A History of Tobacco Cellaring?

When I started, it was "stuff I haven't gotten around to smoking yet." Now, it's cellaring.

I don't know if there's any kind of data about this. My impression is that for many decades there have been a few people who have been cellaring, and that it was a relatively tiny fraction of the pipe smoking community. The majority of smokers just bought what they needed as they needed it. I'm also under the impression that cellaring has become more widespread in the past several decades as more smokers became attracted to the possibly beneficial effects of long term aging. And even more so recently as smokers developed concerns about an increasingly hostile social and legislative environment, concerns about cost increases, and concerns about the availability of favorite blends.

Greg Pease has done a lot of blogging, often making reference to tobacco aging: http://glpease.com/BriarAndLeaf/?cat=2#038;paged=1
You may also gleen some historical info from the Pipe Tobacco Aging, Storage And Cellaring FAQ: http://pipe-club.com/tobacco_aging_faq/eng/

I always assumed cellaring became widespread starting in early/mid 2000s, when online retailors became a thing. I remember being exposed to cellaring by reading everything I could on the subject via internet back then. There is a lot more depth and varied perspective on the subject nowadays compared to 15yrs ago, and the pipe cult presence is much more prevalent compared to then. It seems to have heldped with tobacco proliferation
I assume before the internet, pipe cellaring was something discussed / learned through pipe clubs and good pipe specialty shops (?). I’m guessing there, as that’s before my pipe time. My grandfather only smoked one or two blends, same as a good friend of my Dad’s. They didn’t have any kind of cellar, just a big jar or two of their favorite blends.

Interesting. I'm sure its related to the number of blends available to the average pipe smoker now. In the past you may have had one or two favorites, now you would have many more. So if you had a tin or two of all your favorites, it adds up to 'cellaring'.

iirc, Pease started out by trying dusty old tins at a pipe shop, and searching for them became a thing.

+1 Cortez

There’s really not anything before Greg started writing about old blends. It was him that started the whole concept, or at least someone in his circle. But, he was the one who made it public info.

There was some interest in laying down current production tobacco at the second pipe show I ever attended, an Indiana Briar Friars gathering in 1983. I knew a little bit about chasing out of production stuff, as did many others, but that and cellaring became more and more of a topic as years went by. It was already taken as a given that aged tobacco tasted better. The first time I met Mary McNeil at a show later in that decade I can distinctly remember her telling us how much she and Mike enjoyed smoking some of their aged product over the Christmas Holidays. And some of the guys who had hung out at Drucquers in Berkeley were into it big time.If you define cellaring as holding something in anticipation of it actually tasting better later than when you bought it, the concept was out there in the early 1980's and was, I think, fairly widely accepted among hobbyists by the end of the decade.
I am reasonably certain that you would find more on the topic in back issues of THe pipe Smokers Ephemeris from that period.

That sounds about right, geezer. Back in 2005 Pease wrote:

I've explored the virtues of aged tobaccos throughout my 25 years as a pipe smoker, having been introduced to aged tobacos by Robert Rex during my pipe smoking infancy.

Click to expand...

...which I take to mean Pease's days at Drucquers.

I can't speak for others, but I began to cellar tobacco in the mid 1980's. I had a few "pen pals" - back then there was no such thing as the Internet (at least in my world) - and we would always compare notes regarding blends that seemed to age well. I think that the late Barry Levin was making the concept famous by touting blends that he created featuring old leaf and then McClelland's (who made Levin's creations), Bob Hamlin (of PCCA fame), the late Tony Soderman, and perhaps a dozen other collectors who were stars back in the day, really got us going on the enhancement of presentation that aged tobacco made. I should not leave out Jon Loring either. He actually began researching famous old blends in the 1990's and helped us collectors out greatly by publishing soft copies of his research.
One of our fellow members here, Jon Guss, has also been helpful for decades with his research and is also a big time collector of vintage tobacco. Others that come to mind who would be great for information include Dr. Fred Hanna - who actually worked at a tobacco shop in the 1970's and is a wealth of information, and long time collector Rich Esserman, who was enamored with aged tobacco in the 1980's.
Another one of our members, oldgeezersmoker, was a big time pipe and tobacco collector back in the 1980's and would be a wealth of information regarding when aging pipe tobacco began to catch fire.
Once the Internet began to catch on, collectors from all over the world started to cellar tobacco when they began reading about the subject and it just kind of caught fire from there, I believe.
I wish there was more written information on the subject of the great advantages of letting quality tobacco blends of all types age. I eat that kind of stuff up when I can find it.

Gee, pipestud, I know I am big and I know I spent a lot time pursuing this aspect of the hobby, but whether, in comparison to other people, I was "big time" would be a dubious claim. With only a few exceptions, I somehow have managed to outlive the people who truly were "big time." When there is no tiger in the jungle, the one eyed jabbering monkey is King
I had a senior moment when I was writing my original post, and could not have remembered Bob Rex' name had my life depended on it. He did explicitly advocate cellaring tobacco so that it would improve with age. That you occasionally have a can of Royal Ransom or Cooks #5 show up on your site is testimony that people believed him.
John Loring was easily the most passionate collector of _knowledge_ about the subject. One of his guides us still available on the net

here
By the 1990's cellaring in the sense I have used the term was much more widespread. Bob Hamlin had customers, including a New York lawyer you know, who would have whole cases of PCCA blends drop shipped to them from Kansas City.
Of course, there are many other reasons to have a lot of tobacco on hand. But when I first became aware of the practice the main motivation was the belief that aged tobacco tasted better. I believed that 35 years ago, right after I sampled some Cope's Escudo from a knife lid tin dated 1947 (there was a tax stamp on those tins that had a number you could use to establish the date) and for the most part I believe it now.

What else can I say but...
:worship:

That is fascinating, Pipestud and Oldgeezer. It would be fascinating to read correspondence among pipesmokers from that era of the hobby... or any era of history.

I hope I live long enough to be able to enjoy the tobacco I'm putting away now. Wish I was into it 20 years ago. Thanks to mrenglish, I have been able to enjoy several bowls of 2002 University Flake. 16 years old with very strong, excellent flavors. I've also been fortunate to pick up a fair amount of quality leaf 5 to 7 years old. Even that period of aging makes a huge difference. I just opened a tin of SG FVF from 2012. Still moist, very dark flakes that smoke divine.
I'll never become an expert because what I really care about is simply enjoying the aged leaf. On most things, I'm more of a scientist. With this subject, I'm happy to simply be an artisan.

This cellering concept is quite an American thing. I do not wish to discredit it, by any means, on the contrary. What I am trying to say though is that in Europe we lack the culture in as far as cellering, or at least in as far as I know. I am quite travelled around the old continent with the exception of Scandinavia. Perhaps over there people cellar, and I believe that they have an overall pipe smoking culture above other european countries. In my neck of the woods we have inherited the pipe smoking habbit (as back in the day it was considered just that - not to call it vice, and definitely not a hobby) from the Austrians. Today you can still see older men smoking pipe in designated places in Vienna, but that's pretty much it. The further you go east the less likely it is to meet a pipe smoker. I understand from my father that even in the 70s and 80s pipe smoking was rare, and it was usually associated with the upper classes. Well .. so to speak because all of us were proletarians during the communist times, but like George Orwell wrote .. some animals are more equal than others. For me, germany was and is the measurement unit for pipe smoking, both in terms of tobacco supply, and people enjoying the hobby. In fact that is the only place where I can have a live conversation with another fellow pipe smoker, as in romanian I am the only pipe smoker in between timisoara and Bucharest (well this is maybe an exageration, there is a guy working for the ministry of culture in my town but we rarely meet, and i have two "apprentices" that I have turned on to the pipe, but again time doesn't allow us to meet much). This being said, I have started cellering at first solely with the idea of hoarding tobacco that is otherwise very difficult to procure in my geographic region. The taste benefit of ageing was for a long time a secondary purpose of the process. I guess much won't change around here .. sometimes I wonder what will become of my pipe inheritance once, hopefully many years from now, I will pass.

It's easier for people in the US to amass a cellar because we pay a lot less for tobacco than do smokers in other countries. I cellar for a variety of reasons. Aging is one of them. But I've come to the conclusion, based on my personal experience, that aging doesn't necessarily improve the flavors of tobaccos. It changes them. Whether that change is an improvement up to the taste of the individual smoker. There are some blends that I like better fresh than aged, and for others it's the opposite. Either way, I'm happy to have what I like to smoke available to me.

Aging was never a concern of mine. My cellaring since the early '90s has been mostly accidental and by buying up blends that I like after a few that I enjoyed were discontinued. After several years it just builds up.

When I first read about cellaring, I thought it was just a pipe smokers term for hoarding.

Steve and Jon, thanks for your posts. Fascinating reading.