While I am not a huge fan of all bulk tobaccos, some strike the right chord with me. Stokkebye tobaccos are definitely gems in jars, so to speak. Since Sykes is traveling all around Denmark, meeting with various pipe makers and tobacco houses, it seems fitting to do a brief post about one of the best blenders in the world.

I remember when I first began to smoke a pipe in college. Driving to the local shop was like going into a wonderful bakery, but this was a bakery full of wonderful smells of things burning. While the tobacco shop was rather small, they did have a couple dozen pipes on hand. Along with less than a dozen tinned tobaccos, they had a few dozen glass jars on a rack with blends from McClelland, Lane, and Stokkebye. I must have picked up every single jar in the place for a deep-lung whiff. Really great cheese stores frown upon this, but good cheese and good wine, as well as tobacco, deserve a good sniffing to perk up olfactory sensations.

Of course, the Stokkebye tobacco caught my eye immediately. While most of the jars were full of ribbon-cut blends with various liquors, fruits, and syrup flavors poured over like a sundae, the Stokkebye tobaccos were different. They were beautiful. As I talked with Betsy, the nice lady who owned the store, she informed me that they were not only pretty, but they had a great taste. I wondered how someone could take tobacco and shape it into gorgeous flakes for smoking. Years later, I came to understand that they were not doing this with ribbon leaf, but were actually laying out sheets of perfect tobacco for some really, really, REALLY hard pressing. The bullseye flake is actually shaped like a rope, and eventually ends up looking like a long roll of nougat. After these tobaccos are shaped, and aged for their necessary time, a super-duper sharp guillotine cutter cuts off the pressed flakes into very uniform thicknesses.

The reason why I like flake tobaccos the best because when I give them a quick rub between my hands, they form very uniform ribbons that pack and light easily. It's impossible to get a chunk of tobacco the size of my fingernail in the bowl. Pictured below are the Stokkebye Navy Flake, Luxury Bullseye Flake, and Luxury Twist Flake (of which I constantly inhale the sweet-buttery notes). I've purchased a few pounds of each of these blends, and they age extremely well. If you've not tried them, I would highly recommend doing so. Betsy used to sell quite a bit of the blends because she said they were 'pretty'. While they are very attractive tobaccos, they also have a good taste and great cellaring potential.