Puffing Blissfully Away
-
Kevin Godbee - Sep 6, 2016
- 7 min read
Fred Brown
Well, Tobaccogeddon arrived and stomped through like a bad storm. We are down, maybe on one knee, but we’re not out. Just taking the eight-count, as they say in the ring. There are several more rounds left.
Nothing will be the same again, true, but it is hard for me to believe that the tobacco community at large is going to wither away without a quiver of resistance. We all know this is madness and that our own federal government is doing its dead-level best to end the tobacco business.
We have history behind us. The nation was practically built on the sweet tobacco leaf as a crop. People clamored at home and across the globe and still do for a taste of Kentucky, North Carolina and Tennessee tobacco.
We have other credentials as well: pipe smokers of the past were members of exclusive clubs including the finest scientific minds in the world. Even U.S. presidents, philosophers, song-writers, Nobel Laureate authors, Oscar-winning screen actors, astronauts, clergy, singers, and on and on. I’m talking the top of the food chain when it comes to brain power.
Today, we are in a dark time, to be sure. There is no doubt that pipe smokers are on a fear-driven frenzied buying spree of favorite tobaccos racing to get ahead of a deadline in which some of the most wonderful blends in existence are threatened with the new FDA regulations. Anxiety is rampant in our community. And with good reason.
The FDA is out to destroy pipe tobacco and its manufacture. I see this as losing a battle, but not the war. Not yet. It isn’t over. And actually, this time in our history may turn out to be something of a windfall for tobacco manufacturers, since pipe smokers are buying blends like there is no tomorrow. And for some blends, there may be no more tomorrow. Just sayin’.
And despite the fact that the feds let loose the Tobacco Kraken (FDA), we are still standing. We haven’t capitulated and shipped home on our shield.
Regardless whether or not your cellar is stocked from floor to ceiling, you shouldn’t be overly concerned, either. The sky isn’t falling. We are experiencing some turbulence and just need to fasten our seat belts.
Here’s why I’m not a blubbering idiot over the regs. . . .at the moment. As I understand the FDA regulations, any blend created before Feb. 15, 2007, is supposed to be grandfathered in, am I right?
Those pre-drop dead date blends won’t be subject to the draconian, evil, job-killing, business-ruining rules and regulations of blends conceived after that date, if any survive at all.
Recently I performed a quick completely unscientific check on the old reliable TobaccoReviews.com website of a few of my favorite blends. I looked up one of my favs, and then clicked on the "oldest" review of that blend. If the date precedes 2007, I am guessing that if I understand the FDA’ outlandish rules for pipe tobacco, that blend will be saved from the trash heap of history.
For example, let’s consider McClelland’s Frog Morton, unquestionably a favorite by popular demand. The oldest review I find is 2001. To me, that means whoever the reviewer was either purchased the blend from a B&M or ordered it online in that year.
The date the review was published by TR.com does not mean that is a particular blend’s release date by the manufacturer, but it should give you an idea of when the blend was first available to the general pipe smoking public.
So, now, how about another of my old favorites, Rattray’s Old Gowrie? Reviewed on TR.com in 2002. I’m feeling pretty good at this point.
The year 2001 was a very good year for many of our favorite tobaccos. Frog Morton on the Town, Dark Star and Blackwoods Flake, three more favorites by McClelland, and the ever-popular Esoterica Tobacciana Stonehaven also reviewed in that year.
You can research your favorite blend on Tobaccoreviews.com and just look at the oldest review given on your blend. If it comes up pre-2007, you are (as far as we know) grandfathered in.
All this has worked to cause a great deal of panic and consternation within the pipe tobacco community. We, of course, hang on every word, every press release and re-release and re-working of the FDA rules.
I have decided to take a much calmer approach (those who know me will think this is a fabrication) to matters concerning pipes and tobacco.
The Dali Lama says in order to be healthy we need a happy mind. I am going happy with the happy mind approach.
If the worst happens, which appears it will unless the U.S. Congress steps in to put a muzzle and leg chains on the FDA, we are going to lose some of our more recent prized blends. No question about that.
But, I am trying to point out that we already have some extraordinary pipe tobacco blends pre-2007-drop-dead-date. Hopefully those blends will be around as long as there are pipe smokers.
Yes, some of the most talented pipe tobacco blenders in the world will be hamstrung to a certain extent until the tobacco manufacturers find a work-around.
But take a look at what will be available. Instead of the glass is half-empty, we have to see this thing as the tobacco jar is half-full.
Well, okay, maybe not that rosy. I’m not pleased either about losing some of the great tasting tobaccos that have emerged in the last few years.
Like you, I have been buying up what I know will be gone. But then I got to thinking about the old days when I was a youngster and I smoked Drug Store, or Codger blends. They really weren’t so bad.
I could do that again. Do I want to? Not all the time, no. But I could. Some of the old-time tobaccos are really pretty decent.
The FDA has jumped into the middle of our parade and done a nasty. My hope is that the big cigar and tobacco manufacturers take the FDA all the way to the U.S. Supreme Court on this.
If you have read your U.S. Constitution lately, you know there are three branches of government: executive, legislative, and judicial. The way our Constitution is set up, the executive and legislative are hard-wired not to get along.
That’s where the judicial branch comes in. They write all the laws that govern and set the other two branches straight. And try to keep them from each other’s throats.
So, what the executive and legislative branches created, the U.S. Supreme Court can fix, (or unfix) as the case may be. Let’s hope that it goes that far now that our case is in the courts, thanks to the cigar and tobacco manufacturers of this nation.
And another thing:
Like you, I have been watching online retailers unload an amazing amount of pipe tobacco lately. If you haven’t filled in your cellar, you can’t say you weren’t warned. Now is the time to get serious for the blends you cherish and want to have in the future.
It’s all very sad, really. From all appearances, it seems we are coming to the end of an era in pipe smoking. Life isn’t going to be all bad, but the sun is setting on the days of having some of the greatest tobacco blends in the world.
How did we get here? Why? I continually ask myself why the FDA is so hell-bent on destroying the tobacco world? Pipe smokers are a peaceful lot. We don’t want our children puffing anything before they are old enough (majority) to make that decision for themselves.
And I don’t appreciate anyone making that decision for me, either.
I very much like Sir Winston Churchill’s attitude toward life. He took it with a cigar and a drink now and then, which is what these times call for.
We need to open the pressure valve a bit. Let the steam out.
Here is what Sir Winston had to say about cigars and the evil drink: It is, he said, "An absolutely sacred rite, smoking cigars and also the drinking of alcohol before, after and if need be during all meals and in the intervals between them."
Of course, I am a bit prejudiced. You see, he was a journalist before he was a lord or premier or any of those very British things.
Now, let’s all light up a pipe or a cigar, grab a glass of elixir and puff blissfully away while we still have the finest tobacco blends ever created at our disposal.
"People don’t pay attention. And then one day there’s an accounting. And after that, nothing is the same."
― Cormac McCarthy, No Country For Old Men
|
|
Written by Kevin Godbee
5 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
9 Fresh Ashton Pipes |
107 Fresh Savinelli Pipes |
3 Fresh Ser Jacopo Pipes |
8 Fresh Claudio Cavicchi Pipes |
New Cigars |
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
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.
According to the FDA’s interpretation, it is not those tobaccos that were on the market, in production, and distributed prior to “Feb 15, 2007”, but “on” Feb. 15, 2007. If this condition was not met, it is not eligible for ‘grandfathering”. If, as an example a tobacco was reviewed in 2001, 2002, etc, but was for some reason halted in 2006 and brought back on the market at the end of 2007, it would not be grandfathered, but would be a ‘new product’. Of course one could challenge their interpretation in the courts if so desired. Also, as noted before, the manufacturer would have to provide documentation to substantiate its availability on Feb. 15, 2007 and as a tobacco manufacturer, still pay the user fees. I am sure that many of the tobacco manufacturers will be making some hard decisions now and in the future.
http://www.fda.gov/downloads/tobaccoproducts/guidancecomplianceregulatoryinformation/ucm416498.pdf
“We interpret the phrase “as of” February 15, 2007, as meaning that the tobacco product was commercially marketed (other than exclusively in test markets) in the United States on February 15, 2007. If your tobacco product had been commercially marketed in the United States before February 15, 2007, but was not commercially marketed on that date, it is not a grandfathered product and may not be commercially marketed unless you comply with the premarket requirements of section 910 of the FD&C Act and obtain a marketing order. Section IV.B describes how you can demonstrate that a tobacco product was commercially marketed (other than exclusively in test markets) in the United States as of February 15, 2007. “
The part of the current FDA initiative that I resent the most is that tobacco and its users are treated as all one entity. Pipe smokers and the products they use are grouped categorically and unquestioningly with cigarettes, cigars, vapes, and chewing tobacco. I do not think tobacco pipe smoking is similar in terms of demographics, average quantity of use, inhalation of the product, nor medical effects. I’ve seen little or no research to make any differentiation, so what purport to be decisions made based on science simply aren’t.
Just finding the blends that won’t be discontinued is an adaptation. However, the discontinuing of recent and new blends will change the economics of pipe smoking. When the profits of introducing new blends is gone or extremely limited (to the largest corporate entities) then profits will be wrung out of whatever remains marketable, and prices will go up, until customers will abandon much smoking and nearly all small blenders and apparently pipe makers artisanal and assembly-line makers, will drop off the tree. Presumably the pleasure and sociability gained by a significant cohort of pipe smokers, many of them older men, is of no value. Some millions of us disagree. I don’t think the FDA has any plan for how we should proceed with the pursuit of happiness … here in the home of the free.
I’m glad 99 percent of my smoking is Carter Hall…
All the efforts will fail for most fail to identify the headwaters, the source of the anti-baccy moves.
The EU and The US (FDA) merely acted as they were instructed by the Globalist Elites at The UN, in accordance with its anti-tobacco Program-Day.
“All Pigs Are Equal, The Smoken Ones Even More So”
AUGUST 28, 2016 ~
When I was a farmhand~for~hire working the Hogpen I was keen to keep myself aware lest my flesh from the bone they would tear. The Rules of The Pen I was fast to learn, the fattest of hogs makes them, rules so stern.
The family farm now gone, corporate hogs in their ‘stead, universally bred, by these the faceless masses, by Boss Hog Rules, fed.
The other day, of dual incidences I read, European, Amerikan bred hogs broke loose, in the fields of Old Toby, panic and fear, skat was spread. Europeans and Amerikans tried to reign in their free-ranging hogs but to no avail for they tried to find the skat they could recognize, mark their trail, Universally Hog bred skat they did not recognize, for all their efforts, one gigantic fail.
Now dear reader, through the fog can you see clearer? Not only Old Toby but at your watering holes too, Boss Hog rules apply only to you, ne’er the fattest hogs, their numbers universally inbred few.
Post Link: http://wp.me/p1amkx-p6w
Thanks again for another well written and sane analysis of these deplorable times.