Hooray for Hookah: a Variety of Fruity Flavours

Source from:  tobaccojournal.com 13 Jul 2007 07/30/2007

During a busy Sunday evening, a thick fragrance of pineapple, strawberry, coconut and cheery tobacco hangs in the air at Melita Café, a trendy nargile (hookah) bar in Istanbul's up market Fenerbahçe district, overlooking the city's biggest marina. Young men and women, including many teenage girls, are seated in soft cushion sofas inside, languidly smoking fruit-flavoured nargile tobacco from tall water pipes, as they play backgammon and watch their favorite football team play on a large plasma television screen. "I have been smoking fewer cigarettes since I began smoking nargiles four years ago," noted Yigit Özbek, 21, an economics student from Istanbul Bilgi University, as he puffs on his water pipe. "I like fruity nargile tobacco because it represents the taste of life." "Nargile smoking is not habit-forming. I do not crave it. I smoke it purely for keyf (pleasure) and because smoking it is very social among my friends," asserts Cihan Asena, 23, a schoolmate of Özbek's, as he blows halos into the air. Hubbly bubbly goes global Thanks to a plethora of fruit-flavoured tobacco and molasses originating from Egypt, Saudi Arabia, Jordan, India, Thailand and now Turkey inundating global markets, hookah smoking has become popular among young, high-income patrons around the world. One reason why hookah smoking has also become fashionable is due to the view held by many young smokers that it is less harmful than smoking cigarettes. Hookah lounges are mushrooming throughout the United States, Canada and Europe, especially near university campuses with large Middle Eastern and Indian populations, though patrons of these establishments are by no means solely from those parts of the world. In Germany, hookah smoking is on the rise in Berlin, Cologne, Stuttgart, Aachen and Munich and other cities where large Turkish communities live. In Spain, the use of the hookah has grown in popularity and is often available at tea-oriented coffee houses, called 'teteria', in Spanish. In Moscow and other Russian cities, many bars employ "hookah men," often dressed in Middle Eastern garb, wearing traditional baggy trousers and fezzes, to bring the water pipes and hoses to the tables and prepare and light the tobacco. In Sweden, hookah smoking is gaining in popularity, and hookahs are used mainly by teenagers and immigrants of Middle East and Asian origin. In South Africa, hookahs are known as "hubbly bubblies" and becoming just as popular among white youths as they are among ethnic Indians. Hookah cafés, which have existed in the Middle East and the Indian-Pakistan subcontinent for centuries, have also popped up in Malaysia, England, Israel, the Philippines, Mexico, Kenya, Australia, Argentina and even Japan and China. In Brazil, hookah bars have the friendly atmospheres often associated with coffee sensation Starbucks according to one observer. A tradition for Muslim women Fruit-flavoured tobacco was introduced initially to allow sequestered Muslim women in the Middle East to smoke hookahs at home with their families and friends, experts said, but it soon spread to lounges across Asia, the Middle East and North Africa and from there to the West, and attracted young smokers. Nargile smoking has traditionally been the past-time of middle-aged and elderly Turkish and Middle Eastern men, who smoke traditional rolled and twisted tombak (a strong, pungent, broad-leafed water-pipe tobacco) produced in southeastern Turkey and Iran. According to experts, hookah smokers over 25 do not savour smoking fruit-flavoured tobaccos; instead, they prefer traditional nargile lounges. "You will not see any middle-aged or elderly persons here. All of the patrons are young," says Siddik Ekinci, who prepares the nargile tobacco at Melita Café. Fruit-flavoured tobacco is generally made by mixing fermented fruit, which comes in the form of paste, with fruit molasses and oriental tobacco, rather than from traditional tombak. "We use fruit with a high content of sugar while making fruit-flavoured tobacco," stated Kamil Kutlu, owner of Serbetli Gida ve Ambalaj Sanayi Ticaret Limited, one of Turkey's four private producers and exporters of fruit-flavoured nargile tobacco. "We use natural fruit in steeping it with tobacco. Cigarette manufacturers use chemical flavourings," explained Mustafa Kutlu, his brother and partner in Serbetli Gida, a food processing company that has been in the Nargile tobacco business for just four years. It takes only 20 to 25 days for Serbetli Gida, which produces 20 fruit-flavoured tobaccos on the market, to bring out a new flavour. "We try the new flavours among ourselves. If we like it, we begin producing and marketing it," Kutlu said. In Turkey, the state tobacco giant, Tekel, is the only producer of traditional tombak tobacco, which is not mixed with any flavourings. The end product is also different. Fruit-flavoured hookah tobacco resembles a sticky, paste-like substance, while cigarette tobacco appears dry. In Egypt, the market for hookah tobacco, or 'shisha' as it is called in Arabic, is largely controlled by the state-owned tobacco monopoly, Eastern Company. But several companies produce and export fruit-flavoured tobacco. Regardless of the fruit used, fruit-flavoured tobacco must contain anason (aniseed) and sugar cane, which allows for smooth combustion explained a leading Turkish expert on fruit-flavoured tobaccos. "The tobacco would not light up in any other instance," he said. From coconut to California dream Many of the flavours available are exotic. Mumbai (Bombay)-based Soex India Pvt. Ltd., one of the world's leading exporters of fruit-flavoured tobacco and molasses, offers more than 30 flavours, including apple, strawberry, mixed fruit, aniseed, mango, grapes, watermelon, melon, pineapple, mint, silver fox, golden amber, peach, rose, lemon and lime, cardamom, orange, blueberry, blackberry, panmasala, banana, menthol, raspberry, coffee, vanilla, black liquorice, chocolate, coconut and butterscotch. The company also produces herbal cigarettes, also known as bidis and are extremely popular in India, which provide the "flavourful smoke found in regular tobacco but without the effects of tobacco as it contains zero nicotine and non-tobacco," Arif Fazlani, managing director of Soex, claimed. Soex's fruit-flavoured hookah tobacco comes in packets of 50g, 100g and 250g. Indian exports of fruit-flavored tobacco and molasses totalled 10,023 tonnes in fiscal 2006/07, according to India's Business Standard newspaper. Countries such as Belgium, Russia, the Philippines, Germany and England were the major purchasers of Indian tobacco products. The Jordanian-Egyptian Al Waha company produces more than 25 flavours, including kiwi, Jamaican Rum, Margarita, vanilla, acai berry, spearmint, butterscotch, pina colada and honey tobacco. A sister company in Egypt, Nakla, produces a wide variety of fruit-flavoured tobaccos, including punch, guava, winter flower, cola and "California Dream." Egypt offers rebates on exports of molasses tobacco for shisha pipe and fruit-flavoured tobacco. Turkey's Selar Tütün Ürünleri Turizm Sanayi ve Dis Ticaret Ltd. produces cappuccino and fruit cocktail-flavoured tobacco "Men in Turkey like lemon and mint-flavored tobacco, while women prefer melon, strawberry and other sweet fruit tobacco," says Yonca Ciler, a Turkish high school student who has smoked hookahs. According to some exporters, in Turkey and most of Europe, apple, cappuccino, grape strawberry and melon-flavoured hookah tobaccos are favourites. There have been duds of course. Serbetli Gida's rose-flavored hookah tobacco did not find a following in Turkey, but sold well in Kuwait, to which it exports its products. Metin Demirsar Enditem