Translations:DUNHILL PIPE TOBACCO: 1907 – 1990/12/en

It is interesting to note at this point, some five years after Alfred opened his shop, that if the shop he opened was not the type of store we go to today, five years later it was. For when one reviews the pre tinned blends offered in the early catalogs through 1912 you find that they include the full range of what we consider today to be the English style blends, from matured Virginias such as “Royal Yacht” and “My Mixture #288”, to straight Virginias such as “#36” and “#190”, Oriental blends such as “Durbar”, “#1”, “#28”, “#108”, “#187”, and “#850”, Latakia blends such as “#10” and “#965” and for the odd occasion, “Cuba”, a cigar leaf blend. Thus for the balance of the near century, from 1912 through 1990, we find that the keynote for Dunhill the tobacconist is “refining” with an increasing emphasis on generally available ‘name’ blends as opposed to custom “My Mixture” blends. For in most all respects everything was in place by 1912. Although that is not to say that the custom blending business withered away, for by the end of the century over 36,700 individual blends had been recorded in the Duke Street shop “My Mixture Book”. However, even from very early on most of those individual My Mixture recipes were somewhat less then ‘bespoke’ and more like a custom tailored ‘pre cut’ suit, that is rather then recorded in terms of raw ingredients, for the very great most part the Duke Street “My Mixture Book” records them as mixtures of existing blends, e.g. “2x127 2x128”, or “2x965 1x77 1x27” or as variants of existing blends, e.g. “3x144 1xLat[akia]” with an occasional extra touch, e.g. “cut short & dry”.