Tucker Carlson, a self-proclaimed "nicotine sommelier" with 40 years of experience, conducts a brutal blind taste test of U.S. nicotine pouches, crushing Zinn’s Wintergreen as "shit" and mocking California’s flavored-pouch ban as "Stalinist." Praising his own Alp Pouch’s Tropical Fruit (6 mg) for sensory depth, he dismisses competitors like Lucy’s Mango as unremarkable and Pillows’ Sour Blueberry as dry, while declaring WIN’s Banana Chill a failed experiment. The episode blends product critiques with political jabs—defending craftsmanship over mass-market shortcuts—and ends with Carlson crowning himself the ultimate judge of nicotine quality. [Automatically generated summary]
Like, that's like the worst smell I've ever smelled.
It's really bad.
It's really bad.
I don't know, really.
Try it.
It's good for the climate.
Oh, f*** you, Zim.
Nobody works at the company who uses nicotine pouches.
I'm kind of like a living lab rat right now.
Like, what happens if you really go all the way?
I'm Tucker Carlson, and I like nicotine.
One of the keys to life, I think, is being honest about what you know.
Can you give a two-hour talk on copper mining in Congo?
Probably not.
But if you ask me what I think of nicotine, I have an informed answer because I am a lifelong, over 40-year nicotine user.
After a lifetime of testing, I've arrived now at Alp Nicotine Pouches.
We created Alp Pouch because we know what we're talking about.
When we talk about nicotine.
But it dawned on me the other day this could be the moment for a nicotine tasting.
And as I just said, I'm not just a casual user.
I'm a nicotine sommelier.
So today, we're going to go through the entire gamut of commercially available nicotine pouches in the United States, and we're going to compare them to the product that we make, Alp Pouch.
I'm going to be donning a white glove as a sommelier would, and the purpose of this, and it's just to my left hand, I'm left-handed, is to make sure it's fair.
I don't want to pollute the taste of anything.
Any of these pouches with oils on my hands.
Okay, that's how serious we are.
So let's start out with what we make.
This is Alp Tropical Fruit.
This is one of my favorite flavors.
I, on a day-to-day basis, I use 9 mg, but we're going to hit the median here with 6, and I mix these actually with wintergreen.
I put two tins together, and I kind of like they marinate together and create something kind of special.
But we're going to try it alone today.
It's not that easy with the white gloves, but the white gloves are worth it.
Now, before, people always do the upper deck or lower deck, whatever, but I like to swirl it around in my mouth, front of the tongue, back of the tongue, roof of the mouth palate.
Even, honestly, under the tongue, different parts of your mouth react to flavor in different ways.
So you want the whole picture.
You want the full 360-degree profile of the flavor.
All right, next up is number six, Alp Wintergreen.
As I said, I use nine, but by the way, can I say something?
So if you're like in a duty-free in another country and you see like the whole rack of foreign, particularly the Russian nicotine pouches, you will see some high milligram nicotine.
And even for me, some of it's a little bit too strong.
You do one of the ones with like a Russian bear on it.
That's like 20 milligrams.
Our nines hit differently.
It's a slower release.
It's not, you know, blowing you out of your chair.
Breathe in, clears your lungs, clears out any remaining tuberculosis.
Not making health claims here.
I'm just noting the facts.
This you can keep in all day.
The flavor stays so long in these pouches that we're almost thinking, well, wait a second.
If you have a product that people can keep using, they don't need to buy new products.
You know what I mean?
So if you double the amount of time someone can keep a pouch in, maybe that's like a massive loss in revenue to you.
If you think about it, it doesn't have planned obsolescence built in.
But we didn't care.
We did it anyway.
So this is chilled mint.
The other day I was actually in a car going to the airport and my driver had COVID like four years ago and he lost his sense of smell.
I'm not making this a true story.
And I open up a tin of this in the back and he goes, I can smell that.
And I said, I'm sorry, do you not like it?
He goes, I haven't smelled anything in four years and I can smell whatever you just opened.
It's the first thing I've smelled.
So again, not making medical claims here, but I'm just saying this cut through the COVID haze for the man who was driving me to the airport.
You open it, I can smell it from here.
If you've had a really late night, And I gave up late nights many years ago, but let's say you're still in the late night phase of life, and you have to wake up a little early to get to the jump.
They're definitely bright-eyed, bushy-tailed, reporting-for-work-sir kind of nicotine pouches.
Very, very good.
This is the next flavor of Alp.
It's called Refreshing Chill.
What is Refreshing Chill?
What flavor is that?
Oh, good question.
It's no flavor.
Now, why do we make a nicotine pouch with no flavor?
Well, because we're required by law to do that by the state of California, which has decided, having solved all of its other problems, the tens of millions of people living there illegally, drug cartels running at cities, the mass shootings, the fentanyl ODs, feces-covered nature of San Francisco.
And that's why I'm launching a new podcast.
Having solved all of that, they're going to protect their citizens from the real threat, which is flavored nicotine pouches.
So you cannot sell a flavored nicotine pouch in California.
That's how progressive it is.
It's so progressive, it's just like Stalinist.
But we're not giving up on our biggest state.
I'm from California, so I feel a certain familial loyalty to the state.
And so we produced this product, Refreshing Chill.
And it is, actually.
It is refreshing.
And it's chilly.
You're going to want to wear a sweater for this one.
Welcome back to Nicotine Tasting Hour with Tucker Carlson, the White Glove Nicotine Sommelier.
We've gone through some of the selection that our company, Alp, offers.
We started there as a kind of baseline.
How do the other products compare to the one that we're offering?
And we go first to a company called Zinn, kind of politically transcribed.
Now, I'll just be totally honest.
Obviously, I've thrown a lot of shade at Zinn.
I'll admit that I use Zinn for years, and I did it without self-consciousness, really without self-awareness.
I had no idea what I was doing.
I didn't know what I was putting in my mouth.
That was the old me.
It's been a long time since I've had a Zinn wintergreen, and I'm going to see now that we've created Alp, and we know what a nicotine pouch can be, how this rates.
I'm going to try to be honest.
I mean, there are competitors.
Ooh, there aren't many in here, are there?
It's like half full.
There are only 15 pouches in there.
Ours have 20. Just saying.
It does feel like a teabag.
I feel like steeping it.
Instead, I'm going to put it in my mouth.
Tastes like salt, actually.
For real.
I'm going upper deck right now.
It's shit.
It's actually horrible.
I cannot believe they sell that commercially.
I'm not saying all Zinn is bad.
By the way, some of them are...
I'm going to throw it.
Actually, will you turn the cameras off?
I'm going to spit.
This is Zin Coffee.
I always thought it was the best of the Zin flavors, and we're rolling out a coffee mocha that's better.
You can't freaking taste it because it's dry.
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You have to sit there and wait, wait, wait, wait, wait.
By the way, there's room for more than one nicotine pouch.
There's only room for one truly great nicotine pouch, but whatever.
I mean, Coke always had Pepsi.
Levi's always had Lee.
Marlboro always had Winston.
Like, it's okay to have a kind of beta position, someone in the bitch seat behind you.
It's all right.
It's a better first impression than the black cherry.
I can't overstate my disappointment on the black cherry.
I like the fruit flavors.
I'll just be totally blunt.
I'll just admit it.
We're going to do like a boysenberry at some point just to please me.
But everyone has to make it wintergreen.
It's the law.
We're close to the law.
Well, it's not bad.
Yeah, it's fine.
It's fine.
You know, it's like fine.
I mean, this is the good enough flavor.
If this were like someone you were dating, your friend would be like, well, she's got a lot of extracurriculars.
You know what I mean?
If I was like, if I was walking down the sidewalk and Velo 9 milligram wintergreen walked past me, I don't mean to be mean, but I wouldn't even notice her.
Now, obviously, I want to outsell all these companies.
Our product is better, just factually.
But, you know, you want to encourage excellence no matter what.
But it's not good.
It's not good at all.
Obviously, the flavor of a pouch evolves over time.
When you first put it in, you get one sensation.
This is true of all products.
It's true of chewing tobacco.
It's true of cigarettes.
It's certainly true of cigars.
So it is fair to say that a pouch, you can't judge a pouch by its first sensations.
But that doesn't mean first sensations don't matter.
They really do matter.
And the first sensation here has a kind of, this was made in a chemical plant in New Jersey kind of feeling.
Like, I don't know the process behind Rogue.
Or maybe it's Ragui.
I'm not.
Honestly, I don't know how it's pronounced, but I can just imagine out behind the loading dock, some Dominican guy with lots of tattoos is like, got a hand truck with this giant 50-gallon drum that says mango across the back, and it's been made at a chemical plant on 95 in New Jersey.
I'm just guessing.
I'm just guessing.
I'm saying what it tastes like.
But I'm getting the sense that they don't have like a mango tree in the yard at Ragui or Rogue.
Nicotine on demand!
It's kind of ludicrous.
Like, when else did you get nicotine by accident?
Like, what?
All nicotine is by demand.
The people demand nicotine.
That's why we have it.
We don't have it because the authorities want us to have it.
They definitely don't.
Anyway, I thought it was lime.
I was actually pretty excited.
Someone needs to make a lime nicotine pouch.
I think that would be super cool.
But it's not lime, it's apple.
But, you know, I support that too.
And there are a lot of varieties of apples.
Sour apple.
I just reviewed a chilled apple on our prototype.
I don't know how I felt about it.
I'm still thinking.
But this is just flat-out apple.
Smells good.
The smell.
Why does the smell matter?
I don't know.
I mean, why do aesthetics matter?
Why does beauty matter?
Does it add to your bottom line?
No.
But it adds to your life.
So smell does matter.
I smell everything.
I never put a single thing in my mouth before smelling it.
Ever.
Not my whole life.
And I don't care if it's embarrassing or not.
And this smells fine, but it doesn't quite have the punch that it should have.
Like a true apple.
Like a green apple on a cold day.
Crunch!
Red apple.
Even a red apple, which tend to be a little pulpier.
So your smell, your nose, your olfactory senses, you know that it's coming.
It's coming.
It's coming.
Should I let it in?
And in the case of Zannie No. 9 Dragon Fruit, do not let that in.
All right, next one up.
I don't even know what that says.
Kadobar?
Kadobar?
I don't even know.
K-A-D-O-B-A-R.
Okay, well, that's bizarre.
Blueberry candy.
A lot of people are going to be like, that's way too fruity for me.
Question your sexuality if you like blueberry candy.
I've got four kids.
I'm totally comfortable with blueberry candy.
If this is good, I'll say so.
Okay, these are long and slender.
Dry.
Yep, granular.
When will they learn?
Initial taste is not good.
You've got to test these things before putting them in packages and selling them.
Like, what are you doing?
This is not good.
Here we go.
We've got something called WIN.
Nicotine on the go.
What does that even mean?
What nicotine isn't on the go?
If you're only using nicotine when you're resting, you're kind of missing the point.
Nicotine is for all times.
Have I slept with a nicotine pouch in?
I'm not going to answer that question on the ground, so it made me...
But here's the thing I like about this.
It's banana chill.
Now, I'm a little skeptical of the chill.
Why would you chill a banana?
I am looking for a banana nicotine pouch.
Probably nobody else is.
I am.
In fact, we're testing one right now.
Yeah.
Why do they put the chill in bananas?
Like, have some confidence in the flavor.
If it's good enough for the chimps, it's good enough for me.
Yeah, it's crap.
Doesn't taste at all like banana.
If I could give some unsolicited advice to the Wynn Corporation, have confidence in your banana.
Be proud of your banana.
Feel no banana shame.
It's banana.
It's in everybody's flavor.
Everybody loves bananas.
And that is not good at all.
That's like awful.
I really think the race is on.
This is like getting to the South Pole, like the 21st century version.
Who can make the first truly good banana nicotine pouch?
May the best pouch win.
So if there's one piece of advice I could give to nicotine pouch users coming up, and I would give the same advice to a young woman dating, don't settle.
Don't fall for the first nicotine pouch you run into at 7-Eleven.
You know what I mean?
Save yourself.
Pull back a little bit.
Is this the pouch for you?
Probably not.
High standards.
Set your standards.
Maintain them.
You're worth it.
Don't put some dry, granular, degrading piece of garbage in your mouth.
And whatever you do, don't put that dragon fruit crap that smelled like roadkill made by, what was that company?