re: "The best tobacco you never heard of comes from St. James Parish"

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People who smoke pipes know all about Perique.

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True dat. this isn't some mystery tobacco. It's a condiment tobacco used to spice up a blend. It is fermented with a really strong taste and high nicotine content, you don't need much.

Latakia is another one of those specialty tobaccos, but it is smoked over camel dung.

The problems with perique are:

1. Expensive only one farm grows it in St. James, some years no production due to weather or business.

2. How many pipe smokers do you see out there IRL? Even on Mad Men out of the whole office and cast of character who smoked only one smoked a pipe.

3. The pipe tobacco companies needed a consistent inexpensive source of perique and developed fake perique using kentucky tobacco. It's like when Pepsi and Coke switched to cheaper HFCS from sugar, sure sugar is better but 99% of the plebes out there can't taste the difference.

The real perique smells like fig preservatives and packs a wallop. I've smoked them both pure and there is a big difference.

In a typical blend where perique only makes up 5% of the blend it's hard to tell much of a difference.

Dunhill Nightcap used to be a fave. Now the issue is pipe tobacco companies are calling the fake perique "perique" so you never know if you're getting the real stuff or the Kentucky stuff.