An occasional feature telling the real stories of real people on the job.

Today: Ben, a tobacco flavourist

My favourites are the king size ones. They burn a little longer and a little cooler, and that lets you really taste the bornyl isovalerate. I'm proud of that.

The thing nobody realizes is that tobacco is not a finished product when it comes off the field. The stuff is grown by inbred subsidized yokel farmers from North Carolina, and all I have to say about that is we're not exactly talking sophisticated palates.

These are the kind of hicks who wouldn't know a 1961 Chateau Latour Pauillac if Robert Parker personally brought it to their tar-paper shacks and poured it in their shorts, so you can hardly expect them to keep their soil pH within the tolerances you need to make a classic king size Turkish-American taste like a classic king size Turkish-American. Everything distinctive about a Virginia 100 -- its noble character, its nose, that crisp finish -- that's all the work of artisans like me.

You don't get a lot of praise doing this kind of work. It's a keep-your-head-down environment. You put on your lab coat in the morning, you spend the day using your nose and your judgment, adding a trace of gamma-decalactone here and a sprinkle of para-methoxybenzaldehyde there, and you go home hoping that somewhere, somebody is sucking your handiwork deep into their lungs and taking the time to savour the nuanced edge of the isoamyl formate and the saucy warmth of the 2-heptanone. If just one person does that, then I've done my job well.

I still don't think the industry's recovered from the menthol disaster. I'd like to meet the clown who came up with that and give him a good hiding. It's not candy, for heaven's sake! It's not chewing gum! Have you no respect for the leaves at all?

Lord, does that ever get me steamed.

Now don't get me wrong. I don't have a problem with flavourings in general. If I did, I wouldn't be in this business. But what you have to realize is that you're working with a proud and noble plant here, and if you have any respect for the tradition of the tobacconist you have to care about the fundamental character of the leaf.

Speaking of which, would you care to try one of my new Cool Ranch 100s?