Cigarettes

Important facts: five things you didn’t know about tobacco
 

• A close relative of the potato: tobacco is a nightshade plant – this can be seen from its flowers with five petals and its large leaves. Tobacco is therefore biologically related to potatoes, paprika and aubergines.
   
• Forbidden pleasure: in the 17th century, it was forbidden to enjoy tobacco as the church denounced smoking tobacco and taking snuff as immoral pleasures. Tobacco could only be sold by apothecaries.
   
• Tobacco as a cure-all: after the tobacco plant had been imported to Europe in the early 16th century, it was considered to have great healing properties. As a brew, powder or in the form of compresses, tobacco was thought to heal stomach and intestinal complaints, soothe pains and even defeat the plague.
   
• Luxury tobacco: the most expensive cigars ever sold are the Cohiba Behike, which were manufactured in a limited edition of 100 boxes of 40 cigars each in 2006. The cigars, rolled by a master hand and numbered, cost 375 euros each. 
   

Enjoyable and sociable – the many pleasures of tobacco
 

• Cigars and cigarillos: they are the most original and the most sophisticated way to enjoy tobacco – rolled from whole or cut tobacco leaves, without any additives or a filter. The best-known cigars are by Cuban brands like Romeo y Julieta, Partagas and Cohiba.
   
• Pipe tobacco: the pipe is the embodiment of cultivated tobacco enjoyment. The Netherlands and Scandinavia in particular have a distinct pipe-smoking culture with a wealth of sweet and aromatically fruity pipe tobaccos.
   
• Chewing tobacco, quid or snus, as it is called in Scandinavia, is a pressed and strongly aromatic tobacco which is held in the mouth or chewed. Like snuff tobacco, chewing tobacco is not smoked, so it can even be enjoyed in smoke-free rooms.