Sykes Wilford Interview Part III (Conclusion)
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Kevin Godbee - Jul 14, 2010
- 18 min read
In Part II of of our interview, we talked about the proliferation of pipe smoking information on the Internet, anecdotal evidence that pipe smoking is becoming more popular with younger adults, and Sykes was telling us what makes SmokingPipes.com unique from any other pipe and tobacco retail business. We learned about the rigorous process each pipe goes through including multiple inspections, and each pipe being individually photographed even if that make and model was photographed before. Each photo on the site represents the exact pipe you are getting.
Read Part II of the Sykes Wilford Interview Here … or Continue to Part III …
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Sykes Wilford: We’re constantly trying to do things better. Some of this relates to pipes, and some of it is purely business related. How do we tighten the supply chain, how do we improve the customer experience on the website, how do we check our internal processes so that things happen more efficiently so the customer is served better?
On tobacco, how do we do things more efficiently so we can shrink our margins so we can offer better prices? How do we… I had a meeting in here yesterday afternoon with the regional IT guy from UPS and Melissa, our IT Manager, who you met earlier and we’re talking about address validation, Excel integration and data pushing here and there between us and UPS in order to tighten that link in our logistics. And that’s obviously something simple that we do.
Kevin: Is there anything else that makes SmokingPipes.com different?
Sykes: Well, in some obvious ways. I mean, there’s a vastness of selection. There are other places that sell or that carry, on their websites, as many Peterson’s as we do, but we also have at any given time, about 500 estate pipes on the website. There’s a vastness there that doesn’t exist elsewhere.
Additionally, the biggest difference, perhaps the single biggest difference is that we update the website with, on average, 150 pipes, twice a week. 300 pipes a week, so 1,300 to 1,350 a month and its constant. There is always new stuff. Yes, we only have about 1,500 pipes on the site, but next month it’ll be a totally different 1,500 pipes from what we have right now.
Kevin: Estate pipes is a fancier way of saying pre-owned, which is a fancier way of saying used. My observation has been that most estate pipes are acquired on eBay auctions and you don’t typically have the opportunity to find them in a standard online store. However, you guys have a wide range of estate pipes available at SmokingPipes.com. How much of your business is accounted for by estate pipes and is there really any other place to get them besides SmokingPipes or on eBay?
Sykes: Not on this scale. There’s no other place. There are a couple of websites that do estate pipes and do it fairly well, but it’s on a much smaller scale. Then there’s eBay of course.
Kevin: So where do you fit into the estate pipe market?
Sykes: That’s a loaded question! (laughing). Obviously most estate pipe transactions are person to person or through eBay as a medium. Those that are handled by retailers, we are the largest by a few times over.
Rob Cooper (Coopersark),the PipeRack.com, and a couple of others do sell a fair number of estate pipes, but a fair number’s a much smaller number than what we do week in, week out.
What we have done in estate pipes is take pipes in and give them the SmokingPipes.com seal of approval. We will not sell a pipe that doesn’t meet our rigorous standards. If we discover any type of flaw, it goes in the “pipe science bin”, which we then use to test new cleaning methods and stuff.
We make sure the product’s that are on the website are cleaned to a very, very high standard.
Kevin: What’s the process you use for that?
Sykes: It’s very thorough. We clean the insides with alcohol, we ream the pipes, we soak and buff ebonite stems and buff all stems, we clean and buff the bowls. Most of the time is spent on things that are truly disgustingly nasty. I once pulled a staple out of a Charatan. It was just stuck up in the Charatan stem. There was a staple in there. Or things that are weird.
A lot of time, really old pipes need a lot of work, but we don’t top pipes; we don’t do anything to fundamentally alter pipes.
Kevin: You don’t top, what does that mean?
Sykes: A lot of pipe restoration involves taking sanding discs, getting under the surface of the pipe, and then re-staining the rim. We never do that. There are a lot of people who do. I don’t think it’s necessarily a bad thing, but we have decided to do less, rather than more.
What we will do in a situation like that where the rim’s really messed up, well, we’d just clean up the best we can and sell it that way or we wouldn’t sell it. But pulling just tar layers off of stuff, it can be time consuming. We figure it takes about 50-55 minutes per pipe on average. Obviously some are very quick.
Kevin: Could that be one of the reasons why you guys have become so big in the estate pipe market; that just the amount of effort required to prepare a pipe for sale many others are not willing to go through?
Sykes: I think that you could say that about everything we do. People have tried to get on weekly update schedules before and they don’t stay on them for more than two weeks because something takes priority, it takes discipline, it takes business processes, and it’s an awful lot of work.
There are currently 25 employees at SmokingPipes.com. There are people that clean pipes all day, that’s all they do. People that describe pipes all day, that’s all they do. Take pictures of pipes all day, that’s all they do. In order to bring in new stuff every week, it’s constant work that you need dedicated people to be doing every day.
Kevin: How do you acquire estate pipes?
Sykes: All sorts of different ways. Most actually come as trades. Pipe smokers look at their collection and think; “I don’t like those ten”. They send those ten to us and they get credit towards something else they want. I’ve done that with my collection over the years.
Kevin: How does that work, value-wise on a trade?
Sykes: We offer 55% of what we expect to sell it for in trade. There’s some consignment places that will take smaller margins. With us there’s a level of cleanliness and a quality of execution that means that we can charge a little bit more than eBay because you don’t have to clean it and it’s been freshly restored. The pipe is ready to go and it’s beautiful, as opposed to possibly having mold growing around the bowl and staples in the stem. So we offer 55%, but the quality of the finished product is higher and the value end is higher. It’s a real convenience to people buying because they don’t have the equipment, expertise, time, or energy, and desire to clean this stuff up.
Can you sometimes get a Dunhill Shell 4102 from 2004 cheaper on eBay than you can from SmokingPipes.com? Absolutely. Do you know what’s going on inside of that pipe from eBay? No. Do you know what’s going on inside of the pipe from SmokingPipes.com? Absolutely. We have a pipe maker with an industrial design degree on staff that writes the condition statements of all the estate pipes.
Kevin: So it’s almost like being able to buy a new pipe for much less?
Sykes: It’s kind of like going to the Volkswagen dealership and getting a certified, pre-owned Volkswagen verses going to Bob’s Lot of Used Cars and maybe getting something that didn’t pass it’s Car-Fax Report.
Kevin: Are estate pipes still primarily an American phenomenon?
Sykes: Yes, is the short answer. For years I’ve heard people saying that Europeans, Germans, Japanese, etc., don’t buy estate pipes. While there aren’t any developed estate markets outside of the U.S., we do sell estates into other countries.
Kevin: Are there any general noteworthy trends that you’re seeing in the pipes and tobaccos market?
Sykes: Our business has grown tremendously in the past couple of years. We’ve seen much faster growth than we have during the prior three years.
Kevin: Do you think the overall market is growing?
Sykes: I don’t know. I wish I did. I hope it is. I suspect that it is, but I’m still not hearing that from everybody. There is more positive information than negative though.
Kevin: In pipe tobaccos, how important are new tobacco blends and how many do you see introduced in a year?
Sykes: This month we’re adding 32 tinned tobacco facings. This is a big month because we just came back from the Chicago show where a lot of new blends were introduced.
Kevin: Along the lines of a steady stream of new tobacco blends being introduced on a regular basis, I’d like to know your thoughts on something I read recently.
I was reading Gary Schrier’s book, “Confessions of a Pipeman”, (which I really enjoyed) and in Chapter 9, entitled “The Right Tobacco”, he asserts an interesting opinion about how many new tobacco blends are actually new.
He says that there are only so many types of tobacco leaves and only so many ways you can process them and blend them. He implies that nearly everything has been done already and that many of the new tobacco blends are not really new, and are more of a marketing scheme to sell more tobaccos. Those are not his exact words, but my interpretation of the statements on page 51 of his book.
What do you think of that?
Sykes: I love the book, and Gary’s awesome. We sell a bunch of his books and that one’s a lot of fun. There is a kernel of truth to what he said. It’s not totally absurd what he’s arguing. He’s saying you’ve got X number of different tobaccos that basically have these characteristics. You have palettes, the human palette is not as sophisticated as we would all like to pretend it is, and how many different combinations you can get out of that? How many people can actually tell the difference amongst them? That’s effectively what he’s arguing. It’s not a ridiculous thing to argue.
However, you’re not just taking different tobaccos that are blended together. You’ve got a vast number of different tobacco blending processes. When you’re taking the leaves to process, you don’t just slice up leaves into ribbon and that’s it. You can press it, slice it, and depending on how thick you slice it, how long you press it, and so on opens up more possibilities that will change what the blend turns into.
Even if it’s a ribbon cut, you’re still pressing it for a short time in order to slice it. You slice it and you get these long ribbons of tobacco. It’s not all together like a flake but you’re still doing something to it. So no matter what it is, you’re doing something to it. It doesn’t matter if the tobacco is non-aromatic, or aromatic, it doesn’t matter. There are perfectly normal additives that are added when you’re blending tobaccos.
Everybody uses different additives in order to achieve a set of results. Some of these are pleasant additives, some of these are unpleasant and it doesn’t make them all aromatics either. Everybody uses a little bit of sugar or a little bit of honey or a little bit of something when you’re processing tobacco because you have to.
You also have to use a little bit of, at the very least, something like a watered down vinegar and at the most something like propylene glycol. What they’re accomplishing is adding a little sweetness to bring out the other sweetness and flavors out of tobacco, or preserving the tobacco so that it doesn’t mold before it gets to the consumer.
There are a whole bunch of different decisions that go with that; what do you use, how do you use it and how will it change the character of the blend?
McClelland, for example is a very distinctive blending house and they make these extremely high quality tobaccos. Their blending is extremely good, and even though they have blends that are different from one another, McClelland has this distinctive quality taste. You can’t smoke a McClelland blend and think it came from Samuel Gawith, or Orlik, or even another American blender. That’s because of whatever decisions they’re making in terms of processing.
It’s not that those are good or bad decisions. You have to do these things. It’s not like one tobacco is better because it’s “pure”.
| People think; “I don’t want any flavor in my tobacco”. However, no one should think they don’t want any flavor in their tobacco because it’s gross. Everything we smoke is at least processed with a little bit of sugar or a little bit of honey or a little bit of liquorish or a little bit of something in order to bring the other flavors out. Even things that we think are totally not aromatics. |
Kevin: Speaking of which, as far as your sales show, which is more popular; English, or Aromatic tobaccos?
Sykes: I’m not sure because we haven’t broken it out that way. I think it’s an artificial division. I mean it’s not a totally artificial division. I smoke things like a Virginia, a Virginia/Perique, things I think of as not aromatics. There’s a gradation. There’s 1Q and BCA, and Stokkebye Peaches & Cream at one end of the spectrum.
Then there’s a straight Virginia with as little done to it as possible. Just pressed and topped slightly with sugar water or something very neutral at the other end of the spectrum.
So we don’t break things out quite like that. I would say probably 50/50, which makes us unusual since most of the pipe tobacco sold in the United States is aromatic.
Kevin: There are three specific brands of tobacco that the PipesMagazine.com members wanted me to ask you about to see if you could offer any insight to their availability – Dan Tobacco, Samuel Gawith and Dunhill.
Sykes: I can provide some insight on all of those.
Several Dan Tobacco blends recently arrived in our warehouse and they are available on our site. As far as Samuel Gawith goes, they’ve become enormously popular. The popularity of Samuel Gawith has just exploded in the last few years worldwide and they have a really small factory with really old machinery and they can’t grow production without destroying what makes it special. A container comes into the United States (I don’t know when the next one’s coming) and we buy as much as we can out of the container. It gets put on pallets and then we turn around and put it in little tiny boxes and it’s all gone in about five days, sometimes only three days. There’s all this pent up demand for it and there’s no way Samuel Gawith can make enough and that’s what happens.
So that is the situation with Samuel Gawith. I don’t know what the problem was with Dan Tobacco, but I understand it should be getting better soon.
Kevin: How about Dunhill?
Sykes: Here’s my read on the Dunhill situation. I’m pretty sure BAT [British American Tobacco] owns the rights to the Dunhill pipe tobacco brand.
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They used to be made in Belfast by Murray’s which was owned by BAT and sold through Lane in the United States for years. Lane’s distribution ceased to be and they moved all of that to Conwood in Kentucky. They are primarily a moist snuff company and they distributed Dunhill Tobaccos for a while.
It went to Conwood because they are owned by Swedish Match, which is owned by British American Tobacco. Conwood said “this is not worth our time and effort” and stopped doing it. You have to realize that BAT has billions of dollars in sales and it’s a huge company. [Editor’s note: BAT’s annual sales, roughly translated to U.S. Dollars is about $21 billion. Source: BAT 2009 Annual Report stating £14,208 million.]
Even a really big, important brand like Dunhill in the grand scheme of big business like BAT’s is miniscule. Trying to get someone at BAT to make a decision and getting Dunhill to a place that fits in their rather twisted corporate minds; because they don’t want it to end up in a subsidiary of a competitor … They want to place it with a subsidiary of something they own.
In the meantime, the Belfast factory closed and all that production went to Orlik in Denmark. It went to Orlik in Denmark because BAT owns half of Scandinavian Tobacco, which in turn owns Orlik. So there’s all this big tobacco business incestuousness, and they don’t know what to do with this one little tobacco brand. From their perspective it’s a little tobacco brand.
Kevin: Basically, the company that owns the rights to it is too big to have it be a priority?
Sykes: Exactly. I think it’s just not a priority. Do I think it will get fixed at some point? Sure. Maybe there will be a pipe smoker at BAT that can make a decision, or at least someone will make the right decision at BAT.
Kevin: Okay, so you’re 29 years old, actually turning 30 at the end of this month, and in the last 10 years you’ve developed your company into one of the dominant providers of pipes and tobaccos. Where do you see the market going in the next five to ten years? Where do you see your company in that time?
Sykes: Wow, I wish I knew the answer to this question. I mean we have plans; we have one year, five year plans, like any responsible business, but there are a few things that are unknown. The “Known-Unknowns” to quote Don Rumsfeld. [Former U.S. Secretary of Defense under President George W. Bush from 2001 to 2006]. The Known-Unknowns are the regulatory environment … the entire industry is worried about the regulatory environment. That’s just a big thing that hangs out there unknown.
Another known-unknown is a little bit more positive. Right now the pipe smoker market is very small but we’re seeing this increase in younger smokers. Is this the vanguard of a trend? Are we going to see something in pipes? … maybe not like the cigar boom, but it doesn’t take much to take pipes from being very tiny to very tiny times two or times three and where will those pipes be made?
If something like that is indeed happening in the United States, that would be a radical game changer for everybody in the pipe world; from us to pipe makers to people like you Kevin, for all of us in the pipe world. That would be awesome. I mean how cool would that be if pipes were that “in”? That would be great for everybody. Those are the big “wow, how do we really plan if these things could change everything?”
We project our numbers and we do the responsible thing because you know the bank likes us to, and we’re grown-ups. At the same time when I’m honest about prospects; five years, ten years down the road … Those are time horizons where there’s so much opportunity for unpredictable things to happen and it’s really hard for me to look that far down the road. I can look at the next year down the road and work extremely hard right now. The business is going very well and we’re working very hard to improve the website and quality of service we provide right now.
I hope that a year from now we’ll be doing better and smokingpipes.com will be stronger and it’ll be great for us and for customers and for everybody but five years down the road who knows?
Kevin: Alright, so I have to end with the obligatory question, like in the cigar world it’s “cello on or cello off?” but we’re talking pipes, so is it straight or bent? Personal preference?
Sykes: Alright let me see here … [looks at personal pipe collection racks, counting under his breath] … I’d say about 50/50 for me personally.
We sell probably a few more bent pipes than straight pipes but sometimes a distinction has to be made. How do you compare a little quarter bent apple with a wild free hand giant bent thing? It’s kind of tough to stick those in the same basket.
Kevin: Clearly, pipes are a true love for you. We’ve been talking about them non-stop for an entire day, and I know you could keep going. I thank you for your time and wish SmokingPipes.com a Happy 10th Anniversary.
Sykes: Thank you sir, this has been a lot of fun.
Sykes Wilford Interview Part I
Sykes Wilford Interview Part II
Written by Kevin Godbee
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There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
I loved all three parts of this interview. Kevin asked insightful and interesting questions, and Sykes gave insightful and interesting answers.
I have watched smokingpipes.com grow from a small operation to a large one, and I have heard nothing but praise for its customer service over the years. Personally, I have always been happy with every transaction.
As for the collector market growing from “very tiny to very tiny times two or times three,” that would be awesome. The fact that Sykes has managed his business to continue growing without considering that possibility — or without relying on it — shows what a brilliant businessman he is.
I’m a young-adult, just about to turn 20. I’ve been smoking myself a pipe for about, oh, seven months now, and in this time I’ve turned two friends into pipe smokers. More anecdotal evidence, huzzah!
Thank you so much Rick! I’m honored that you were one of the first to read and comment on the article.
Keep it going Collin! That is great news!
Thanks Rick! I certainly appreciate the kudos. Glad you liked the piece. When I read it, I thought I sounded like an eight-year-old after four cans of Mountain Dew, but at least I sound as enthusiastic as I feel!
Oh, and I love the irony that Dan Tobacco was in stock as of the interview, but now again faces the same shortages that prompted the question…I’m back to saying that I hope we have it back in stock soon!
Thanks for the feature article. The questions were exactly along the lines of my interests, and Wilford’s responses were refreshingly candid.
This was a great 3 Part interview and article!
It is filled with tons of information and is very entertaining. Thanks for taking the time to have the interview Sykes!
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Collin,
That is great to hear that you are getting some of your younger friends involved in the great hobby of pipe smoking, keep it up!
Great job Kevin! Being a previous pipe shop owner from the 80’s I have watched Smoking Pipes grow over the years. It’s been my pleasure to meet and talk to Sykes and much of his staff and I am impressed by all. Thanks to people like Kevin, Bob and Sykes, I am very optimistic about the future of our hobby and enjoyment. My thanks to all.