Georgetown Tobacco Co.'s Byzantium

Until last month I hadn't smoked a pipe in 28 years! The unrelenting complaints of my wife and daughters kept a tight lid on my smoking enjoyment in the house and it just became too impractical and inconvenient to confine smoking on the porch. This declination of affairs, couple with the encroaching tentacles of political correctness as the years have "progressed' ended the experiment. This non-state of affairs might have continued for the duration, but last month, while cleaning out a forgotten corner behind my desk, I rediscovered hermetically sealed mason jars I'd completely forgotten about. So much so that one of my all-time favorite smokes, Balkan Sobrani 759 had been doing service for years holding small diameter wood screws. But there it was. The evidence lay before me. I'd stuffed oversized glass jars with unopened zip-locked bags of my then favorite tobaccos, cellared for future reference, as it were: tobaccos from Georgetown Tobacco Co; Special "D" and my other favorite "Byzantium" neither of which are available anymore. Ounces of the English blend, Persuasion next to the aromatics, Reverie and 1269. I also found an unopened can of Rattray's Red Rapparee. I'd all but completely forgotten about them.
When I opened the lid of one of the mason jars, glory hallelujah! The aromas that wafted out were all it took. I went looking to find my pipes, but only with partial success.
I turned up the magnificent meerschaum calabash and a Jensen bent bulldog (946 DANIA stampled on the stem) together with another Jensen, this one a billiard that has always smoked way too hot(!); and, my dad's hand-me-down Amphora billiard which never smoked hot but always had way to much dottle. Other pipes, I'd enjoyed for years were not to be found - a Savinelli and an Israeli freehand Danish style handful. In any case, I saw that I'd left my pipes in pretty good condition - they were wrapped in shoe bags, the bowls were not heavily caked and each had pipe cleaners inserted. A friend in the neighborhood happened to be a tobacconist. Sadly, he just closed down his small but very unique shop - besides a selection of fine tobaccos he carried the best of coffees and rare teas from China. He introduced me to McClelland's blends and S. Gawith's Skiff. I bought from him a new, rusticated L. Viprati Bent what looks like might be called a POY (though dI don't know what that means) and I'm breaking that in. A winter cold has slowed the process down by a few weeks but it's a fine piece and I think it already smokes a cut above the others (except maybe for the meerschaum). In any case, I haven't picked up where I left off, because the Dunhill's I also used to rotate through regularly, Ye Olde Signe, Royal Yacht, Nightcap and Morning Pipe, just don't taste the same (I'm uncertain as to whether it's the tobaccos or me). However, the McClelland's Arcadia and Old Dog, No. 22 Matured an Gawith's Skiff keep me focused on the present and looking to the future."
Thanks again, guys. Have a healthy and warm winter!
;David

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