The King Street Emporium

1792 Flake

English Flake

1792 Flake takes its name from the year Thomas Harrison hauled fifty tons of equipment by horseback from Scotland to Kendal and established what would eventually become Samuel Gawith and Co. The number carries weight because the blend itself is meant to represent the oldest end of the company's tradition, a tobacco pressed and produced on the same machinery that has been running in that Cumbrian facility for over two centuries. The blend combines dark fired Tanzanian leaf with mature Virginias, heat pressed and slowly baked to draw out a character that sits well outside what a straight Virginia flake delivers. The dark fired leaf adds an earthy, smoky depth that the Virginias alone could not produce, and the whole thing is finished with a tonquin bean essence, a flavoring with its own long history in British tobacco that adds a subtle warmth to the blend without announcing itself as a topping. It is a full strength tobacco by any measure, and one that improves significantly with time in the tin. For a blend named after a year, it smokes like it means it.