THE DIFFICULT ART OF BALLANCE

It is also important to bring your innovations to the market first in the universe of pipe smoking. This concerns the way the tobacco leaf is combined and in connection with flavours, but certainly also in the gentle handling of the tobacco. It was therefore quite a task for Mac Baren's R&D Manager, Franz Pedersen, to arrive at "Vanilla Cream Loose Cut" which, in only three years, has developed into something of a best seller.

But as tradition dictates it cost the usual round of blood, sweat and tears to achieve the right blend in Vanilla Cream Loose Cut. More precisely, it took a whole year to create the foundation for the tobacco that pipe smokers around the world enjoy every day.

"As an ingredient and an aroma vanilla is available in a wealth of different forms, but many of them are unfortunately synthetic. If you fail to build up the flavour properly it is very easy to miss the target completely, and for the same reason it is quite a job to create the basis that we ended up working with," relates Mac Baren' s Export Manager, Simon Sophus Nielsen, who has seen Vanilla Cream Loose Cut become a tobacco that is in great demand on many export markets.

"Anybody could get hold of some vanilla essence and pour it over the tobacco. But it' s naturally not quite as easy as that. This is what will lead to that synthetic flavour. Instead Franz used a large number of different fruits and in this way gradually came up with a flavour that was precisely what he was looking for, after which he put the finishing touches to the product with his own top flavour.

“In general the borderline between the synthetic and the genuine flavour is very narrow. This is because when you are composing such a special flavour s “Vanilla”, it really involves feeling your way. Vanilla in itself can very quickly become overwhelming and is therefore one of the most difficult flavours to work with, as it will easily become too sweet. Finding the right balance is really an art that only the fewest master.

How you cut the tobacco and how you combine the colours, for example. There must also be something to appeal to the eye when you look at your tobacco, just as there must be something for the nose and the taste buds. In short, there are many elements that play a role. At present many less experienced pipe smokers prefer the sweeter, more aromatic tobaccos. So with Vanilla Cream Loose Cut we focused sharply on the composite flavour. This means that the tobaccos must be mild in order for the tobacco leaf and the flavour to make up the ultimate unity together.”

The underlying idea of Vanilla Cream was to move in a slightly sweeter flavour direction and, as far as this is concerned, Franz was absolutely right.

“We have to be at the forefront of the tendencies that are popular just now and the trends that are prominent in general. In Vanilla Cream Loose Cut it is not only the tobacco that is the staple medium, it is also the flavour itself, and the tobacco must therefore be mild in strength. And this is the reason why it is more important than ever that the tobacco and the flavour suit each other.
In concrete terms tobacco is built up layer by layer. First and foremost you must take the tobacco leaf mixture into consideration and then what we call the “casing”: that is a basic mixture made up of ingredients that are to a great extent very familiar: sugar, liquorice and honey, etc. Ingredients that have been used in tobacco production for many years. All these things are added layer by layer until you arrive at the final part of the process where the top flavour, as mentioned, is the characteristic feature that is added to the tobacco.”

A point at which - like Franz Pedersen - you only have your intuition and many years of experience to go by.

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