Have you encountered a bad snuff?

heavily, artificially, over-flavored snuffs like Wow Concord Grape and Dholakia Chocolate Rose. And one that I like but cannot tolerate, sadly, Bohica. Oh, and there was a Dean Swift one that I had to throw out because it smelled like burning tires.

Another vote for Poschl. They got me in to snuffing but I can’t stand them now. I gave a big bag of Poschls (new and part used) to a close friend recently and like a typical newbie he loves them and doesn’t like the higher quality brands like Toque, Wilsons of Sharrow, SG etc. I was just the same as a newbie. I’m waiting for his taste to improve so we can enjoy proper good snuffs together.

Woah. One second. Pöschl is rubbish and for noobs? I don’t think it has anything to do with higher or lower quality. It’s what you know. If I had to start off with super dry, super fine English snuffs (supposedly higher quality), I wouldn’t have stuck with it. At the end of the day it’s a combination of flavour and how easy it is to apply into the nose. A lot of your “higher quality” brands cause burn, throat drip and aren’t necessarily pleasant to consume. Fair enough if someone is a snuff snob and Pöschl basher but in all fairness, not everybody likes a super fine ground bit of English dust in the nose. It’s what you enjoy, not snobbism in “snuff evolution” from noob brands to proper “real snuff”.

I think on a thread like this, you have to expect people to diss the snuffs you might like. I just smiled when someone said they didn’t like Dholakia White - clearly one of the best snuffs ever made. So don’t take it to heart if someone doesn’t like yours, @Kiwi78‌.

Oh absolutely. We just need to keep it separate from the person and not look down on someone who “hasn’t evolved to better brands”, the “typical newbie” whose taste hasn’t “improved” yet. That’s what upset me. Just don’t make it personal.

@Kiwi78‌ I’m sorry I made you feel bad and I know I sound like a condescending snuff snob saying that but it really is the truth. It seems to me that people lose interest in Poschl very quickly. They appeal to a lot of newbies, myself included, but people rapidly come to the conclusion Poschl are low quality, poorly flavored, way too heavily mentholated rubbish. If you’re still offended by my comments, look at it this way. If there was a poll thread asking the question ‘Which is your favorite snuff manufacturer?’ and it listed the most well known brands, Poschl would be near or at the bottom of the poll.

low quality, poorly flavored rubbish. If you’re still offended by my comments, look at it this way. If there was a poll thread asking the question ‘Which is your favorite snuff manufacturer?’ and it listed the most well known brands, Poschl would be near or at the bottom of the poll.

That’s exactly how I feel about Wilsons of Sharrow for example. And I snuff quite a bit of Poschl (especially Kloster Andechs and the Schmalzlers) because there are many good ones, and I wouldn’t want to look down at someone who enjoys those snuffs with the mildly condescending pity you’re suggesting. They are the world’s largest manufacturer of snuff, holding 95% of the German market and about 50% worldwide. And I’m hardly a noob who needs to evolve. I have sampled plenty of brands and I don’t actually like WoS or SG, both of which you mention as “proper good”. That’s what I know without a poll. As a matter of fact, unfortunately it can be a thing of internet forums of any kind (for example die cast, watches, model cars…) that there can be a little chest beating, competition, snobbery and comparing the length of… I don’t need to make myself look like a more sophisticated snuffer just by mentioning or buying certain brands.

I understand you feel passionate about Poschl, @Kiwi78‌, and that’s your right. Obviously I wasn’t including the schmalzlers which are very good. I’m referring to their tapbox crap and whilst I acknowledge I’m sometimes appallingly blunt, even unintentionally rude, I stand by my points. I’ve never seen one, not one long term snuffer on this site who says Poschl are their favorite brand. However, I am sorry I offended you.

You’re not getting my point. I’m not even talking about rubbishing one brand over the other. I’m talking about rubbishing certain snuff users by extension and implication based on how “high end” and “sophisticated” the brand is that they’re snuffing. I didn’t know that people here are in certain categories and that you haven’t graduated from the snuff academy before you don’t consistently buy those brands. I would not dare to sit on my high horse and say “oh you poor little sod, you’re still snuffing XYZ? Just wait, you’ll grow up and learn too.”, pat on the head. That’s the offensive part. There are people here, not just categories and degrees of “developed snuff users”.

Oh I get your point all too well, I just don’t agree with you. Poschl are a special case. If snuff was wine, Poschl would be Asti Spumante or Liebfraumilch, both of which are popular but derided by wine connoisseurs for being cheap, poor quality plonk.

I don’t really believe that there’s much in the way of condescension amongst snuffers personally, there’s such a variety of styles and types that it stands to reason that people will have diverse tastes. I do think that peoples taste changes over time too. When I started taking snuff many moons ago, it was just limited to basic snuffs that I could buy at the local newsagents to begin with (Hedges, JH Wilsons et al). Now these, although ‘classics’ in a sense, aren’t the easiest snuffs to take; largely, fine, dry and strong. It wasn’t till a lot later that I discovered more varied types of snuffs. Many of these are much easier to enjoy than the ones I persevered with. I guess what I’m saying here is that it all depends on the individual. To use @SnuffySnuff 's wine metaphor. Some people love cheap wine, some like expensive wine, you can’t have one without the other, otherwise it’s all just the same bland wine.

Well, I think we’re getting a bit absolute here. While I agree with @SnuffySnuff about Pöschl’s quality, it’s ME who agrees, inspired by MY OWN experiences and feelings with their tobacco: it’s not some kind of eidetic judgment coming from above or any “conoisseur” opinion. For me, and I’ve had trouble stating this in many a forum, quality is a subjective matter. Of course, if I discover they’re poisoning their snuffs and making them highly toxic just to make production cheaper, I’ll doubt anyone can say they’re a “high quality” brand, but that’s not the case, and they can be agreeable to someone even if most of them are dreadful for me. A teenybopper that reads Twilight and finds the novels pleasurable will undoubtedly say that they are “high quality”, yet for me they’re cheaply written rubbish, and I expect her to grow and try reading some novels that I consider the “real deal”. But what if she doesn’t change their opinions and keeps reading what I judge as bad literature? Does that make her less intelligent than me? I believe not: in fact, if she is able to still get pleasure from reading things that are derided by most of their peers and extract pleasure from it, I don’t find any fault with her attitude and I understand that in her perception, Twilight novels and the like are of the highest quality. And being able to pursue your own fun instead of doing what’s acceptable in “conoisseur” circles (which is many times based on equal doses of elitism and tradition) is a sign of healthy independence and intelligence. On the other side, I’d try to convince her to read “good” novels, but always based on the fun I’m able to extract from them, not because they’re intrinsically better. As a sidenote, I’dlike to point that Pöschl’s quality is FAR better than Twilight, despite being such different products (I was just pushing things to the extreme). :stuck_out_tongue: I’ll always love a good dash of Gletscher-Prise (even if it’s no longer the beautiful and puzzling product it used to be for me, its flour is one of the most cigar like ones on the market, despite being partially ruined by oil), Grado is occasionally good and I don’t despise the Eau-de-Cologne Packard as much as most people who has written here… but they don’t agree with me, oh no. Edit: @MisterPaul: At the same time! Ha! High five!

I thing you can take this aesthetic relativism thing a bit too far. You can judge quality to some extent by the quality of the ingredients. A good espresso is better coffee than Nescafe, however you slice it and even if you enjoy the Nescafe better. Never tried Poschl, by the way.

@JakartaBoy: Nescafé is cheaper to produce, that’s objective. What I try to state is my opinion that, if you present the best Jaimaca Blue Mountain or Colombia beans to some Nespresso fan and he or she doesn’t like it, saying that it’s of “higher quality” will not convince him or her, nor saying that it’s most expensive (“Ha- will the person in question say- that’s one point more to Nescafe!”). On the other way, if the person likes it, he will surely say “Ah! It’s indeed of a better quality, those filthy men kept me drinking dirty shavings from the husks of coffee beans all this time while they sold the good quality beans to prestige brands!” (and believe, I’ll agree with this when stated as an OPINION, not as a fact). The only factual thing is the price, the merely economical, and, perhaps, the chemical and the origin of the caffeinated and water-darkening agents many a man refuse to call “coffee” (assuming Nescafé, unlike Gawith Apricot, is regular in composition, but we’ll assume that :P) As a way to defend my statement, I’ll bring some historical data: High Dry Toast snuff was originally cheaper than most of the most prestigious brand because it was made with nerves and stalks, deemed unsuitable for the best of snuffs made following traditional recipes (I read this somewhere in the forum). It was, thus, consumed primarily by commoners and people with lower incomes and less free time to sample different snuffs. However, with the passing of years, it has become a snuff for connoisseurs and most of the snuffing community agrees on its quality, judging it better than most “just leaf” snuffs and being a firm favorite of many people, me included. If I was to take a time travel, would I be able to make a top hatted fop believe that the woody stuff commoners are shoveling up their noses without a sense of decorum it’s indeed better that the “tobacco” he is inhaling, delicately perfumed but soon to be discovered as being 3o% walnut powder and at least 0,5% lead? I believe not, specially when some fellow fops are currently supporting the snuff chandler where he purchased the vial of snuff as the current trending topic. Of course, I’d like to think that most of my tastes are indeed based on the objective, specially because they coincide with those of the “elites”, but both experience and thought experiments like that have me dissuaded of the thought. (However, I still believe I’m right about most issues, and I agree with most “experts”! I just try not to take a lot of pride for it, or to impose my own opinion). Edit: I’m not even saying that there are innate tastes, or substance that we’re readier to accept than others, but most of us stray from the norm because of the effect of culture or society at one point or another. Culture is indeed very important: what if the one person liking Nescafé was to be more efficient on the wild because of their tastes? Would we have to admit that we all are wrong? I believe we don’t. By the way, debates about coffee are very common in Philosophy of Mind to examine the relationship between taste (or any sensation we can describe attaching qualities), rational thought and culture, because coffee, like tobacco and wine, is believed an acquired taste with no natural causation… but I’m going off topic all by myself! :stuck_out_tongue:

I sincerely think portions of the forum have gone mad. A screening process must be implemented. We must act now to save ourselves. The noob rebellion has begun. On a serious note, people have been a bit touchy lately. We’re supposed to be pals. What gives?

There have been a few I didn’t care for at first, but as I learned from my fellow posters- give it a rest and revisit it at a later date. I have done this with several snuffs that at first blush I didn’t particularly care for, and after a revisit they are now on my top 5 list. That said, the only snuff I don’t think I will come to really “like” is American Sweet Scotch- just not my forte. I can and did certainly use it when I didn’t have my hands on what I preferred, but I wouldn’t go as far as classifying sweet scotches as “bad”, just not to my taste.

@saucy_jack: I hope you don’t talk about my post, though I seriously got a bit into the “too long and off topic” teritory! I was just trying to be lovin’ and peaceful (and to imply that the beauty of a snuff is pretty much in the nose of the one that takes it, so there’s no real reason to be upset).

Samuel Gawith Mimosa was truly horrible, though some like it and I was able to trade it away. Samuel Gawith Lavender was also pretty damn bad. They’re one of my favorite snuff producers in the whole world but they also make some of my least favorite snuffs, funny that. Still it’s pretty rare I have a snuff that’s actually distasteful. A lot of snuffs I’ll try and think “meh” but they’re still good enough to finish off the tin, just not interesting enough to reorder.

@horus92 I hoped for SG Lavender to be at least somewhat interesting, since I really like lavender smell and Wilsons Lavender (and most of their florals, TBH) is a dusty, one dimensional boredom of a snuff.

I love SG Lavender Dark