One of the biggest misconceptions about nasal snuff is that it is made from the stalks, scraps and waste produced in making other tobacco products.
Nasal snuff is made from the same high quality leaf that goes into the production of cigarettes and pipe tobaccos. (There are some exceptions as High Toast and Irish blend recipes require the use of stalks to give them the right color and texture).
The process of making snuff has remained largely unchanged since the middle of the 18th century, and some of the blends available today have been made for more than 250 years. The equipment has been modernized—old water-powered mills being replaced with electric mills—but the methods have stayed very much the same.
Traditionally, most of the tobacco used for nasal snuff came from the United States, but now snuff producers use tobaccos from countries such as Zimbabwe, Brazil, India, Malawi, Mozambique, Tanzania and Uganda.
In the old days, the most popular way of packing and shipping snuff was to place the tobacco in hogsheads, which could carry as much as 1,500 pounds. The tobacco stalks were bound together into hands and layered into the hogshead. The hands were then pressed with enough pressure to avoid damaging the tobacco.
When the hogsheads arrived at the factory, they were rolled inside and unpacked. The hands were then sorted. The more pliable tobacco was reserved to be made into ropes for use in clay pipes. The rest was again sorted, stripped of its veins and stems and then chopped up.
The chopped up tobacco was then fermented for about a week before it was taken to the mill to be ground into snuff by mortars and pestles.
Once the flour has been created, it is taken to the scenting room where the secret flavoring recipes are added, creating provenances. Then the provenances are taken to the mixing barrel and combined together to create a blend.
Flavoring agents range from floral and fruity, such as apricot, geranium, cinnamon, lemon, vanilla, lavendar, mint, musk, aniseed, rose, sandalwood, tonquin and violets; to the medicinal, such as camphor, menthol, and eucalyptus.
Other nasal snuffs are unflavored, such as Fribourg & Treyer’s High Dry Toast, which uses a mix of cured stem, dark-fired leaf and sun-cured leaf tobaccos to produce a natural tobacco taste. The flavoring agents are completely natural.
The German and British governments regulate the materials that snuff makers may use to scent their snuffs.
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