“sniff like a rose, don’t snort like cocaine” are my instructions to anybody who wants to try my snuff.
I find it goes to my throat if it’s too dry. Easily fixed by folding a bit of damp paper towel and leaving it in an airtight box with your open snuff tin overnight
Thanks for letting us know – I was hoping to restock this month, but I’ll survive another month. Good to know it’s only temporary.
Hi Roderick,
It has a definite ‘old’ smell to it, very smokey, almost gunpowdery. Like breaking into the sealed cellar of a building which was bombed during the war. I haven’t tried JR’s to compare, although it will be on my next order. I’d put the smell purely down to age, but having tried Old Paris, it’s entirely possible the aged smell is by design.
While I was looking into it, I also came across this auction listing from last year. Somebody got a great deal there!
I just received an old F&T tin that I bought from eBay. It was listed as empty, but on arrival it’s about 3/4s full and has a label on top proclaiming it as “Astho Roth”.
The tin lists addresses in Oxford and Cambridge as well as the Haymarket address – a bit of research shows that F&T occupied 130 High Street, Oxford from 1930-1968 and 1970-1976+, and an autobiography of one Frank Bird says he worked at F&T Tobacconists on Kings Parade when he was 15 which looks to have been around 1951, so I’m inclined to date the snuff around the 50s, given that records show another tobacconist in the Cambridge location from 1962. It has a very old musty smell which may be by intent or just a result of the passage of time. Certainly an interesting one for the collection, although I’ll be mostly sticking to the Morlaix today.

<p style=”text-align: left;”>I only discovered snuff in the last couple of months, but it’s now my main nicotine. Before that I mainly vaped and very occasionally smoked. I’m considering getting a pipe for occasional use too.