The pensioners mixture!
What's in it? Well nobody knows and nobody can honestly tell us! "Its obviously the sweepings up off the floor and all the stalk" I hear you cry! We can forgive you for jumping to that conclusion as we believed the same for many years.
You've just treated yourself to that new expensive pouch of Flake, plug or twist, you like to break the seal and be hit in the face by a wonderful aroma. Once you have acclimatised to the aroma and opened your eyes, you expect to be presented with a neatly trimmed, well presented piece of tobacco, and why the hell not, your paying enough for it. During the manufacturing process of flakes and plugs the cake is squared off so that when prepared and packaged the result is a neat cross section of the caked leaves. These perfectly good tobacco leaves, that if in the centre of the cake would provide endless enjoyment, relaxation and satisfaction for most pipe smokers are simply thrown away right? Wrong! They are broken up and chucked into the pensioners mixture as a gesture of good will to the older generation who have grafted over the years to build a better future for us.
The government is doing a pretty shoddy job of looking after them in their retirement so the kind fellows in Kendal are doing their bit! So no its not the sweeping up and the stalk it is exactly the same, Virginian, Kentucky, Perique, Burley and Cavendish leaves that go into the premium blends, plugs and twists. It has been carefully prepared and aged, it is broken up in the rubbing machine with the odd chunk of twist and shag tobacco chucked in for good measure. It is then chucked in a bag at a discounted price before being snapped up by the wiser generation of optimistic pipe smokers who enjoy a bit of variety and a good chunk of that un-known quantity in their pipes.