Dunhill Pipe Tobaccos: 1907-1990

Dunhill pipe tobaccos are a blend catalogue that grew from the shop Alfred Dunhill opened in 1907 on Duke Street in London's St James's district, first expanding and then contracting over eighty years. This entry covers the catalogue's course between 1907 and 1990. The individual characters of the blends, along with the brand's post-1990 period, are the subject of Dunhill Tobacco Blends; the pipes are covered in Dunhill (White Spot).

The Duke Street Counter and the "My Mixture" Ledger

In the shop's opening years the business was not selling ready-made tins but talking with each customer to build a bespoke recipe; the sign in the window read "Tobacco Specialist." Every recipe was given a number and entered into a ledger called "My Mixture." Records indicate that in the early years the leaf used in the blend came from George Dobie & Son in Paisley and a supplier called the Tobacco Supply Syndicate. The first crack in this arrangement appeared in the 1910 catalogue: ten "My Mixture" recipes were now listed openly for anyone, and nine of them carried the name of the customer for whom the recipe had first been prepared. 965, the longest-lived member of the series, had also been arranged for a single customer before 1910. The ledger tradition continued as the catalogue grew; it is said that by century's end more than thirty-six thousand recipes had accumulated in the Duke Street books.

The Birth of the Catalogue Blends (1912-1939)

The English regulation of the period kept the use of additives in blending far tighter than on the Continent or in America; flavour had to be drawn out of the character of the oriental tobacco and Virginia leaf themselves. The processes that achieved this — pressing, toasting, and ageing — could not be carried out at the counter, only in a workshop. In 1912 the firm released its first ready-made "named" blends: Royal Yacht, Cuba, and Durbar. According to catalogue records the list grew during the First World War with Ye Olde Signe (1915) and Harmony (1917); for troops at the front, temporary blends called Campaign Plug and Campaign Mixture were produced along with a plain pipe of the same name. In the 1920s, Standard Mixture, offered in three separate Latakia strengths, along with Three Year Matured and Prince of Wales, were added, followed by London Mixture in 1928. The name Prince of Wales was a token of gratitude to Edward, Prince of Wales, who granted the firm its royal warrant in 1921. In 1936 Throgmorton and Old Colonial were added; Throgmorton took its name from the firm's second London shop, run between 1923 and 1946. At the end of the same decade, when the assets of a tobacconist called Savory were acquired, Baby's Bottom and Savory's Mixture also entered the list. During this period the list only grew: from 1912 until the Second World War, no named blend was discontinued.

Post-War Culling and the Final Expansion

The shrinkage began after the war. Harmony, Throgmorton, and Old Colonial dropped from the list at the end of the 1940s, Super in the early 1950s. Against this, three new blends were introduced in 1951 — Aperitif, Early Morning Pipe, and Nightcap — and the latter two became among the brand's best-known names. Flake, a pressed Virginia, was added at the end of the 1950s, followed by Rough Cut Virginia in 1963. In the 1960s Prince of Wales, Savory's Mixture, and Three Year Matured were culled; the discontinuation of Cuba, blended with cigar leaf, in the same years is attributed to the American embargo on Cuba. The late 1960s and the 1970s brought a temporary expansion with names such as Elizabethan, Golden Label, Golden Hours, and Virginia Ready Rubbed; the culling that stretched from the late 1970s into the 1980s removed a series of names including Aperitif, Durbar, and Ye Olde Signe.

Leaf, Ownership, and 1981

Changes on the raw-leaf side played a large part in the catalogue's contraction. From the 1960s onward, oriental leaves began to be sold in bulk without regard to regional distinction, which made it harder to sustain recipes built on specific sub-varieties. The gradual replacement of Syrian-sourced Latakia by leaf produced in Cyprus is also counted among the developments that permanently changed the taste of English blends. Meanwhile the firm's ownership structure had changed, with Rothmans International taking over more than half the shares in 1967. Records indicate that in 1981 most of the tobacco-blending business, together with the named blends including 965, passed to Murray, Sons & Co., the same group's manufacturer in Belfast. At this long-established facility, dating back to 1810, ageing times shortened and some of the more complex recipes fell out of production; the first chapter of the story that had begun behind a counter in 1907 thus closed.