Expert Review★★★★★ Click to read Tap to read
This snuff gives all-day energy. In the long summer Texas days, this snuff gave me a steady pick-me-up even after cutting several lawns over the weekend, and its fine texture may contribute to its rapid absorption. It is fine and dry, and as such can be difficult to place in the nose properly without a very proficient hand and technique; even with a very light inhale, this snuff can find itself deeper in the sinus versus the nose.
This snuff presents out of the pouch with a unique blend centred around sarsaparilla root, a profile traditionally associated with old-fashioned root beer. It is dusty out of the packet, with a uniformly light brown base flour and a fine, somewhat fluffy and dusty milled texture, and there is very little moisture here. What makes this snuff unique is its old-fashioned root beer foam in the nose, achieved through traditional sarsaparilla root. Although similar to root beer, modern root beer often leans heavily into a mixture of wintergreen and vanilla flavourings; this instead has a more nuanced, earthy mixture that lets the traditional sarsaparilla character take centre stage.
It still has that familiar creamy, foamy quality that immediately calls root beer to mind, but without turning into a straightforward root beer candy or soda flavour. The sarsaparilla root provides a more herbal, earthy, slightly woody backbone, adding depth to the profile. It reminds me less of cracking open a bottle of modern root beer, and more of what I would imagine an old-fashioned sarsaparilla tonic served at a frontier saloon might have smelled like. Notes of wintergreen, caramel, vanilla, and herbs wrap around a lovely tobacco base; the tobacco doesn't come through nearly at all, but instead acts like glue in the background.
The fine, dusty grind does demand respect. Take too hard a sniff, and that sarsaparilla is liable to bypass the front of the nose and head straight for the sinuses. With a careful hand, however, the reward is a distinctive and surprisingly nuanced take on a familiar American flavour.