for products that would be a suggested replacement for some of the much loved but unavailable blends. The same for very expensive or hard to get blends.
I understand if this is too hard or not possible though.
@Tank That's a great idea, my friend. I'm not going to pretend I know if it's technically possible or not, but I'll definitely pass it on to the programming team!
@tank
Isnt the idea that you plug in the components you want, and the tool returns the brand/blends that youre looking for in taste?
As an analogy, if I was looking for macaroni noodles with an american cheese (excluding swiss and cheddar), it might return brand’s A, B, and C macaroni and cheese types. If brand A is shutting down, I still have brands B and C with the same components.
I’m equally bummed about losing the McClelland / Frog Mortons but I’ve always found that when one door closes, at least one more opens. Embrace impermanence, appreciate what you have now, and keep an open mind that you might actually find something equally good or better.
Newbie to ordering. Will try to do so for Heine's Blend, 14oz. Thanks for the email alerts of specials & all. John
Your tobacco locator sucks. Why have you
over complicated what used to be a simple
user friendly process of just listing tobacco by brands?
@Joe Tetherow Thanks for your feedback on our tobacco locator. This hasn't replaced listing tobacco by brands, you can still access a full list of all the tinned tobacco brands we offer at https://www.smokingpipes.com/tobacco/tinned/. We have a similar page for all the tobacco brands we carry in bulk at https://www.smokingpipes.com/tobacco/bulk/.
The tobacco locator is best used when you're looking for new tobaccos, or specific tobaccos by cut or component to try. We find that it's helpful in discovering new blends that you might not be aware of. We hope you find this helpful and please keep the feedback coming!
My local tobacco shop recently fell prey to the now well know tobacco wars. Consequently, I have not been able to find a reasonably priced alternative to my favorite blend - "Black Lace", formerly "Black Velvet". This was a blend my tobacconist had prepared by a 3rd party supplier/blender. I have no idea who that was, but it was the most delightfully aromatic & mild blend I've found in my 40 years of smoking. I did mange to find a tobacco sold under the same name "Black Lace" from one of your online competitors; it's close, but not the same blend. It's also very expensive. My 1st smokingpipes.com order of "Midnight Smoke" came close, but was terribly wet, and from what I could tell, has an additive to keep it that way. It has virtually no tongue bite, which I like, but not much of anything else. Unlike my favorite Black Lace, no one would ever describe the aroma as that of fresh baked brownies. I would be very grateful if you could recommend a bulk tobacco that has no tongue bite, minimal additives, and a delightful (brownies) aroma. Sorry about getting so verbose.
Many Thanks,
R. Munn
@Richard M We're happy to help you on your quest for the ideal blend! After reading your description of the characteristics of the blend, I narrowed down my search to what I feel would be a great selection for you. Cornell & Diehl: Dark Chocolate is a bulk tobacco that is similar content wise for your preferences. It is a very mild Black Cavendish blend with a chocolaty aroma. I'm quite sure that you would be satisfied with this blend. I hope this helps you in your search and appreciate you reaching out to us!
Hi: How do I get Germain tobaccos, they are always out of stock..
Thank you...
Dave
@Dave Loewer Unfortunately we are only able to get Germain tobacco a few times a year and in very small amounts. You can sign up to get an email alert when we do have it in stock. When we do get some in we send out a limited number of alerts to the people on the top of the list. Then every one down the list who does not get the alert is moved up. Even though with hard to get tobacco like this we limit orders to one or two tins it goes very quickly. You can also give us a call. We are always happy to check if we do have anything. I hope this is helpful.
Regards
Chip Kushner
nothing now.
Is there a way to sort by in stock/out of stock?
Is there a way to sort by in stock/out of stock?
Robert Nichols, We do not currently have a way to sort by stock availability, however, that is a fantastic idea! Keep an eye out on the site, that feature should be rolling out in the next few weeks. Thank you for the suggestion!
I would be forever grateful if I could find a decent replacement for McClelland's 'Dark Star'. Any suggestions?
@J Dalton Good question! I recommend trying Rattray's Black Virginia when it's back in stock. Also, Sutliff's 507-S Stoved Virginia would be a good blend to try, and it's a little easier to obtain. I hope one of these will do the trick for you!
Is there a pipe tobacco on the market that comes close to the classic Flying Dutchman I loved in the 70s? Sutliff sells a 'match' but it's not even close.
What tobacco is like My Mixture 965?
@Wally R Give the Peterson My Mixture 965 a try, the blends were acquired from Dunhill and rebranded under the Peterson line, so it's the same recipes! It's out of stock now, but we should be restocked soon.
Trying to find shippers tobacco shag cut by van rosems
@Lou Sejovski Are you looking for Van Rossem's Troost? The Troost Aromatic was a shag cut and is no longer in production, but Sutliff has made a match for it Calle "Troost Match" and you can find that on our site and give an ounce or two a try!
can anyone tell me if mac baren still sells gold cube
@Ronald Howell Unfortunately, that blend has been discontinued.
What's a close match for Balkan Sobranie 759? After a 20 year break, I'm getting back into enjoying a pipe and my favorite tobacco from years ago is no longer made.
GALVINS--CAME IN A ROUND SMALL TIN.....DID ANOTHER COMPANY BUY THIS BRAND OUT AND CHANGE IT'S NAME ?
With certain tobaccos like Esoterica’s, Samuel Gawith and Gawith and Hoggarth getting harderto find.How about getting your team to kick around ideas of trying to come up with your own tobaccos to be similar to the hard to find tobaccos.I understand the return on your investment.Perhaps putting Jeremy Reeves to oversee the project. He has the ability to think of new blends.I belong to the “You Tube Pipe Community”Keep in mind we have over 14000 members.Just a thought.Thanks StevePS. Don’t forget Condor and the HU Germany tobaccos.
Can you suggest a substitute for Nat Sherman 536 (Empire English).
I am trying to search for low nicotine blends. When I search for low strength the types of tobacco are usually higher nicotine? If I search by type of tobacco (oriental) the strength is high?
I acquired my first pipe in 1962 and smoked Dunhill Royal Yacht. I'd several favourable comments from the fair sex due to the pleasant tobacco aroma. Sadly it is no longer available. Does any tobacco today come close?
HOWARD On December 30, 2020GALVINS--CAME IN A ROUND SMALL TIN.....DID ANOTHER COMPANY BUY THIS BRAND OUT AND CHANGE IT'S NAME ? 50 years ago this tobacco was discontinued, but i am still hopeful that someone has information about this tobacco and if i can purchase it under a different name.......HELP!
HOWARD On December 30, 2020 "GALVINS"----CAME IN A ROUND SMALL TIN.....DID ANOTHER COMPANY BUY THIS BRAND OUT AND CHANGE IT'S NAME ? 50 years ago this tobacco was discontinued, but i am still hopeful that someone has information about this tobacco and if i can purchase it under a different name.......HELP!HOWARD On December 30, 2020GALVINS--CAME IN A ROUND SMALL TIN.....DID ANOTHER COMPANY BUY THIS BRAND OUT AND CHANGE IT'S NAME ? 50 years ago this tobacco was discontinued, but i am still hopeful that someone has information about this tobacco and if i can purchase it under a different name.......HELP!
"GALVINS"----CAME IN A ROUND SMALL TIN.....DID ANOTHER COMPANY BUY THIS BRAND OUT AND CHANGE IT'S NAME ? 50 years ago this tobacco was discontinued, but i am still hopeful that someone has information about this tobacco and if i can purchase it under a different name.......HELP!HOWARD On December 30, 2020GALVINS--CAME IN A ROUND SMALL TIN.....DID ANOTHER COMPANY BUY THIS BRAND OUT AND CHANGE IT'S NAME ? 50 years ago this tobacco was discontinued, but i am still hopeful that someone has information about this tobacco and if i can purchase it under a different name.......HELP!
Thank you for the detailed explanation of the new Tobacco Locator tool! Your insight into how it helps refine searches for tobacco blends based on various parameters is incredibly useful. It's clear that a lot of thought went into making this tool user-friendly and effective, and it’s great to see it enhance the shopping experience.