Rappee, Varinas and Macouba: what old snuff names mean

Some old snuff names describe how the snuff was made or where the leaf came from. "Rappee" is a process, and "Macouba" and "Varinas" are places. Dictionary.com dates rappee and maccaboy (the English form of Macouba) to between 1730 and 1740, and both are still on tins today. Varinas appears in English print by 1747.

Rappee

Rappee comes from the French tabac râpé, "grated tobacco", from the verb râper, to grate. Dictionary.com dates the English word to between 1730 and 1740.

The grating was literal. Leaf was twisted tight into a roll, and the French called that roll a carotte because of its shape. You took a rasp to it and grated off as much as you wanted. The history of France's tobacco monopoly describes the carotte as "the bundle of tobacco leaves tied and twisted together" that merchants used to prepare pipe and snuff tobacco for their customers. That same bundle became the tobacconist's sign. Every tabac in France still hangs a red carotte outside, and since 1906 the law has required one.

The name outlived the rasp. Britannica describes rappee as a coarse, pungent snuff made from dark tobacco, and English mills still make it. Our piece on the mills behind English snuff has more on how they work.

Varinas, from Venezuela

Varinas is the old spelling of Barinas, a town in Venezuela. In 1747 the writer William Douglas listed Varinas tobacco alongside Virginia and Brazil as a distinct kind. A pair of Delft tobacco jars made between about 1760 and 1790 carry "Varinas" in a cartouche, and the dealer selling them notes that Varinas was once thought the best tobacco in the world.

The leaf travelled in rolls. In 1839 the writer W. A. Chatto, under the pen name "J. Fume", wrote: "Varinas is usually imported in rolls, formed of the leaves of the tobacco spun into a kind of thick twist." Simmonds' Dictionary of Trade (1858) describes a Varinas roll as tobacco "generally plaited round a thick stick". So Varinas reached Europe as a spun or plaited roll, much like the carotte.

Seed from Trinidad and Caracas changed Virginia's tobacco too. Virginia's colonists first grew the native Nicotiana rustica, which Melvin Herndon's history of tobacco in colonial Virginia calls inferior to the Spanish colonies' leaf, with "a much greater nicotine content" according to botanists. John Rolfe, Herndon writes, "persuaded a shipmaster to bring him some tobacco seed from the Island of Trinidad and Caracas, Venezuela". Rolfe's crop from that seed became Virginia's export.

Macouba and maccaboy

Macouba is a district in the far north of Martinique, in the French Caribbean. Its name went into English as "maccaboy" (earlier macabao, macauba and macouba), dated by Dictionary.com to 1730 to 1740. The French macouba meant an aromatic tobacco made there, and in English maccaboy came to mean a snuff, usually scented with rose.

On the shelf

Fribourg & Treyer still make a Macouba, and the rappee tradition carries on in Mullins & Westley Black Rappee and Wilsons of Sharrow Brunswick Black Rappee.

Sources

• Dictionary.com, "rappee" (origin 1730 to 1740, from French râpé, grated) and "maccaboy" (from French macouba, named after Macouba in northern Martinique). dictionary.com/browse/rappee; dictionary.com/browse/maccaboy
• "Seita", company history, Reference for Business (the carotte as the tobacconist's symbol; the Ferme des tabacs). referenceforbusiness.com
• "Why do French tobacconists use carrots as their protest weapon of choice?", The Local France, 4 October 2017 (the carotte sign required since 1906). thelocal.fr
• "Varinas", Murray's New English Dictionary, quoting W. Douglas, British Settlements in North America (1747), W. A. Chatto ("J. Fume"), A Paper on Tobacco (1839), and P. L. Simmonds, Dictionary of Trade (1858), via the World English Historical Dictionary. wehd.com
• Encyclopaedia Britannica, "rappee". britannica.com/topic/rappee
• Pair of Delft tobacco jars inscribed "Varinas" and "St. Omer", De Drie Klokken, Delft, about 1760 to 1790, dealer's listing. 1stdibs.com
• Melvin Herndon, Tobacco in Colonial Virginia: "The Sovereign Remedy" (1957), Project Gutenberg. gutenberg.org/ebooks/27117