Burley Tobacco

Burley is a varietal of the Tabacum plant species whose strains typically yield leaf that has a low sugar content and that cure almost to a red hue. Burley tobacco, which is used in smoking, chewing, and snuff products, is grown extensively in Kentucky and to a lesser degree in Tennessee, as well as in numerous other tobacco growing regions worldwide. The precise origins of Burley are unclear exactly, but the White Burley strains, which today account for possibly the entirety of commercial Burley cultivation, certainly originated from “Little Burley” type seed obtained from the tobacco farmer George W. Barkley of Kentucky (1818–1900) in the year 1864 by the tobacco farmer George Webb of Ohio, who would be the first to raise this White sport properly the very next year in his native state.