Miss Virginia Burley: Virginia's Leaf

Whilst l have a smoke l'd like to tell you a little about my tobacco
leaf and how it gets to you.

These 2 photos show the tobacco plant itself. Did you know
that the leaf is graded depending from what part of the plant it
comes from? It's graded from bottom, middle and top.

Once the leaves are harvested and cured they are then put
into bales and sent to the tobacco distributor. Sometimes the
bales are sold as is but many customers prefer it to be selected.

This is Loose Leaf Burley. You'll notice that they have full
stalks. Leaf distributors like to cut off 10-15cm of the stalk
(stem) because this is where a lot of moisture is and can cause
problems when stored as it can spread along the whole stem.
The problem can be easily recognised as it has a whitish furry
appearance.

This is Butted Burley where 10-15cm of stalk is removed

and sometimes the tips too if preferred. As Virginia doesn't

have the same problems as Burley, it is not usually butted.

What happens to Virginia is it can be made into hand strips.

This is where all the stem is removed leaving you with

just leaf. This is all done by hand.

Burley too can be made into hand strips.

You can also purchase mixed Burley and Virginia hand strips.
l prefer to keep them separate so you can choose ratio of mix.

There is also the Dark Fired hand strips (available Oct 2014)

Once l've chosen my leaf it is then pressed in big machines
for shipment. This is how l receive my leaf. The above is Burley.

These are Burley tips left over after butting.

This is what happens to all the scraps. They are run through
a machine to produce what they call scraps. Cigarette companies
like this as filler for their cigarettes. Bet you didn't know that!