For the consideration of those to whom such matters might be interesting:
It has been mentioned that the current Toque Rustica which comes in the large economy mylar bags is not alkalized. This indeed appears to be the case, as yesterday I was preparing a blend from some snuffs that I am not otherwise finding very interesting on their own, and that had a not too small proportion of the rustica added to it. At 6% sodium carbonate, the mix started to give off ammonia nearly instantaneously, and is incredibly strong in the perceived vitamin N department; far stronger than just sniffing the same rustica, untreated, out of the bag. Twenty-four hours later, there is still a very strong ammonia, like NTSU Black strong, but a few initial pre-maturation whiffs tell me that this is going to be something of a powerhouse once it settles down in a week or so. None of the other factory snuffs I included in the blend are particularly strong to start with, and when I have made such mixes before with alkalizer added, never have gotten such strong ammonia (so can only assume it to have been the rustica).
Here is the blend in question (25g total):
18% The Viking Snuff Thor’s Hammer 4.50g
16% Toque Rustica 4.00g
14% The Viking Snuff Viking Blonde 3.50g
12% Sir Walter Scott’s Tears of Chios 3.00g
10% H2O 2.50g
8% Sir Walter Scott’s Auld Alliance 2.00g
6% Sodium carbonate 1.50g
4% Rosinski Ochsenkopf 1.00g
4% Bernard Kownoer 1.00g
3% Artisan Snuff Oriental 0.75g
2% Snuv White Line 0.50g
1% Propylene glycol 0.25g
1% Sodium chloride (Maldon) 0.25g
1% Orange extract (Watkins) 0.25g
Addendum: forgot to add that everything was given a quick whirl in the wet ingredients (four blade) cup of a spice blade grinder to homogenize (and gently reduce the coarser components), and then the whole thing sieved to ≤300 μm to even out the particle size.