Tobacco from Lake Constance. The last fields of Eastern Switzerland.

While three quarters of Swiss tobacco grows in the Broye valley between Vaud and Fribourg, there is a small second growing region in the north of the country - around Lake Constance. Today only a handful of farms in Thurgau and St. Gallen still cultivate tobacco. The total area at Lake Constance is in the single-digit hectare range.

In the canton of Thurgau, tobacco growing has shrunk to a single farm. Andreas Schum has worked a field in Willisdorf near Diessenhofen, on the western edge of the canton, for more than twenty years. He produces just under six tonnes of tobacco per year (source: Thurgauer Zeitung, 2020). Part of that harvest is processed into Heimat cigarettes.

In the canton of St. Gallen there are also a few growers - mainly in the Rhine valley and around Steinach, where Heimat operates its manufactory. Cultivation here is small, but it links back to an Eastern Swiss tobacco tradition that goes back to the 19th century.

In the 19th century, tobacco was an established side crop in Thurgau and St. Gallen. Farmers grew it as additional income alongside fruit, wine and grain. In Diessenhofen, Frauenfeld, Rorschach and the Rhine valley there were drying barns and small manufactories that processed snuff, pipe and cigarette tobacco.

At its peak around 1900, Thurgau alone had dozens of tobacco growers. The Lake Constance region benefitted from the mild climate tempered by the lake - warm days and cool nights that Burley takes particularly well. With the industrialisation of the global tobacco economy in the 20th century, local cultivation came under pressure. Cheap imports from Brazil, Zimbabwe and the United States displaced more expensive Swiss tobacco.

Until the 1990s there was still a small group of tobacco farmers in Thurgau. Today Andreas Schum, with his farm in Willisdorf, is the canton's last remaining tobacco producer (source: TVO Online, 2024).

Tobacco needs warmth, light and a vegetation period that is as long as possible. At Lake Constance both are tight - the season lasts only around 100 to 110 days from planting to harvest. What still makes the region a tobacco region is its unusual microclimate. The lake stores solar heat during the day and releases it back to the surrounding fields at night. The result is warm days, mild nights and rarer late frosts - ideal conditions for the slow, even ripening of Burley.

The soils around Lake Constance are largely alluvial - sediments from Ice Age glaciers and river courses. They are deep, well aerated and rich in minerals. Burley tobacco draws mainly potassium and magnesium from these soils - minerals that later shape the burning behaviour and aromatics of the leaf.

The result is a Lake Constance tobacco with a thinner leaf structure, less sugar than its southern relatives, and a milder, herbal and earthy aroma profile. Comparable in logic to wine from the cool Mosel region: less sweet, but more precise and structured.

Andreas Schum has been running his farm in Willisdorf near Diessenhofen, on the western edge of the canton of Thurgau, for more than two decades. Burley and Virginia grow in his fields - the two classic Swiss tobacco varieties. He harvests around six tonnes of leaf per year, part of which he delivers to Heimat Tabak, where it becomes cigarettes (sources: Thurgauer Zeitung, 19.08.2020 and 05.09.2023; TVO Online, 08.10.2024).

Schum is regarded as one of the most accomplished tobacco producers in Switzerland. In a 2017 portrait in the 'Schweizer Bauer' magazine he was cited for the high contribution margins he generates from his tobacco fields - an economic exception in an otherwise difficult market. His expertise in nitrogen management, variety handling and post-harvest treatment has grown over years and rests on practical experience - there is no tobacco school in Switzerland.

For Heimat, the partnership with Schum is more than a supply channel. It is a piece of lived Eastern Swiss tobacco tradition. As long as Andreas Schum tends his field, Thurgau tobacco exists. If he stops, cultivation in the canton would end.

Burley is an air-cured tobacco variety with a light, almost cream-coloured leaf. It needs warm days, cool nights and well-ventilated drying barns. At Lake Constance it finds all three conditions. Burley makes up most of the Eastern Swiss tobacco harvest - on Andreas Schum's farm it is also the larger share, by his own account.

Virginia is a flue-cured variety. The harvested leaves are dried in closed curing barns under controlled heat. This fixes the natural sugars in the leaf and gives Virginia its characteristic golden colour and sweet note. Schum grows both varieties in parallel - according to Schweizer Bauer (2017), he deliberately depletes nutrients from the Virginia plots in advance, because unlike Burley, Virginia hardly needs any nitrogen.

The Lake Constance varieties differ slightly in aroma from their counterparts in the Broye valley: a touch more herbal, less sweet, with a noticeably longer finish. That is not measurable, but it is what experienced blenders confirm when they place Lake Constance Burley next to Broye Burley.

The economic reality is unchanged. Swiss tobacco is several times more expensive to produce than imports. It is not an option for industrial mass blends. What keeps it alive are niche buyers - manufactories that consciously rely on Swiss raw material and are willing to pay a fair price for it.

Heimat Original is today one of the few reliable buyers of Eastern Swiss tobacco. Every processed batch secures a piece of cultivation - directly, without intermediaries. If Lake Constance tobacco is to exist in twenty years, it will only be because there is a small but stable demand for it.

For the region itself, its disappearance would be a quiet loss. Alongside apples, wine and hops, tobacco is one of the few old specialty crops that agriculturally characterise the Lake Constance area. If it goes, a piece of cultural landscape goes with it.