I’m a martyr to throat drip. Meaning I love snuff, but can’t stand a bitter throat drip. That’s why I was initially a Wilson’s fan. Pretty much nonexistent. I want to expand my horizons, within reason. Could more experienced members tell me what to avoid? Sounds like I should stay away from rustica and the heavy hitting Indian varieties.
When I started snuffing certain snuffs gave me a nasty throat dip as well. However, now that my technique has improved I almost never experience this anymore. Certain snuffs can be sniffed without difficulty, but others need more attention in my experience (e.g. toasts). When I encountered a difficult snuff (e.g. a nasty throat dip), I use the snuffing-toast/white elephant-technique, which I don’t know how to describe in English, but can be found searching the forum. Now that I’ve learned to use this technique (I use it almost exclusively for all snuffs), I can really enjoy those ‘nasty-throat-dip’ snuffs without the dreaded dip. In fact my favorite snuff at the moment, SWS St-James Parish Blend, is (in my book at least) part of the ‘nasty-throat-dip’ snuffs.
SWS Auld Alliance and Mull of Oa both have this effect on me.
For whatever reason SWS snuffs do have a strong tasting drip but I actually enjoy it on most of them. The German snuffs do this to me also but part of this from taking larger pinches. No matter what snuff it is, if you take enough of it at one time, throat drip is very likely to occur.
The coarser the snuff, the easier it may start to drip. Very fine ones easily hit the throat when sniffing, but they don’t drip the same way. I think throat drip is a sign of too much. Too much stuff in the nose. Especially with schmalzlers. Others may disagree though :). My advice is to avoid stuffing the nose over-full with coarse ones. 
Interesting, @SkeG . I think all of our schnozzes might be plumbed a bit differently. With all snuffs, coarse or fine, I get a bit of drip after I blow my nose. Not tons, but some. The drip from toasts is completely inoffensive. The drip from Sam Gawith ’ s I actually enjoy. The drip from the fermented Virginia in the De kralingse line actually stings a bit.
@SkeG I can agree with you on the schmalzers. You can’t get enough but then with the pleasant enjoyment of pleasure and aroma up your nose you instantly feel a hit in your throat. And that point you don’t know what to do first because, its not the flavor that’s so bad. Its the scratch you don’t know what to do with. You swallow or you spit. But its hard to remember that its not healthy to swallow.
On the contrary, one must pack the nose. That’s the key, imo, to using snuff. Little baby pinches and you’re simply smelling the snuff. When I get nose drip, it’s out the, front.
@Malatesta, never occurred to me that someone would actually find the drip pleasant. Tastes indeed differ
Heh, @SkeG. Some snuffs taste like they smell, some taste of nada, some taste like the pits of hell. I prefer the second, can tolerate the first, and abhor the third.
@SkeG: There are some drips whose taste I enjoy, specially the unavoidable Schmalzler drips (except for, maybe, Zweifacher), but most coarse snuff drips, while usually being the tastiest, also burn like white phosphorus. I seldom get throat drips from medium to fine grind snuffs like Macouba, but when I do they use to be quite nauseating (the same can be said of its throat hits, that stuff is not meant to be tasted, IMHO!). @Malatesta: Indians like 6 Photo and Dholakia never gave me a throat drip. The downside is that they hold to the nose like it was their one and only love (specially the black varieties), and you have to work hard to get them out of there, since most have a pretty invasive smell. Dholakia Sparrow, 6 Photo Cheetah and some others seem devoid of both problems. Anyway, these are minor nuisances that never really bothered me much. On the other hand, Pöschl snuff (not Schmalzler, which is quite good and has a nice drip) began to give me terrible drips sometime in the past, and it was one of the main reasons why I chose to kept my relationship with it on amicable but distant terms. I have a friend that takes tiny little pinches and gets an almost instantaneous eye watering throat drip… that even gets worse when he tries to pinch noticeable quantities. It’s both a matter of technique and nose constitution, I think.
The drip from the fermented Virginia in the De kralingse line actually stings a bit.
^This. But I’m fairly new to snuffing.