![]() ![]() ![]() This was an open secret at the store by the '60s, and many's the two, four or eight ounce can of Our Best Blend we opened and found inside the Balkan Sobranie rice paper or card stock insert. During the Second World War Joe was stationed in England, where he visited Balkan Sobranie and made a deal with them to sell Balkan canned by them in London and labelled as Best, exclusively. Balkan Sobranie literally was Our Best Blend at that time. By the mid 1970's, as inventories of the real stuff had disappeared, the changes became obvious.įirst, a bit of history learned from Joe Zieve, the founder of Smokers' Haven in Columbus, Ohio, where I went to Ohio State and, with a friend from Kent State, studied more with Joe than at school. From the company's (the name and the recipe's) sale and in sale after sale after that the blend has been cheapened and diminished, with production moving to Jamaica (?Made in the U.K.?) and elsewhere. I say ?real? because that was the last of it. Between 19 I smoked pound after pound of the real Balkan Sobranie Smoking Mixture. The original Balkan Sobranie is the holy grail of pipe tobacco, and when even its subsequent, inferior versions garner four stars from virtually every reviewer in these pages, it deserves more than a few words from an old codger who's never found an acceptable substitute. ![]()
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