Description
The Charatan Story
In 1863 Fredrick Charatan opened a shop in Mansell street, London where he began to carve Meerschaum pipes. These got very popular very quickly and Charatan moved to a bigger workshop in Prescot Street.
Here, he began to make the briar pipes that made the name Charatan world famous. Reuben Charatan took over the family business in 1910 when his father retired. The business was wholly owned by the Charatan family until 1960.
During the 2000s, Dunhill Tobacco of London, through the House of Edgeworth, introduced a range of Charatan cigars. These were manufactured exclusively for the UK cigar smoker. However, British American Tobacco (Dunhill Tobacco of London) made the decision in December 2016 to withdraw from the handmade cigar and pipe tobacco market in 2017.
To combat this announcement, Tor Imports Ltd made a successful approach to purchase the Charatan brand from Dunhill Tobacco of London. This has allowed them to keep the brand alive and to develop the marque into new product segments.
Tor started work to launch a Charatan Pipe Tobacco with their Global Pipe Tobacco manufacturing partner in 2017. Creating and testing replica blends with pipe clubs around Europe and the UK with a view to introducing a brand new range of Pipe Tobaccos on exhaustion of the current stock of the Dunhill range. It took months before they were happy that they have achieved the blends to be as close as possible.
