Gauloises Blondes
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| Product type | Cigarette |
|---|---|
| Owner | Imperial Tobacco, Reemtsma (Germany only) |
| Country | France |
| Introduced | 1910 |
Gauloises (pronounced [ɡo.lwaz]), "Gaul women" in French ("cigarette" is feminine in French), is a brand of cigarette of French manufacture. It is produced by the company Imperial Tobacco following its acquisition of Altadis in January 2008 in most countries, but produced and sold by Reemtsma in Germany.
Traditional Gauloises were short, wide, unfiltered and made with dark tobaccos from Syria and Turkey which produced a strong and distinctive aroma.
Gauloises cigarettes first appeared in 1910. The brand is most famous for its cigarettes' strength, especially in its original unfiltered version. Forty years later, filtered Gauloises cigarettes debuted. In 1984, the Gauloises brand was expanded to include a light, American-type tobacco with a filter. The original non-filter, Gauloises Caporal, have been discontinued and replaced with Gauloises Brunes, which are also filterless but less strong. Gauloises Brunes have low tar and nicotine levels, because of European tobacco laws, but the tobacco is still dark and strong-tasting. They are also no longer made in France, but produced instead in Spain and the Netherlands.
Between the World Wars the smoking of Gauloises in France was considered patriotic and an affiliation with French "heartland" values. The brand was associated with the cigarette-smoking poilu (a slang term for the French infantryman in the trenches) and the resistance fighters during the Vichy Regime. Their slogan was "Liberté toujours" (Freedom forever). George Orwell tells of how he "squandered two francs fifty on a packet of Gaulois Bleu" in his 1933 book Down and Out in Paris and London. In 1939-40 some packets of cigarettes were given a disctinctive "troop brand".
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