Tobacco That’s So Brooklyn but Made in Belgium

 

 

(NYTimes) We were somewhere around Barolo on the edge of the Italian wine country when my wife’s 68-year-old uncle, Dario, lurched forward in the driver’s seat, fished a small leather pouch from the floorboard and threw it in my lap. “Semwaz!” he cried, as if this were the answer to everything.
I had no idea what the word meant, but inside the pouch, I found the strangest pipe tobacco I’d ever seen. It was dry and brittle and smelled like a barn, and if anyone else had given it to me, I’m sure I would have tossed it back. But Dario was a special case. In the years I’d known him, he introduced me to some of the best mushrooms, moonshine and cigars I ever tasted, and if he now recommended this packet of old straw, it seemed only fair to try it. Continued