Mac Baren Tobacco Company's Owner & Master Blender Henrik Halberg's personal account of the birth of Cube.

MASTERING THE BLEND

Really good premium tobaccos are not just something you can go out and buy in markets here, there and everywhere: they are something you are offered.

There are receiving stations located at various places around the world where farmers come in with their tobacco. Here it is sorted and stored so that buyers can see, feel, smell and test smoke it. Then it is simply a question of going round and sniffing them all out. The world's most important tobacco manufacturers come with whole delegations, some with laptop computers. Mac Baren's delegation consists of two people with my old notebook.

The very best, the crème de la crème, is never displayed on the tables. It is always stored somewhere deeper in the trading rooms. Not everyone gets to buy it. That's why I am always happy when a tobacco merchant says, "Just step over here, Henrik. I've got something I'd like you to taste." This they do because they have a tobacco that they believe will suit the aroma and quality I like, which they recognize because I have known these merchants for many years. And indeed in many cases I also know the farmers and have visited their farms. They have put the tobacco to one side because there is something out of the ordinary about it, and now they would like to hear my opinion - they want to be sure it will not be put in just any old tobacco.

This is the way in which I purchase the quality tobaccos contained in Mac Baren's wide product range. Moreover, working in this manner often gives me new inspirations. The many different taste and sense impressions put together a new jigsaw in my mind and in my little book, inspiring new dreams of tobaccos that might be developed.

One day I had an idea that was complete in itself: the various tobaccos I had been buying in recent years because I liked them could finally be used to create a very special new tobacco. I still needed a few pieces to finish the puzzle, and therefore I applied myself to buying up these missing tobacco pieces each time I was lucky enough to be offered them.

For many years now I have been gathering all these fantastic tobaccos at Svendborg, and have been looking forward to the day when I had gathered enough of them to experiment on the realization of my dream.

Cube's three cornerstones

My mind harboured the concept of a tobacco that tasted the same from the start to the finish and which contained within it a struggle for power between the sweet and the fruity in a beautifully creamy manner - a tobacco with a refreshing interplay that tasted identical each time.

At long last, during a journey in southern Brazil, in Santa Catarina I found the missing piece in the special Brazilian Virginia tobacco. This tobacco would bring the blend that last underlying hint of sweetness.

With the ingredients in the "treasure house" at Svendborg the actual work of developing Cube could begin.

This work partly consisted of finding the right blends of tobacco relative to each other and partly in finding precisely the right taste additives. Naturally, the ingredients are secret, but among the elements used in developing Cube were maple syrup from Canada, Caribbean cane sugar, the best English liquorice, modest amounts of a selection of the best chocolates and a variety of fruits.

Cube consists of three tobacco blends:

Burley Eight different pressed Burley tobaccos from various continents cut finely give Cube a rich, rounded taste. The combination of this pressed fine cut tobacco with the other loose tobaccos in Cube provides a slower, cooler smoke, more long-lasting enjoyment and a better taste, which does not turn bitter.

Virginia 12 different Virginia tobaccos from Brazil and North America give Cube sweetness and freshness. Cavendish Seven different specially treated Virginia tobaccos give Cube the perfect roundness with a mildly sweet and slightly acidic taste.

Having completed sample smoking I now had three basic blends - widely different in taste and appearance, each with their own characteristic taste.