Cornell & Diehl Redburn
-
Kevin Godbee - Oct 2, 2018
- 4 min read
Kyle Weiss
If you’re the sort that doesn’t like fall, or likes it simply because there’s certain coffee drinks now available, we probably wouldn’t get along. It’s akin to being someone who doesn’t understand why bacon is a thing, doesn’t regard baseball as an awesome sport, or someone who dislikes animals. You might even hate tobacco and those who smoke it. We’re just different tribes. That’s fine, and you can go enjoy your thing on your time—away from me. This is my time. There’s a delicate changing of the guard between vibrant life and vibrant decay with which many of us above or below a certain latitude are blessed to experience every year. If you’re reading this, your pipes are a natural part of your routine as much as mine, and seasons definitely matter.
Cornell & Diehl recently debuted "Redburn," a small-batch crumble cake consisting of Burley, light and red Virginia, dark-fired Kentucky leaf with a kiss of rum as a topping. The label alone is a screaming autumn-red and I genuinely, if not skeptically, enjoy a good Burley-forward mixture.
Crumble cakes are an interesting method of doing pipe tobacco. They’re easier to deal with than a plug but they might be daunting if you’re unfamiliar with loading your pipe. Redburn’s take on this is almost spongy and it delightfully pulls apart like a pork shoulder that’s been smoking all day. You have to deal with it correctly and there’s certain ways to deal with it–no knife necessary.
Redburn smells barely of rum, but has a treacle-fig nose to it once broken apart. This encouraged me, because toppings for pipe tobacco can range from overkill to downright nonexistent. Loading a pipe with a range of chopped to nearly ribbon-like tobacco can be a tad tricky. Half the time I encountered "sniper leaves" of tobacco that blocked the airway, but nothing a pipe cleaner couldn’t push out of the way. There’s a balance of roughing up the tobacco too much and not enough. Once achieved, lighting is easier if this stuff is broken apart and left to dry out a bit, but when it does, the delicacy of the burn is rather impressive.
I found Redburn to be easy as hell to smoke right from the beginning. The nutty smoothness of the Burley and buttered bread hints from the red Virginia is there at the start, and there’s a nice tongue-prickle likely from the pinch Kentucky dark-fired. If topping is going to be an issue, this is where I brace myself, and I can say without reservation it’s not problematic. I couldn’t even tell it was there.
This tobacco isn’t overwhelming to the senses, but it has a little kick to it. Moderate nicotine levels midway through let you know it is present and accounted for, while delivering just the right amount of character. The Kentucky sits in the background, without being tongue-coating. The bright Virginia pushes some pleasant sharpness past its red counterpart, and there’s no bitterness from substandard Burley—which means the quality was selected properly. One of my biggest complaints about Burley is how it can, at times, be a mere filler rather than a focus. Redburn didn’t seem to have these thick, leathery leaves but rather the paper-thin and delicious sort.
Managing a bowlful of Redburn is almost effortless, but it’s advisable to keep tamping light and less often. This tobacco likes some natural, gentle puffing. It likes to breathe, but not too much. Quick smokers might experience some angry taste buds, whereas the patient let-it-smolder sorts will enjoy keen rewards. Keeping this in mind is important for the end of the bowl, as I’ve found with some Burley there can be ashy and bitter components, perhaps from tamping and stoking embers too hot. Done right, there can be a black tea background with an almost roasted chestnut experience. Not a bad way to end a smoke.
Lighter whiskeys and beers would be my choice for a beverage companion. Coffee tended to be okay for the morning, but since tea was mentioned, you’d do good sipping that perhaps a bit more.
Redburn is a great tobacco. It gives a great Burley experience though the pairing of the companion tobaccos is unusual. Most notably there isn’t an unnatural sweetness meddling with the mixture. I’m not going to say it’s an "advanced" smoke, but seasoned smokers that are into Burleys should grab a tin of this. Aging may or may not do a lot for it, but time will tell. The fresh product is completely ready to go. My overall experience with this tin has been an excellent one. Maybe I’m mesmerized by crisp mornings and the cacophony of fall colors, but this tobacco gave me quite a few decent sits on the porch. Changes of seasons are inevitable, and being a pipe smoker it’s good to find new things to enrich a fella’s day.
Happy fall and smoking, everyone. Except those who can’t see past nature’s brief periods of splendor. Life is too damned short, and these momentary pleasures are a great way to combat this fact.
Written by Kevin Godbee
9 Responses
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.
Your experience is exactly what I was expecting from this tobacco…however, all I got was an unpleasantly strong topping which to me smells like a permanent marker. Same thing with Haddo’s Delight. Since Haddo’s seems to be so well-received and enjoyed, I’m guessing this issue lies with me, and not the tobacco. I’m bummed! Very nice write up.
Haddo’s Delight is a wonderful tobacco! Permanent marker scent? That’s the first I’ve heard anyone mention that…could be you…did you have a bad experience sniffing markers in your youth? I keenly remember getting in trouble huffing the blueberry-scented dry erase markers that became available when I was in the fifth grade. The brain damage was minimal, I’m sure.
Glad you enjoyed the article, bummer the tobacco didn’t jive with you as it should have.
I hit up a local B&M a month ago and one of the guys bought the tin on a whim. He opened it up and offered a bowl to everyone. I liked it from the first bowl. Just received the first full tin and I’m on my second bowl of it now. It has an interesting flavor profile. I’ve noticed it’s kinda pronounced at the beginning and end of the bowl. In the middle of the bowl it kind of mellows out a bit for some reason I can’t quite pinpoint. Definitely the slower you puff the better it is. The rum top dressing wasn’t too strong to me. I wouldn’t really call this an aromatic in the sense of the American aromatic definition. I’ll definitely be stocking the cellar with this.
Loved the way you described this right down to the Bacon. Yeah, with you on Fall all the way being that I am from the Southern tip of New Jersey where the Fall months grace the meeting of Victorian and the Atlantic. Great time of year for great Tobacco. Red Burn sounds like my kind of smoke and going to secure some today, albeit online and not local. Thanks for the review. I’ll report upon smoking a few bowls.
Thanks for another well written and nicely illustrated review.
Thanks, guys.
I still have about a quarter of a “brick” left–a little goes a long way. Still enjoying it and I should probably switch to next month’s tobacco a little more.
One thing I want to add that I did not in the article: a clean pipe. This is one of those tobaccos that I call a “ghost hunter.” If you smoke anything Latakia, Lakeland and I presume aromatics, you’re going to find undertones that aren’t there. Let this be said for estate pipes you may have recently acquired. I’m not one to often have a pipe exclusively for a particular brand or line of tobacco, I usually just separate them into Latakia and non-Latakia. It works decently for this tobacco, but also, cleanliness being next to godliness, you’ll be better off with Redburn.
Well, here I am a month later, and after picking up a couple of tins on the strength of your review. I’ve had several bowls now, and I can’t thank you enough for turning me on to this blend. Many thanks, Kyle.
Cortez, sorry for the late reply, it’s been an rough month (year?) for me…
…and you’re welcome—enjoy! I wish I hadn’t smoked up the tin so quickly, myself.