Tobacco and Beverage Pairings
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Kevin Godbee - May 20, 2010
- 6 min read
By Russ Ouellette
A favorite pipe and a treasured tobacco can be wonderful companions, and they’re often enhanced by the presence of a nice beverage, but we often don’t give much consideration to what we’re drinking in combination with a particular tobacco blend. Interestingly enough, I often get the question, “Why is it that I’ll occasionally get a bowl of tobacco that doesn’t seem right?”, and most people believe that the problem lies with that particular bowl not being mixed very well, or a problem with the pipe being smoked. My first question in reply is- “What were you drinking while you were smoking?”, as most people give little thought to how much impact the taste of an accompanying beverage can have on the flavor of the tobacco.
For many years, cigar dinners have been popular, and one of the intriguing aspects of putting one of these events together is figuring out what drinks go well with the cigars being offered, or vice versa. A few years ago I was offered the opportunity to lecture a culinary class at a state university about conducting dinners of this sort or how to recommend a cigar to a patron of the restaurant based upon what the customer is drinking. In the course of putting the lecture together, I came up with a general approach that can easily be adapted to pairings with pipe tobaccos as well.
My first “rule” of pairings is: Match the body of the drink to the smoke. If you are smoking a deep, rich Balkan-style blend, then you want a full-bodied libation to counter-balance the smoke. It’s necessary to do this to avoid having one or the other dominate your experience. A light white wine will not provide enough substance to even be noticed while enjoying a Latakia or Perique-heavy blend. To balance out, a Port or Bourbon would be a better bet. Are there exceptions? Of course. If you just want something to quench your thirst or cleanse your palate while trying a new blend, something easy on the palate and innocuous like water, seltzer or tea will be fine. And it’s certainly okay to have a cup of coffee with that first bowl of the day, but when you want that full sensory immersion experience, following this guideline will help.
To help with your choices, we need to understand what body is. There are sparkling waters that have a vanilla flavor to them, and there is vanilla custard. They’re both taste like vanilla, but the intensity of flavor is so much greater with the custard. There’s the defining note- the depth or intensity of taste.
Rule #2 is quite different than rule #1, however. There should be a significant contrast between the flavor profile of what you drink versus what you smoke. If your tobacco is sweet and tangy (like some of the McClelland Virginias), you would get the most out of the pairing if the beverage is dry and smooth (along the lines of a Merlot). The contrasting flavors will enhance each other, as it becomes easier to taste sweetness immediately after being exposed to sour or bitter flavors.
Fortunately, it’s a lot easier to identify elements of taste than it is to determine body. Salty, sweet, bitter and sour are easy to pick out, so figuring out a contrast shouldn’t present much of a problem. To measure body, a frame of reference is useful. Think of a dense, dark fudge cake. The flavor is deep and rich, and the concentration of chocolate is intense. That’s an example of full body. On the other end of the spectrum, you have something like cucumber – a flavor that registers lightly on the tongue, and it usually fades quickly.
Let’s take an example: You load up a bowl of Greg Pease’s Ashbury, which is a light to medium-bodied blend. It is smoky and savory, but not overly sweet. To accentuate the tobacco’s nature, a medium-bodied drink with some sugariness and a tang would work well, such as a golden or spiced Rum, or a glass of Riesling. If you want to avoid alcohol, a white grape juice, cocoa, a light-roast coffee with a touch of cream and sugar, Earl Grey tea or even a soda would work.
The way to approach pairings is usually to start with the smoke and then pick the beverage. To determine the body of a blend, understanding the intensity of the component tobaccos is a good place to start. Some tobaccos that tend toward light to medium body are: white Burleys, lighter Virginias, Carolina, Maryland and some of the lighter Orientals. Medium bodied leaf would include: medium Burleys, red and brown Virginias and the majority of Oriental and Turkish. Full-bodied varieties would include dark Burleys, Latakia, Perique and a lot of the strains of cigar leaf. Obviously, the combination of these different tobaccos will lead to varied levels of flavor depth.
Once you’ve determined the body of the blend, you’ll want to find drinks that share a similar body.
Here’s a very basic list:
– Light bodied- Water, most teas, flavored waters, clear fruit juices, most lager and pilsner beers, many dry white wines, light rums, gin, vodka.
– Medium bodied- Enhanced teas, most other fruit juices, most amber and red beers, most ales, heavier white wines and blushes, golden Rums, lighter Scotches and Whiskeys, lighter liqueurs and cordials, most mixed drinks.
– Full bodied- Medium to dark roast coffees, dark juices (grape, dark berry), Stouts and Porters, dark Rums, full, peaty Scotches, Bourbons, deep red Wines, Port and Sherry.
Once you’ve matched the bodies up, just try to get contrasting flavors, and relax for an enjoyable time. As with just about anything that involves taste, going slow always seems to help. Sip and savor the drink and puff lightly enough to keep the pipe from getting too hot as this will produce the best and most complex flavors.
Now, with all that being said, the most important thing is for you to enjoy yourself. If you like to have a cold, light tasting beer during the summer, it doesn’t matter what you’re smoking if you’re satisfied. The main purpose for doing pairings is to maximize the nuances and subtleties of both the beverage and the blend, but the bottom line is your enjoyment. After all, these are adult choices we make to help us find some delight in our everyday lives, and those choices are individual preferences that personally please us. When I’m really concentrating on the blend I’m smoking, I will try to follow these guidelines so I can pick up on the little things in the experience, but when I’m smoking while doing other things, I tend to drink what I prefer at the moment.
Whatever you do, have fun!
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Russ Ouellette is the blender/creator of the Hearth & Home series of tobaccos for Habana Premium Cigar Shoppe and www.pipesandcigars.com in Albany, NY. He has been a pipe smoker and blender for over 30 years, and enjoys feedback from the pipe smoking public. You can reach Russ at russo@pipesandcigars.com or by calling 1-800-494-9144 on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 am to 5 pm and Friday from 1 pm to 5 pm. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
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When I first started with the pipe as a quirky and precocious teen, the only tutelage I had at my disposal were scenes from old movies in which a well dressed chap would stick his pipe into a pouch, scoop tobacco into the bowl and press it down unceremoniously with his thumb. Then, with great flourish, he’d strike a match and light the thing with all manner of cinematic excess, puffing up vast clouds of smoke falling just short of completely obscuring his visage. While it may look good on film, it’s a terrible approach to actually enjoying the thing. Somehow, though, this “technique” seems to have survived in the contemporary vernacular, at least to some extent, even with bit-loads of information handily at our fingertips that should dissuade us from the practice. 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Before we begin, I should tell you: this tobacco review is being written by an A.I. Not the fancy new GPTs or their ilk; no, this is last century’s meat-and-bone, all-organic model. To be fair, a large part of what we call knowledge is merely the accumulated perceptions and impressions gathered from a life wandered through, synthesized into a spongy mass of what-it-is-that-we-think-that-we-know. The algorithm for this prompt is simple enough: pump thousands of bowls of smoldering plant matter into a gaping maw, cross-reference the chemical sensations with all other matter previously ingested or inhaled, sieve it all through the diffuse and fractal twin lens of memory and emotion, and churn out a panoply of adjectives that attempts to convey the sensations to someone who hasn’t experienced it yet. Odds are that a diligently trained monkey could succeed half the time; if this reviewer nears fifty-one percent then that would qualify as an unrivaled success. 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Thoroughly smoky with lemony, grassy highlights from the Virginia spectrum, it soon segues into the mid-bowl profile: heartier, smokier, with the flavor leaning to the mildly acrid and tangy tinge that is the campfire-esque signature of English blends. Caution advised, it can turn overly bitter if pushed—this is where one’s sipping technique is required to maintain the fullness of flavor through to the heel. I did tend toward a lot of relights, though it may have as much to do with technique as with the blend. Pacing is also important as the nicotine starts to manifest; though the Rustica’s contribution has been tempered well by the stoving, it can certainly upend an empty stomach. At the end of every bowl, the mouthfeel somehow gets better. The balance of sugars in the tobaccos would seem to be spot-on in this regard. I started out my tasting in cobs, then cut short an unpleasant bowl in a meer, and finally landed on my best instrument with the lovely Dunhill 4427 pictured, a quaint group 4 shell briar with a gentle curve and Cumberland stem supporting a perfectly executed acorn bowl. It surprised me here, as I’ve learned through the years that I generally have the best experience with English blends in large, wide bowls. With this blend it seems that to get the best out of the Katerini’s somewhat diaphanous influence the smaller bowl fared much better. Room note is very English, so the company you keep will either love it or hate it, and it doesn’t linger too much. I find it paired best with a strong coffee; Sumatran beans complement the flavors well, as do Ethiopian if a lighter brew is preferred. Overall impressions of the blend are that it’s a curiously interesting take on the English genre, almost a reductive reconstruction of the theme using the unique components. 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Russ,
Thank you for this wonderful, most informative post! You have provided us with a much needed perspective. For years I have tried to find the right pipe tobacco to smoke with vodka Martini’s and Gin Martini’s. I found the perfect cigar (it took years to find it) for my taste (the Fuente King T). I would love to hear yours and other readers choices for the perfect pipe tobacco Martini pairing.
Thanks again, Russ. It was great to see you in Saint Charles.
Best regards,
Brad Starcevich
(Silvercloud)
Great article that is full of information Russ!
I know of a few drinks that I like that go well with certain types of blends, but now I have this info to help expand my tobacco and drink pairings.
Excellent article that simplifies an otherwise bewildering array of choices and combinations. Thanks.
Great article. Very interesting and informative. Thanks for the contribution.
Thanks for the interesting article. I was most interested in what you had to say about “body”, a rather illusive term. I tend to define “body” as “mouth feel”. I’m no expert taster (or drink pairer), but I notice some tobaccos have a mouth feel that is missing from others. I use the analogy of Coke and Diet Coke: they both have the same basic taste, but the Coke (because of the sugar?) has a heavier mouth feel (“body”) than the Diet version. Cuban cigars (even the cheaper ones) have this delicious, heavy mouth feel (different from strength) that other Caribbean cigars don’t have. In pipe tobaccos, Esoterica’s Penzance has a delicious mouth feel (almost like eating a well-cooked steak) that is missing from most other blends. Call it “body” or “heaviness” but it’s not “strength”, at least to my palate. You can have a STRONG tobacco that is still “flat” in the “body” department.
Very good article . Thanks Russ for taking the time to answer a question I hear a lot .
I have been practising the contrast method for years myself when smoking latakia blends. A light Cidre or a lighter semi sweet wine calls out the hidden sweetness of the originally tough and rough smokey latakia blends. I can also reach this result with Latakia and coffee or strong tea both white with…Strange but it works…Although i dont smoke too strong latakia blends mainly English mixtures but still I say it works. Or a sweeter Kriek with a middle English…and so on.
Russ, you are a treasure. It is great to have your perspective here at Pipesmagazine.com..
Great article. I often enjoy a single malt while I puff my pipe; Lagavulin is my favourite and I highly recommend it.