How can you tell a top quality leather?

I was talking today with our leather master. He is our resident expert on all things skins. I take advice from him regarding the quality, pricing and suitability of leathers for different shoes.

His grandfather was a cow farmer, his father a tanner and he has been dealing in leather his entire life. They say when he was born, he was wrapped in leather. He has run his own leather business for over 35 years and he is not a young man. So I take his opinion as fact.

I wanted to ask, in his opinion, how can you tell a good leather? I was hoping he would give me an easy to use expert checklist that I could pass on to our customers. That way they could easily check the quality of our leathers and compare them against the leather used in other labels' shoes.

I know he's not an expressive man, but I was a little disappointed with his answer. He said, "after about 10 to 15 years of handling leathers everyday you just know."

I had a fleeting thought he might be protecting his profession with smokescreen the way a lawyer uses legalese instead of plain English. So I probed him a bit more. He was open and honest but the answers were filled with a lot of, "it depends on this" and "depends on that" and "ifs" and "buts".

There are some general factors that go into the equation of whether it's the perfect leather. They include the skin's thickness, weight, flexibility, elasticity, suppleness, dye, grain, blemishes, moisture, coatings and finishes, odour, shine, etc.. None of which even starts to address colour or fashion.

Then you have to consider the application. Who is it for? In what context will it be worn? What is its durability? What chemicals were used in the tanning process? What type of shoe is it? What about the pattern of the shoe design?

It is like a massive equation with inputs for all of those variables. But there's no time for quantified scientific tests. Nor are there tests available for all the variables. Even if there were accurate tests for all the variables, we still don't know the formula. All we have are the ingredients, not the recipe.

So how do we get an answer to the question in the context of a particular shoe? The answer, now satisfyingly, is "after about 10 to 15 years of handling leathers everyday you just know." After 35 years you don't even need to think about it. Within seconds of laying his hands on a skin, the master knows. All the variables enter through his senses of touch, smell and sight into a brain with the experience of handling leathers for 35 years. Out pops the answer, like magic.

As a customer, how do you tell a top quality leather? It might come down to faith. I trust our leather master. You trust me. Not scientifically or objectively satisfying. But I ask you this...who do you trust at another shoe label? Is there even anyone to ask there?