Janta Naswar Factory "Dragon Brand Madras Snuff" - Nasal Snuff Review

This post written without the assistance of AI.

I find Indian snuffs, for the most part, to be a little boring. I remember my first Indian snuff, one of the first nasal snuffs I'd ever bought online, Dholakia Irish Creme, and I thought it was phenomenal. I was fresh on the scene, and had never had anything like Indian snuff before - coming from Toque and Wilsons of Sharrow, Indian snuff was incredibly fine, heavily scented, and unpretentious about its flavoring. I considered Indian snuff to be a triumph in snuffmaking, and was excited to try others.

I was lucky, I think, with Irish Creme. I ordered a whole lot of Indian snuff from Dholakia, 6 Photo, and others, and I found them to all have more or less the same formula - a very fine grind (which is fine), and a heavy application of rose attar and menthol and all sorts of different fragrances that all blended together to form some kind of inescapable Indian smell. Dholakia was the least guilty of doing this, but they did it all the same. 6 Photo is perhaps the worst offender, even though I can now appreciate their snuffs for what they are, and often return to them when I'm in the mood for that pure Indian taste.

Madras snuffs, however, are different. They are unfragranced (miraculous!) and have a pretty interesting method of production. Apparently, madras snuffs are made with tobacco fried in ghee - and even though the scents they have could probably be reached by dry roasting a well thought out blend of ordinary leaf, I choose to believe in the mythology. I use ghee in cooking occasionally, and if you haven't, you really should fool around with it. It's such a pure, nutty, warm taste, and it adds a lot of soul to whatever dish it's added to.

JNF's Dragon Brand Madras snuff is definitionally a madras snuff, in terms of grind, color, and flavor. The color is a true walnut wood brown, with no green in it, but no wet richness to the color either. In the tin, the smell is fairly unextraordinary - a slightly bitter, green tobacco smell with little elements of nuttiness. It's in the nose where this snuff really comes to life; there are all the regular aromas we expect to find in a toasted snuff of any sort, so brown bread crust is there, but there's also this intense nutty dairy oil smell. I really despise saying that things smell like what they're advertised to smell like, but for this snuff, it's true.

Nicotine is there, as well. This is a fine snuff, so some care is required in snuffing, but even compared to some other ultra fine grind snuffs this one has a punch that arrests the breath for a couple of seconds. It fades within a couple of seconds, so there's no risk of getting overwhelmed. It's a nice, brisk, sharp punch.

I really like this snuff; if you haven't had a madras snuff yet, JNF Dragon Brand is really worth checking out.