What ho, It may just be me, but I think Samuel Gawith snuffs are on a much higher level than WoS. You always get a strong tobacco scent with SG that you don’t get with WoS. My personal tastes are generally pure unscented snuffs, but I also love subtle scents too. Hats off to WoS for irish 22, and HDT, but I’ve just got their Natural and I’m sure it has a slight SP scent. Is it just me? I’d love to try their pure tobacco base but I don’t think this is it.
Natural seemed to have a slight almost-lavender scent to me. Not SPish, but slightly floral. Makes a good mixer with F&T florals to dilute them. Wilsons new “Alberta Plain” would be the ticket to see what their base is like, as they made that to sell in Alberta where it’s illegal (apparently) to sell flavored tobacco.
Wilsons SPs are better than Sammy G’s, I believe. Also try Wilsons Best Dark to compare to the famous SG kendals. I would compare it favorably to the latter. But SG does set the bar for those dark, briney, smokey, leathery, amazing tobaccoey snuffs.
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Cheers for that. It will get snuffed, but it does have a scent. I’ll check out the Alberta Plain, but I do seem to like the dark and dirty best… 
In WoS’s defence, their Dr. Rumney’s Brown is a lovely pure tobacco snuff. It seems they get other peoples blends better than their own. (With the exception of #22.)
Try Best Dark also. A fantastic, salty briney smokey base, like how viking dark used to be, with some citrus notes. similar to kendal brown original. F&T santo domingo and princes are the same base I think, with absolute violet and geranium respectively (the latter much more powerful) if you don’t mind a floral. Great occasional snuffs.
It was my first snuff this bought on a whim in Scotland. It was ok but a bit to hay like for my taste. I didn’t finish the tin. I ended up throwing it away.
Alberta Plain seems to me, the same as Wilson’s Natural, and the new Dr. Rumney’s Brown. I have both, and they are identical in texture, color, and scent. Very nice indeed. These natural snuffs have no scenting other than the taste of the tobacco.
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Funny thing, I noticed some sweet notes in WoS Natural, too. I had gone through my first medium tin and found it quite natural, or to put it more precisely - scentless, just pure tobacco and that typical WoS mild alkali signature, which reminds me of baking powder and is extremely pronounced in WoS Dr. Rumneys Brown.
My second tin of Natural (the large one) is definitely sweeter, but I admit it can be subjective issue related with my snuff scenting experiment with coumarin, as follows.
I have been playing with tonka beens recently, i.e. put one dry bean in a small tin with WoS Natural and left it there for a few days, shaking the tin time after time. Yes, simple as that, though results were astounding. No noticeable changes took place after the first 12 hours, but a few more hours (= a few more pinches) and tonka scent broke through. It got stronger and stronger with every subsequent pinch, reaching inebriating quality and - surprisingly - immediately became favourite snuff! Furthermore, I instantly recognised that addictive aroma of my all times favourite SG Red Crest Scented, which was sold mislabelled as Red Crest and been known to many of us as such (this issue is worth its own thread). I felt an urge to moan with pleasure after each pinch of my tonka-enhanced WoS Natural, and I did moan several times.
Now my DIY snuff is over, I run out of that micro batch quickly. I found it dangerously addictive, as much Indian whites are nicotine-wise, and supressed my coumarin dependence in its initial phase. Well, to teel you the truth, there is another, larger batch prepared already, but I wont dare to touch it for some good time. Maybe there is some kind of interaction between tobacco alkaloids and coumarin, similar to phytocannabinoid and terpenoid synergy. Or just… some olfactory memory ghosting, flashbacky sort of thing.
I am not a mono-snuff user, there are many in my daily rotation, and tonka or pure coumarin may well be an essential ingredient of some SP snuffs I use. I mean, even a small fraction of coumarin makes a huge difference. Simple cross-contamination cant be ruled out, too. I received tonka beens and my last snuff order in the same envelope, which stayed unopened for one month. However, no other snuff was affected. Another plain snuff, Dr. Rumneys Brown, is absolutely plain and, of course, toasty, as ever. The rest are intact. WoS Natural, though, is sweet, and I suspect it is tonka sweetness.
To conclude, smallest fractions of coumarin in snuff, before one becomes acquainted with it, can be easily mistaken for a natural sweeter tobacco aroma. It blends with other aromas finely, too. Familiarization with tonka makes further recognition of coumarin in snuff inevitable, lingering in memory for ages.
@mrmanos Is there a sticker of MFG date on the bottom of Alberta Plain? Oddly, this snuff is not listed on WoS website.
I dunno, man. I find WoS unscented snuffs to be absolutely perfect and have a hard time imagining any unscented snuff being better…but I feel Im leaving SG out now…you guys tried their naturals? Not to forget some of their lightly scented snuffs, which allows the base tobacco to shine through. I fell head first in love with SG after trying afterglow…its…wow. So yeah, naturals, I like WoS a lot, they have some simple complexity to them, whereas SG got some incredibly complex flavored snuffs. The reason I dont like WoS scented snuffs is cause they can be very overpowering (think carnation, cinnamon, chocolate etc), so if its a scent you dont absolutely love, youll hate it with WoS.
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I haven’t tried WoS Natural yet, but I’m pretty sure I have a tin of it lurking in the myriad of boxes my stash is packed away in. I will get round to it at some point, and likely get a bulk order direct. I do like plain snuffs for taming down some of the other more potent varieties, but I already have bulk Toque Plain Coarse, SG Yellow Crest, GH KB Plain, Thors Hammer, London Brown, several tins of Blue Crest, and no doubt others that have slipped my mind. I also like sprucing up some SP and Best Dark with the likes of Royal George, Strasbourg, or one of the more potent F&T snuffs. I’m a big fan of WoS snuffs anyway, so I’m sure me falling in love with Natural is just a matter of time. As an aside, Dr Rumneys Brown is the only toasted type snuff I like. Got some in my hooter right now as it happens.
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