Christmas in a Can
-
E. Roberts - Dec 26, 2023
- 6 min read
Try as one may, getting caught up in the Dreaded Holiday Rush is inevitable. So many errands to run, plans to be made, commitments to extend, and lots of traveling to do, to and fro; the whooshing sound that deadlines make as they fly by. Fortunately, we pipe smokers have a secret weapon against the onslaught of anxiety that such times can induce: kicking back with a bowl and a favorite blend, and savoring our time. Such it is that I finally get around to this deadline-busting installment of tobacco reviews, discovering three new blends peculiar to the season: Pipe Force Episode VI, Cringle Flake Holiday Edition 2023, and Plum Pudding Christmas Spirit, all brought to us from the house of Sutliffe Tobacco. Santa, eat your heart out.
Pipe Force Episode VI
A woody, tangy mixture of select Virginia leaf is elevated with Stoved Katerini, adding dark berry and spice. Dark-Fired Kentucky and St. James Perique enrich the base with earthy notes, pepper, and a light smokiness. Episode VI is a savory, vinous evolution from the natural sweetness and dark flavor of the Virginia/Perique genre. Richness with nuance all the way down.
A passion project collaboration with Sutliffe, the Pipe Force line of the Per Jensen Signature Series certainly speaks to sci-fi nerds of my ilk, both in concept and execution. Like the Birds of a Feather series preceding it, the conceptualization begins with ‘unique ingredients’ as the canvas on which to build; in this incarnation, a delightfully stoved Katerini is the star of the show, supported by the doo-wop duo of dark-fired and Perique singing backup over the baseline of Virginia. This is Per Jensen freestyling, Jackson Pollock-esque strokes thrown wildly against the canvas. Opening the tin, the bouquet of the tightly-pressed crumble cake is centered on rich fruit and a tart background, with more than a hint of furniture polish—a slightly vinegary, tannic note of light oak overlaid with lemony vanillin edges and beeswax. Once the blend acclimates to its unsealing, the vinegary aldehydes dissipate to leave familiar Virginia fruit-and-leather base notes with top-note aromas straddling sweet and savory. In its place is a rather complex melange of impressions: bitter and powdery baker’s chocolate, green wood, dried apricot, mesquite barbecue. In the smoke, the chocolate fades demurely to the background, upstaged by the tangy dryness in the Katerini and peppery piquancy of the Perique. The stoved Katerini imparts a particular voice as it steers the blend; in turns the meaty sweetness of a Medjool date, or earthy and a tad gamey like seared rabbit tips. It is not the rather floral and bright version of the leaf I am accustomed to, and carries itself differently in the company of the other constituents in this blend. The complexion of the smoke drifts and varies refreshingly—indeed, sometimes erratically—over the course of the bowl, giving it enough interest to recommend as a repeat visit to further explore the nuance of the novel ingredients. Overall the blend is every bit as chaotic and unexpected as the theme and tin art would suggest. As the blends are limited small-batch runs, they’re very much worth the effort to seek out and try.
Cringle Flake Holiday Edition 2023
Mark Ryan’s 2003 Vintage Perique leads the way again for this year’s Cringle Flake. Stoved Katerini has been added to the blend combined with decade old Red Virginias to create one of the most unique blends available today. The whole leaf is then pressed and sliced into broken flakes.
Continuing with the experimental treatment of the Katerini, Cringle Flake 2023 makes use of it to even greater effect in this year’s holiday release. Revealing the thickly-sliced loose flakes of gingerbread-brown tobacco, the initial bouquet is familiar VaPer territory, with just a little something extra—high dry wine notes, bright tart hops, mild astringent, pine soap, and incense fill out the bouquet. The fruit notes here are more pineberry than the usual stewed plum or raisin, with a light floral lilt that translates deliciously into the smoke. The flakes break effortlessly, and are at perfect straight-from-the-tin humidity. A brief nose of lemon-lime soda on the charring light segues to a bready croissant in the top bowl; the mid-bowl depth emerges with a rich umami, the condimental leafs coaxing sweet spice in the range of nutmeg, orange peel and rose hips that continues to a smooth finish, never getting too heavy. The Katerini is, for me, better expressed here than in the previous blend; in full disclosure of bias, VaPers with Orientals are very much to my smoking preference, and this is easily one of the most intriguing I’ve had the pleasure of packing in a bowl. It smokes clean and light after repeated bowls, almost effervescent; piquant, complex, and full of intrigue, with a wonderful nose on the retrohale and waft from the bowl—and all perfectly tempered from the well-aged constituents. For my money, this is an all-star blend.
Seattle Pipe Club Plum Pudding Christmas Spirit
Nothing says Christmas Spirit like Plum Pudding. The traditional centerpiece of holiday celebrations since the 17thcentury. America’s most popular Balkan, Christmas Spirit is Joe’s gift to luxury tobacco fans everywhere. Delight in our limited 2023 edition of Plum Pudding Special Reserve aged 30 days in charred oak Apple Brandy barrels, pressed and crumble plug cut. A chunk of the barrel rests in every tin. Merry Christmas from the Seattle Pipe Club.
The original Plum Pudding is a towering achievement of a pipe blend, and I would have to agree with the assessment that it’s America’s most popular Balkan. This special holiday presentation, aged in apple brandy casks, manages to make perfection just a little bit better. The familiar is there, along with added highlights: strong oak campfire notes form the backbone, wrapped in parchment, grenache grape, Port wine, Lapsang souchong tea. The plug presentation is not as tightly compressed as others, so cutting portions off to crumble the darkly mottled leaf comes handily. The smoke is much lighter in weight than the pungency of the bouquet would suggest, and burns cool and facilely through the bowl with surprisingly few relights. My preference for this, as with most Balkans, is a fairly capacious pipe in the range of a bent billiard, prince, or tomato, allowing for longer smokes that fully explore all the territory a complex blend such as this can cover. The smoke brings notes of chestnut, lamp oil, cardamom and nutmeg, frequent bursts of bright lemony sweetness from the Virginia, and added tart tannic green crabapple notes further enhanced by the inclusion of the cask wood. More than a presentation gimmick, the little chunk of wood dials up the bouquet to 11 while more subtly influencing the flavor—it was gangbusters in the wonderful Stove-Aged 35 Ribbon from McClelland not so long ago, and is equally brilliant here. Aside from the high tannic notes, in expands the sharp campfire sting and meaty mid-tones in the mix, and manages to steer away from the duller clay-like notes of Cyprian Latakia that are often a detractor to my palate. If you were already a fan of Plum Pudding, this is a can’t miss incarnation.
Judging from these limited-run offerings from Sutliffe, 2023 is a banner year for holiday blends that will appeal to a wide range of tastes. Along with the general well-wishes of the season, may you all find the time to carve out those moments of respite that our hobby affords us.
Written by E. Roberts
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.
