How delightfully sensitive must be the combined detective powers of taste and scent. Given the above, with which I agree and applaud, then consider...following the selective breeding, development and husbandry of the plants you described above you still have only a few really different plants with which to work...to blend, etc. One only has to think of the cigar industry to get a feel for that limitation. Barring the use of aromatics and botanical essences (Drew Estate, etc.) when YOU pick up a cigar and light it up...what do you expect? Simple. A cigar. I've got a ton of 'em back in the 'Cave of Wonders' and within a specific range of flavor and other qualities like smoothness and light to dark subtleties I know exactly what each and every one of those cigars (that range in value from a buck to fifty bucks) will taste like when fired up. They'll taste like A CIGAR! Within a pretty specifc range, they're all the same thing. You know it and I know it. It's like the old critic's description of a budding actress's role on Broadway, commenting, "She displays the complete range of emotion, from A to B." Ouch! That's what you can do with good ol' tobacco in and of itself...create a very small range of flavor within which to work. THEN, look at pipe blends. The range...from A to Z. But not using just the tobaccos to create that massive range, although much of it might be accomplished using the various strains from around the world...the various Burleys, the VA's, then there's Orientals like Smyrna and Basma and on and on...then add curing methods...flue, and fire and sun and up in the rafters and spread on the ground, etc., etc., etc. Everything from dark and smokey Latakia and plum and peppery Perique to the flat as a pancake Carolinas and on and on. And THEN...either by mist or using the fire house hose the essences are added at one point of the overall blending process or the other (Gawith is the joint that does such an interesting job with this aspect). Now...all we need is for the erstwhile math major to sit down and start calculating just how may possible end results there are among this very large set of variables. Certainly millions. Perhaps billions? Allowing for proportional differences of the various componants, I'd say it was possible.
And here we are...a small market of guys that differ widely in our blend preferences - and then add to that the fact that we change and shift...floating like Ali's butterfly...hard to hit and with all this variation possible to satisfy us. Wow! Kinda boggling. Two things fall from all that. One is that we've just scratched the surface! How many total blends are sold today? Two thousand...maybe? Surely no more than that. And how many were potentially do-able? A figure in the millions anyway? Yeah...there's still a long way to go before we've exhausted the total potential. The other thing is that the whole thing (the new blending and all) is driven forward by the very few 'rock stars' of blending...Oulette, Pease, Tarler, Runowski, Books, Serad, Will, etc. So the designs are the product of indiviaul performance...personal expertise...one guy's vision (plus a few duets). I think the whole thing, when viewed together, is SO TOTALLY AMAZING. As I've said before...sure is a good time to be a pipe guy!
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