(In today’s commercial markets, there is no air-dried Virginia, just as there is no flue-cured burley.) By the end of the curing process, the leaf is gold- or lemon-colored, and it is so dry and brittle it cannot be handled without shattering. It follows that only flue-curing can produce a true, naturally sugary Virginia pipe tobacco. The natural sugars are “locked in” before they can break down. Rapid drying is essential to the creation of flue-cured Virginias because it quickly shuts down the leaf’s metabolic processes. The air is circulated and exchanged to help push the moisture out of the leaf. As the leaf dries, the temperature is raised day by day to a finishing point near 165 degrees Fahrenheit after about 10 days. The temperature is started at the low end of the operational range, around 100 degrees Fahrenheit, to avoid scalding the moist leaf and compromising flavor. The bulk barn is packed to capacity with ripe leaf, fresh from the field. It more closely resembles a big camper trailer without windows. The modern flue-curing barn, called a “bulk barn,” does not actually look like a barn at all.
In the tobacco trade, Virginia tobacco is defined not by its place of origin but by the seed used, the method of harvesting leaves (when they are fully ripe, often to the point of yellowing) and the flue-curing process, which helps ensure a high natural sugar content in the cured product.Īll of the various subcategories of Virginia-red, stoved, aged, lemon, bright or black-result from different kinds of processing, but they all began simply as flue-cured leaf. Flue-cured tobacco is called Virginia for historical reasons, but it is called Virginia no matter where it is produced. This is tobacco that has been flue-cured-rapidly dried in a flue-curing barn at high temperature, in a week to 10 days, in clean air heated by a furnace. The blender can precisely control the level of sweetness because the only sugars present are those deliberately introduced.Ī popular gourmet tobacco in the pipe smoker’s world is Virginia leaf, also known as bright or brightleaf. Blenders call burley a “drinkable” tobacco because it readily absorbs flavorings and sugary sauces, making it ideal for the creation of flavored pipe tobaccos.
This sugar-free chemical makeup is very desirable to blenders because it makes burley a sort of tabula rasa for the tobacconist’s art. The key to understanding burley is that it contains almost no natural sugars. Indeed, Robert Winans wrote in his treatise The Pipe Smoker’s Tobacco Book, “For many smokers the name burley means pipe tobacco.” Related varietals-dark air-cured and fire-cured-show up in some pipe mixtures, but most burley blends use air-cured leaf with white burley genetics.
Burley is by a considerable margin the most predominant leaf used to create pipe blends. Unflavored burley exhibits a mild, nutty, chocolaty, slightly bitter taste, but burley pipe tobacco benefits from sweetening by the blender, so most pipe smokers experience burley as a flavored tobacco. Here’s a primer on the most prominent tobaccos used in formulating pipe recipes. Nelson, Tobacconist Magazine, Special Pipe Edition, May 2016Īs with fine wines, the creation of pipe blends depends on the use of many constituent varietals.
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