Howdy All,

Been away from this board for awhile but had a few questions. What has happened to Samuel Gawith selection on Mr Snuff web page and also F&T? It seems that they are not producing or going to a transition period? It also seems the selection is slim on a number of other companies. Any info would be helpful. Thanks, 

Thanks to new EU regs European snuff manufacturers were forced to drastically cut their product lines to stay in business and some manufacturers had to close up shop.  So alot of snuffs in that slim selection when sold out will NEVER return  :((

Also, in your absence the companies of Samuel Gawith and Gawith Hoggarth have merged. As far as I am aware almost all of the GH snuffs have been cancelled, leaving only CM. Please correct me if any of the above is inaccurate.

The Gawith Hoggarth  website shows 32 snuffs and not a sign of the abysmal tap boxes.   Proper round, vacuum sealed, snap top tins now.

The same site shows 20 Samuel Gawith snuffs.

Looking at the site of   My Smoking Shop, they have a shed load of various Sam Gawiths  and only 1  Gawith Hoggarth and that is CM.

So if you believe Hoggarths site there is still a fair variety still in production.

@artchoo Thanks for the correction. Mysmokingshop is my supplier and that is what I based my incorrect assertion upon. The fella there usually has everything available so I thought they’d all been cancelled as he didn’t have them. BTW If you’ve never had CM it really is excellent stuff.

Hello @Hoffwell

When the recent panic buying was on a few months ago I stocked up on 250g tub of CM and 3 tins.

I rotate my snuffs a lot, and so with all the other bulk buys I made at the same time I shouldn’t have to buy anymore snuff for the next ten years.

CM is a real favourite of mine whenever I get a blocked nose type head cold.  Clears the sinuses a treat.

Not surprised the GH website isn’t updated. They are quite lax with things like that. Snuff.me.uk has a couple more GH options (SP, CM, Special M, and Cafe Regal) in both tap boxes and vac tins. They have a fair range of SG too, but for some reason it just tap box or drum for the SG options - no vac tins. Another point to note, when GH left their old premises and went to the new site, they didn’t take the snuff grinders and were importing flour from Poschl and just scenting it. Now SG have remerged with them, I don’t know if they are using the old site for grinding SG snuffs, or buying in that flour too. All my SG stash is pre-merger, and I don’t know if everything today is as it was before, or if everything has changed.

@50ft_trad

 Perhaps they are deliberately keeping the lid on their production affairs. 

We need a spy in the factory.

   “The Genuine and Original Kendal Brown”     is it really no longer a product of Kendal, but a scented import ?

That would surely make the Trading Standards people sit up a bit.

Hundreds of years of tradition thrown out of the window.    

It doesn’t really matter now to the sales department of the firm, as they can no longer advertise their products in any meaningful way, thanks to new European  laws.

In the old newspapers that I read there are a few cases of “The Original Kendal Brown” being defended by copyright and legal actions taken against infringers.

Although the ingredients may have changed over the years due to available supplies of the raw materials, and the tobaccos are all imported.  Just being made in the Kendal factories with a continued ownership would be enough to perpetuate the nostalgia of the snuff,  but the idea that you can take a snuff from abroad e.g. Indian, African, Chinese, Turkish etc. and throw a bit of essence into it, then pass it off as a national, historically recognised snuff with a fine pedigree, it makes me wince.

Sorry to side-track this topic.

I emailed them and the snuff is now made on an industrial eatate outside Kendal with none of the old machinery brought over. As for a national snuff well we don’t grow tobacco in the UK so it is imported anyway. I guess you mean where the labour is carried out? As for the Poschl base I don’t know

Hello @matteob     Its a loss of history and tradition that I fell rather miffed about.    They were so proud of their own traditional methods, and used it to their own advantage many a time in the days when they were allowed to advertise. 

As I pointed out earlier, their enthusiasm for protecting the brand  with legal action was something else.

It’s a bit like telling the Irish that their famous tipple Guinness is made from barley from all over Europe, and not a bit home grown. Not sure how much home grown is used, but  I think that quite a few would be a bit uppity about it if it was true.

Similar thing with the once UK firm of Cadbury’s.  Famous for their chocolate in the UK.  A short time after it became an American company, their milk chocolate whent awry. Lord only knows how and why they would tinker with a product that has been well received by the public for years.

As to snuff, we are used to batch to batch differences in the product and can usually spot a difference with our favourite, regularly used snuffs, but we put that down to the variability of the raw ingredients. 

It’s still a good snuff,  but are they legally and morally entitled to put “Original Kendal Brown” on the lid if its not wholly processed in this country, in the good old fshioned ways.

I don’t even think the British can call a sparkling wine “Champagne style” anymore.  To me it’s just another glass of fizzy wine with a ludicrous price attached to it, and only really consumed for the spectacle and tradition.   Fizzy wine in a posh bottle would do the job just as well.

Bottom line is,  tradition, nostalgia and history mean a lot to me, and I do get a little miffed when unexpected change happens.

Enough of my rant.

@matteob There was an article that Shaman linked to a while back, which had one of GH’s directors saying they “made” their snuff at the new site from flour imported from Poschl. Your comment about their email reply doesn’t expressly say they are now making it from leaf again. The question of whether the grind etc is as it was pre-merger remains unanswered (for me). There’s a thing in UK law which means that if the last process is done in the UK then the UK is deemed the country of origin for the product. This means that even if GH are just scenting it, the snuff is still legally “made” by them at the new site on the outskirts of Kendal. Sorry, that’s probably badly worded, but my brain isn’t firing on all cylinders today.

@ArtChoo I doubt they would have taken the old chuggaboom grinder with them that they bought from Scotland a couple of centuries ago. It was the oldest/longest working piece of production machinery in the UK. I doubt they’d want that in their new modern premises, or even be able to fit it in there. Wilson’s still have their waterwheel driven machinery from centuries ago, but that’s no longer used for production only. They now use more modern electric mills, and I still love their snuffs (as I do Toque’s, who uses industrial coffee grinders). I suspect there will be changes to the textures at the very least, but I have neither done a side-by-side comparison myself, nor seen one done by anyone else. It may be they are still wonderful snuffs, even if it isn’t made on the same machinery. Nothing lasts for ever, and everything needs replacing at some point.

welcome to the 21st Century business model of efficiency, cost cutting and over inflated “brand” marketing. I would like to see that article but seriously there are very few small craft enterprises doing things the old way anymore. If you want a true craft snuff I would point you Johnny Scott’s way (he is my favourite maker) I am not a massive fan of Sam Gawith Snuffs anyway. I have Kendal Brown and Firedance and they are ok but a bit too coarse for me. I think Wilsons do a better coarse snuff in the Frebourg Princes. I guess it is a hard question but if they are giving the final character of the snuff in Kendal then they can still call it Kendal Brown. The EU does have some arcane laws on protected territorial names like Parmisan Cheese and Champagne but I am not an expert. Things change yes: Kraft have ruined Cadburys and there is still bad feeling at it in the UK (inferior recipes, smaller sizes, huge layoffs etc).

Anyway to order from SG directly ? 

@50ft_trad   Very interesting about the last part of the process qualifying an item to adopt a Country of origin.

A bloke I knew that worked in a spade making forge in Warrington told me he spent many a happy day rubbing the “Made in Germany”  stickers off a load of imported spades, and putting Union Jack flag stickers on them that read "Made in England.

So as the last part of the process was the label changing, they must be quite legal.

On a lighter side,   next time you buy a pie, check to see if they contain foreign Meltons and who makes the  Mowbrays. 

:))

@yisraeldov AFAIK Samue Gawith & Co. never dealt with private customers in last few years. Only trough their retailers or distributors.

On the other hand both of Gawith firms were quite horrid with their web presentations. Also as my latest knowledge Kendal Brown House mills are still running, just the pipe tobacco machinery and raw tobacco storage is moved to new (GH) premises. Jack

Yeah I’m kind of shocked you got a response to an email to them. I’ve emailed them multiple times and never gotten anything back.

I love SG snuffs but find them to be rather inconsistent.  My first tin of KB Special was totally indiscernible from normal Kendal Brown.  On a whim, I bought another one recently and it’s _totally_ different.  Instead of the normal KB lemony scent, it’s like all citrusy fruity candy … grapefruit in there maybe?  Orange?  Dunno.  Years ago I bought their Chocolate and loved it.  Got it again recently, and the grind is as coarse as their Black Rappee, which I don’t care for since it just falls right out of my nose, as does this tin of Chocolate.  it definitely wasn’t that coarse in the first tin I tried.  I got a tin of Scotch Black a while back which had a _very_ complex scent, almost like wet ink.  And another tin of it recently which is much more plain.  

I’m still unsure if there’s actually a difference between SG Kendal Brown and GH Kendal Brown. I’ve tried them side by side and am not really sure.  I love them both though.  I tried my first Mastiff recently and it’s great too.  I like that whole family of Kendal snuffs.  Despite the inconsistencies, that coarse, moist, earthiness is great. And I find the mind lemony scent of the KB Original to be perfect for it.

@jackgrave so they are not bringing in German processed flour then?

AFAIK No for Samuel Gawith operations, by my sources they operate as separate entities under one roof. Only purchasing of raw leaf is condesed (greater quatities = better prices). Also late batches of GH snuff were packaged in SG tins. It does have sense to mill snuff under one roof for two brands if owns working machinery.
Jack

MrSnuff seems to be finding old stock tins of Sam Gawaith in the couch cushions. Snuffing discontinued Firedance and it’s a real treat. Plus the most consistent, pebble-free dark moist grind I’ve found yet (looking at you Sharrow mills)

@ar47 Isn’t Mr Snuff now beyond the reaches of the EU? Suggest that’s how tins with ‘old’ label are now being sold.

Firedance is available at mysmokingshop.co.uk again.

In fact, SG could restart any discontinued snuff at their own wish any time.

I so wish S.G. would start making Banana or Monkey Snuff again ! I would buy two or three Kilos just for starts even if I had to buy it in 25g tins !

@kurtsnose leave some for the rest of us! @nicmizer was kind enough to treat me once to his Banana snuff creation which was spectacular