Tributes to McClelland Tobacco Company 1978-2018

...one of the perks of hanging out with you guys is getting the "heads up" in time to do something about it...

Maybe we can look forward to Russ O. making some matches soon...

The way things are going I might just stick to Match blends moving forward.

Here's a really nice one from SP:


Farewell McClelland
Monday, March 5, 2018 by Chuck Stanion

I'm a Virginia/Perique smoker, and my daily smoke for the past ten years has been McClelland's Beacon, a flake of unsurpassed complexity and clean, pure taste. It hasn't been an outrageously popular blend—I think I probably bought more than anyone else over the years. It is my friend and I'll miss it desperately.

If you're like me, the news of McClelland's closing is devastating. Change is hard, and now I need to find a new favorite daily smoke. Castello's "Fiammata" is a contender, as is Escudo, C&D's Sunday Picnic (it ages great), Solani's 633, and Luxury Bullseye Flake by Stokkebye. But it will take some adjustment. I'll need to retrain my mouth, and that's something I've failed at in the past, such as when I tried to retrain it not to blurt out whatever I'm thinking at a given moment. Had I succeeded, I'd probably now be wealthy, living on my own island. It would be called the Island of Chuckoslavakia and smoking would be required. And I would send operatives out into the world to track down and purchase ALL the Beacon.

But reality is harder. McClelland was an irreplaceable boutique tobacco manufacturer and had carved its own niche into our community.

Mary and Mike McNiel of McClelland worked like sled dogs for more than 40 years to maintain the highest quality possible of their products. They worked insane hours, seven days a week. Mike would sit up for 15 hours at a time just making sure the moisture content was right on a particular blend, for example, checking it every five minutes, adjusting fans, being compulsive, which is what was required. For the past several years he has worked in severe pain because of a back injury that would have required too much time away from work to fix.

Mary was the tasting genius of the operation. She can differentiate subtleties that few others recognize, and every blend had to meet with her full approval. "Without Mary," says Mike, "I'd be on the street begging for nickels to buy tobacco." She invented Frog Morton, one of their most popular contributions to pipe tobacco. "I added the Staved Frog Morton," says Mike, "but I needed her. I couldn't get it right. I was smoking and tweaking, going crazy, and finally Mary tasted it and said, 'Do you have some stoved Red Virginia? Go get it. Here's how you should mix it.' And it was exactly right, exactly what I was missing."

Virginia Flakes are probably the most significant contribution the company has made. No one stoved Red Virginias before it, and no one could process high-sugar content leaf in the same way as McClelland. Dark Star, #27 and Blackwoods Flake are all outstanding examples.

The future will be much different for the McNiels. Mary, who did the artwork for many of the company's tins, including the Frog Morton series, may be attending the Kansas City Art Institute in the very near future. And Mike, who loves "the so-called lower animals," will be working at the Kansas City Zoo. "It's one of my favorite places on Earth," he says. "I called them up and said, 'I'm going to work for you, and I'm going to pay you $10 an hour for the privilege.'" They accepted. It's hard to say no to Mike McNiel.

Pipe smokers the world over owe a great deal to McClelland. It's a company that forged new dimensions in pipe tobacco, and provided untold hours of contentment for pipesmokers of the past two generations. We are fortunate indeed that Mike and Mary McNiel applied their substantial talents to developing tobacco products unlike those ever seen before. We at Smokingpipes.com wish to thank them for their decades of service to the hobby, and I'd like to add my personal thanks, not only for the fine tobaccos, but for the friendship of two wonderfully engaging people. Others around the world share these sentiments, I'm sure. We will all miss McClelland.

I'm leaning more towards SP lately... shipping is a heck of a lot faster to my location than P&C.

Well, they're a business, not a charity.  I doubt McClelland gave them a special discount for buying the stuff.  McClelland made some of the finest Virginia blends ever made.  But not all of their output was as commercially successful and there's still a lot of it on shelves that's been there for years. 

Sad to see them go but you can bet your arse I got ahold of some tins of the frog before they all disappeared. 

3.21/ounce If you buy 5 pounds is y hardly a discount. SPC kept their prices about the same.

I ended up buying 5 of the 100 gram tins of Frog Morton before SP ran out...Nowhere near one of my favorites, but I figure that it would be good to break out with my pipe smoking buddies when it is no longer available.


I stopped by the tobacconist that we have our pipe club meetings at today and had a smoke with him on my lunch hour. We talked about McClellands closing up. Previously he managed a Tinderbox that closed up, when they did close, he bought hundreds of McClelland tins at fire sale prices. Christmas cheer from many of the 90’s... says he has 10 tins of the organic batch that McClellands had a one time run on.

He should do quite well going forward on the open market.

If the McNeil’s really wanted to make a killing, they could have held back thousands of pounds and trickled them onto the reselling market well into the next decade, it would certainly cut out the middle man, for doubled prices.

No I am not speculating that is what they did, (confident that they never would) ,just that it would certainly be a profitable one.