It occurs to me that smell (Plus lovely lady N) is one of the main blessings of using snuff. I find it to be a wondrous experience all in all. However I am often perplexed with trying to identify just what it is that I am smelling. To give me some help I often read reviews by pretty much anyone that will put one out there. Sometimes it is pretty straight forward. You know, things like peppermint, apples, eucalyptus etc. But many of the things listed are, at least to me rather esoteric. I mean, I can figure out what bergamot smells like. Go to the tea isle in the grocer and smell earl grey tea. Simple, But many of the others are well, not so simple. So I am wondering how it is that a person learns to identify what these smells/odors are?
@stogie go to an aroma therapists supply shop. You can smell a lot of different oils there. Probably all the oils that are used in snuff. That are also useful for wine tasting.
Generally I identify without too much troubles scents of our snuffs(it’s often a question of time for menthol’s particulary).There is one I’m not sure it’s Golden Glow but there is something witch remember me wax for wood stairs.I must verify this.
The sense of smell develop his"muscles" with experience on snuffing.You can discover scents as goes along.
It necessite to be always open and a potential student and not too fast a false master.
Actually@Roderick, that sounds like very sage advise. There truly is a world of smells out there that I know I have hardly ever tapped. The advise that @Gandalf gives may well help me be able focus and isolate smells too.
The thing that made me start this discussion is I recently obtained a tin of Dean Swifts Black Watch. Very very dark and oily with what to me is a completely unique smell. I truly am at a loss as to what to associate it with. The best I can come up with is a musty, earthy, old oil and shoe leather sort of thing which is probably not fair to any of those things.
When I reflect on my experience with other snuffs all kinds of things are visualized or experienced in my fairly active mind. Some evoke memories of Grandma cooking, a trip to the bazaar, walking through the arboretum, the perfume aisle or ocean breezes. As I catch that whiff, it seems like I can transfer myself there. With the Black Watch, instead of being transported to another time/place…I am in the dark.
So will work on training my sense of smell… Thanks for the pointers!
Sense of smell is,between the 5 senses,one of the less appreciate at his real importance on our civilisations.
I’m really happy that snuff develops my brain on this direction.It seem to be already an old passion for you Roderick.
Dogmas of psychiatrists will disappear with time,like all of them during history.
Scents are beautiful,like for many things Stogie,interest,passion, brings results.With help of nicotine this work is wonderfull 
I liked the smell of things before I started taking snuff, and after almost a year of dabbling in the wonderful world of snuff now I just really like smelling things. I didn’t realise it until the other day when me and my brother sat down to play a new board game he bought and I was flicking through the rule book and just absent mindedly brought it up to my nose and had a good sniff of it. He looked at me and said “did… did you just smell that?”
I do it with most new things I encounter now, I just automatically smell it, as if it helps me identify what it is. I imagine it’s because I appreciate scents way more than I used to.
Hopefully the reviews are depicting ACTUAL smells and not hoity toity depictions like cigar and wine reviewers use. I have seen leather used as a description and I’m not quite certain if that refers to the oils that are used in leather or that they’ve ground up chunks of leather.
@Roderick thanks for the insight…It is quite meaningful.
@jimmyb I agree. I suppose that even the smell of ‘leather’ can be interpreted in as many ways as there are people. To me, some of the real pleasures in life are to go to places that have fairly eclectic, perhaps unique, occupants. Think of a gentlemans club, not the girly type but the type where people go to do business, catch up on news, read the paper, maybe smoke a good pipe or cigar, The smell is unique and to me can easily be equated to old leather and tobacco.
Another place is a nice walk in humidor with a fair variety of cigars. Just going about and sniffing (not too closely or you might be evicted), can evoke all kinds of thoughts, but largely cedar - tobacco and periodically, if your lucky the smell of a clean barnyard.
Or visiting a mausoleum, especially after a funeral or memorial day can certainly give a panoply of floral smells sometimes to an almost overwhelming level.
Or the kitchen of an avid cook/baker can evoke all kinds of memories, aromas of spices and sweet or savory foods that can evoke a wide variety of images.
Or a visit to the farmers market gives scents of earth, spices, fruit etc.
Isn’t it a wonderful world we live in? It can be made even better as we experience/enjoy the vast variety of aroma’s around us.