At last year’s InterTabac show in Dortmund, Germany, some tobacco companies might have foamed at the mouth with envy over the throngs of visitors constantly beleaguering the quite unassuming booth of a small Swiss cigarette manufacturer, Koch & Gsell. The firm’s Heimat (Homeland) range of cigarettes created a veritable sensation. Not only because it exclusively uses additive-free Switzerland-grown tobaccos but also because the company managed to – legally! – launch the world’s first commercially-manufactured hemp cigarette brand in 2019.

Koch & Gsell AG

Roger Koch, founder and c.e.o. of Koch & Gsell AG

A schoolboy’s dream

Our story first ventures back to the year 1987, when a young schoolboy, Roger Koch, together with his cousin developed entrepreneurial spirit and started blending oak and chestnut leaves with fir needles to create his own “cigarette brand”. In order to earn some extra pocket money, the two boys subsequently offered their product at the local flea market. “With little success, as the smokes tasted absolutely horrendous,” recalled Roger Koch. But the exercise also nursed the determination in young Roger to “someday work with real tobacco”.

It would take quite a few years before he – now an adult – picked up on it again. In 2009, he began growing burley, virginia, and oriental plants in his garden. Yet all self-styled “experts” consulted by Koch advised him to drop the idea. Swiss-grown tobaccos, so they said, were only suited as cheap fillers, nothing more. But Koch stubbornly clung on to his dream, eventually even obtaining an official permit that would allow him to continue with his experiments.

Source: Tobacco Asia