Lane Blends Repackaged and Otherwise

Quality is far better than quantity. I wouldn’t include blends not offered by a known producer of original mixtures. I’ve played around with google searches and found a Lane blend sold by at least half a dozen places as a house blend, and the connection was the description. They took the time to come up with a new name, but weren’t creative enough to write a new description.

You’ll run into some grey areas, but when in doubt, leave it out.

One problem with that approach is the widespread repackaging itself. Should I expect everyone who wants to come on the site and review their favorite Tinderbox blend to know which Lane blend it is?

What I want to avoid is having every renamed blend be a discrete and distinct database field. I am looking for a way to list “akas” or synonyms for blends, so that you can find Tinderbox Burley Light but the review is actually stored under Lane BLWB and both the Tinderbox blend, the Lane blend, and Joebob’s Bite-Free Burley (or whatever) all show ALL the reviews for the tobacco, no matter what it was sold as.

I think you’re on the right track Jon. The answer surely lies in the coding behind the database/website. More specifically in the coding for the search facility. If there was an AKA (also known as) field or feature then a user who otherwise would submit a request to add a new tobacco to the site, would instead be driven by the search engine to the correct page to submit their review. How you would implement that in practice is beyond me at the moment, but I’m giving it some serious thought.

hello,

first of all, congratulations for your website. it helps me a lot.

Lane: I think that the tobaccos repacked by Lane should appear like Lane brand. that is this way people find them.

maybe an observation like “made by ….” would be appropriated.

happy new year

carlos felipe

Lane isnt the only company. I also see Stokkebye brands in some stores labeled as there own. I bought some Optimum from one place and found it as a house blend elsewheres.. same description word for word. Maybe the manufacturers need to step up to plate and ask stores not to do this..
I also wish that tobacco companies list the ingredients in order like food, not highlight the rarer more expensive stuff in the blend first, but the main ingredients first. , but thats another blog.. Wipipecop…

Every Lane tobacco blend that I’ve smoked wasn’t fit to mulch my Japanese Maples. The stuff is vile in the extreme and in fact I wouldn’t be smoking a pipe today if I hadn’t ordered some real tobacco (found on this site) on the internet. So the choice is obvious, don’t even list the stuff on here. Stokkebye’s is nearly as bad.

I’ve known of at least 3 or 4 entries on the site that I know for a fact are renamed Lane bulks. I’ve pointed this out before, but it fell on deaf ears. Eventually, I gave up threw in the towel.

The following are in FACT renamed Lane bulks.

Just For Him - Buccaneer Blend (Lane’s Burley Light Without a Bite)

Just For Him - Privateer (McClelland X-60)

Do with them whatever you will.

I would recommend that is all fairness to list the Alias names under the original manufacture of the blend.
For Instance IQ.
Country of Origin
Content flavoring
Cut
blend notes.
Also sold as:
In this way the proper credit is given to the source.
REDD

It seems to me, that somethings need to be left imperfect. Many tobacco retailers change the names to force some loyalty in their respective marketplaces. It’s certainly their right to do so and with the terrible irrational legislation they have to endure, perhaps this feature is better left alone.

Any time a reviewer cares to point out a re-named blend, terrific; and if not, does it really matter?

This wonderful Site has brought a lot of pleasure to a lot folks. I don’t think Lane/ Altadis or anyone else’s bulk blends renamed is of much consequence or importance. Personally, I would leave it imperfect - like so many of my favorite pipes.

Please ignore S. Jones’ recommendation not to list Lane tobacco blends. This is elitism in the extreme and would not be fair to the thousands of smokers that do smoke Lane blends. I myself smoke Lane’s Edgeworth Ready Rubbed and find it to be an excellent burley blend. If Mr. Jones does not like Lane reviews, all he has to do is not read them.

Smokey Strodtman

I agree with Smokey Strodtman that Lane blends should remain listed, I even expect any blend, be it good or bad, to be found on your excellent site, which has been of great help to me in choosing tobaccos.
Regarding the AKA’s I think you should fare well in listing them as REDD has suggested under the “original” blend name, as it were.

*Tech-stuff follows, skip if not interested*

One way of doing it, technically (if you are running a relational database which I assume) would be to establish a combinatory table which would hold the ID (probably a #) of the original blend, combined with the ID of the renamed blend as a CombinedKey. When showing an Original blend (and its AKA list), make a search for all combined keys containing the Original blend’s ID and populate the Alias list with the names found under the AKA(renamed blends) ID(s).

There would be a problem trying to match the names when someone wants to review an AKA-blend, which would require you to also store the renamed blend’s Name in the combinatory table(thereby forcing a so-called redundancy into the database, since you would also store the renamed blend as an Original blend etc. and would therefore also require a new field in the database (preferrably a Boolean which can assume the values TRUE or FALSE) named something like OriginalBlend (I must leave such design decisions up to you ;))
).

I just clicked on S. Jones’ name and it took me to the Ziggymart website so I assume mr. Jones is affiliated with them in some way. I clicked “pipe tobacco” and found that, among many others, Lane bulk tobaccos were listed for sale. Skandinavik was also listed, which is blended by Peter Stokkebye. Yet mr. Jones does not want these tobaccos listed for review? Even when he sells them? What’s up with that?

Smokey Strodtman

Hi,
Well I hope that the Lane reviews will not be stopped. I smoke several of Lanes offerings, and I would not like to see their blends bashed by our users who don’t smoke them. Not all of us can afford the expensive tins mentioned on this site, and though I don’t often buy the expensive blends, I don’t recommend banishing the reviews of those products. IMHO I wouldn’t even worry about the re-packaging oddities. I give our users enough credit to pick out what they like and don’t like, without this type of additional input.
Randy W…

If you included a AKA field for the reviewer to include and that was a search criteria that may solve some problems. Although you may end up with some AKA’s that are incorrect but if you are going to deal with it at all I think this would be the less cumbersome. I can think of five names off the top of my head for 1-Q, that’s not something you want to tackle on the back end.

Okay,so the plan is this:
I will work on a way to build in an Alias table into the database that allows me to simply take all of the other aliases for a particular tobacco and show all of the reviews for all of the aliased blends in the results of each alias.

So, if Blend 002 is a repackaged version of Blend 001, the Alias table would have an entry for TobaccoID (002) and AliasID (001). By searching the Alias table for “TobaccoID = 002″ I can find out if the particular blend I am looking at is a repackaging of another blend.

Additionally, if it is indeed a repackaging, I can find all of the other names it is sold under by searching the Alias table for “AliasID = 001″. That may return multiple other IDs (004, 013, 132). I then simply put all of the reviews for all of those IDs together and display them.

I can also add additional information to the page for the blend (002) pointing to other names for the same tobacco (004, 013, 132) and to the “parent” blend (001).

All of this happens automatically, of course, when you load a page for a particular blend.

Sound reasonable?

Sounds very reasonable, especially since I am from the same camp as “Smokey” on this issue. I don’t believe any tobacco should be left out if someone wishes to review it. I have a bowl of Prince Albert going as I write this, and enjoy most everything from Middleton through Rattray and Dunhill.

Stump

Jon,

Your plan (re Jan. 10th) sounds just right. Just make sure that when the combined list of reviews comes up, it’s clearly stated what the true name and manufacturer of the blend is.

And as far as dropping some blends goes, nix that!!! ALL blends should be reviewed on this site, not just the ones someone else likes. Every blend has it’s backers, even Mixture 79 and Royal Yacht!! Every voice deserves to be heard.

* * * * *

Here’s another “feature” that I’ve often found myself wishing this site had. (In all fairness, this is the ONLY “feature” that I’ve thought was missing from this wonderful site.)

You know how under the individual blend entries there’s a blurb at the top giving the blend info, description, and even a picture? This is then followed by the individual reviews.

Well, wouldn’t it be wonderful if under the entry for each COMPANY there would be a heading giving some information on that company, contact info (maybe), a picture of the logo (maybe), but (what I’d like to see) is a little paragraph or so of history of the company. Maybe even give some of the changes of manufacturing (like the Dunhill blends over the last 15 years or so). Who founded the company (if known), etc.

What I wouldn’t do would be to give a link to any official site. Why? Because not all companies have official sites (so this could be considered to be unfair to some companies) and I certainly wouldn’t want a link to a site that actually SOLD the tobacco in question. That would really be unfair to a lot of vendors. In some cases there is only one vendor (so this wouldn’t be a problem). But if you really want to find where to actually buy the tobacco, use Google.

– Doug Pearson

Here in Phila, PA. I know of at least four tobacconist who use Lane tobaccos and rename them.
For example, at one shop BCA is called “Liberty Bell” at another shop it’s called “Boston Special”, at another BCA which stands for {Black Cavendish Aromatic}. They all have a Captain Black which is different than the tinned version.
In fact, it’s better. They all have Cherry, Capt. Black Gold, a version of Capt. Black Royal in which one place calls Chestnut Delight. Other flavoring blends such as nougat, ammaretto, chocolate, vanilla, and so on are also on hand.
Then the wannabe english blends. VA. and Oriental, Balkan, and a semi-sweet turkish blend are on hand. One exception is Milan Tobbaconist.
There aromatics seem different? They are tasty, cool, and pleasant to smoke. They may have their own connection or they do the blending and fermenting themselves. I’ve smoked Milan’s London Dock and Sunset Rum and I like them both!
Im generally a mild to medium english guy or a straight up strong Burley and Kentucky smoker.
But I know what folks mean about Lane Blends, they are all over just under house names.
Yes I like BCA, just about every pipe smoker does but why call it Black Special, Raven, or Liberty Bell? Just call it what it is.