So you two are now recommending Chineseyness RY4's using artibacco's ...
LOL. Yes!
Among the more surprising results of this thread is the irony that some of us have developed a greater appreciation of good synthetic tobacco than we had before the thread. One of the best uses of synthetic tobacco flavorings is as bases for RY4s, especially in Classic RY4s, where the balanced, unified flavor profile downplays the synthetic nature of their lab-based tobacco flavorings.
Of the 165-or-so RY4s retail RY4s I've reviewed and ranked on
The Really Big RY4 Roundup thread, only
28 RY4s get an "A" or "A-" grade from me. Of those 28 top-rated RY4s,
24 are made with synthetic tobacco (14 Classics, 10 Customs), while only
4 are made with natural tobacco flavoring. (The ratio in the retail marketplace of synthetic tobacco RY4s to natural tobacco RY4s is about 8:1. As group, I grade the natural tobacco RY4s higher, because I think they're tastier overall than the average synthetic-based RY4. Clay's recent entry, N-E-T RY4.1, is another worthy contender among natural tobacco RY4s, most of which are very good. The synthetic-based RY4s are all over the map, from brilliant to dreadful.
That said, the Classic genre (with its synthetic
Chineseyness, LOL) offers some terrific, delicious RY4s. The RY4 that was mentioned in the thread recently---
Smokeless Image Volt RY4---that kicked off this diversion, is one of the best Classic RY4s ever made by the Chinese. Inexpensive, too! I don't know of any NET-based RY4s made in China, however. Natural tobacco RY4s seem to be exclusively an American invention, as is the whole genre of what is now called Custom or Modern RY4.