Snus for Americans

Could this be the best snus ever?
(Photo by northerner.com)

(Firecured) Moist snuff has been around for a very long time. The oldest producer in Sweden, where they call it “snus,” is Ettan, which has been making snus since 1822. The oldest producer in America, where it’s known as “dip, snuff, etc.,” is Copenhagen, also founded in 1822. Go figure. Snus and dip are almost identical, except for one very important thing: Snus is virtually non-carcinogenic. I’m not going to go into the science here, you can JFGI that for yourself. I just wanted to point out that both Europe and the U.S. have a long moist snuff culture.
Before Ettan came along, it was all dip, that is, moist snuff that included fermentation in the manufacturing process. The good folks at Ettan invented a process that scrapped fermentation for an early sort of pasteurization. This was done for expediency, the benign health effects being a happy accident.
This is important, I think, because there are people out there, Americans mostly, who say American snus is bad, evil, and inferior. It’s not real because it isn’t European. Of course, there’s people who think everything American is best and there are people who think everything foreign is best, we call both these groups “crazy people.” The truth, like so many things, lies somewhere in-between. This is especially true with snus because North America and Scandinavia have two very different, and very long, traditions of flavoring moist tobacco.
The much derided American snus is flavored like our most popular dip - sweet and/or minty. Camel Mellow Snus, for example, has a taste like molasses. It reminds me of gingerbread. Camel Frost tastes like peppermint. These are tastes Americans enjoy and are familiar with. If you like Skoal Mint Bandits, you’ll like Skoal Mint Snus, they taste pretty much the same.
On the other hand, if you buy a can of Swedish snuff, it may have some very odd flavorings, such as bergamot, juniper, rose oil, and geranium. Now let me ask you: When was the last time you pulled into the 7-11 and got yourself a great big geranium Slurpee?
This is not all that unusual in the tobacco world. There are pipe tobaccos produced in England that taste like urinal cake to Americans. On the other hand, the English think that most American pipe tobacco is too sweet and over-flavored. But in the pipe community, there isn’t any denunciation going on, some teasing, oh yeah, but no denunciation.
My concern is that Americans, attracted to snus for it’s amazing harm reducing potential, will be fooled into trying a type of snus totally alien to their tastes and give up on it entirely. Such a thing could have tragic health consequences. So ignore the snus snobs and go try some American snus, you may like it. And don’t just take my word, try some of the foreign stuff too, don’t take anybody’s word, you know what you like.