Common Misconceptions About Pipe Tobacco
-
Kevin Godbee - Jun 20, 2010
- 6 min read
by Russ Ouellette
As with just about any subject, there are a lot of common fallacies about pipe tobaccos and how they’re made. It’s a shame, really, as, through the years there have been many good books and magazine articles that have addressed these inaccuracies, but most pipe smokers have never read them. So I will try to dispel some of the falsehoods about the noble weed.
1) Latakia is made by hanging tobacco in a barn over a fire made with camel dung.
This is probably the most common of all the old-wives’ tales about pipe tobacco. Looking at it from a logical viewpoint, it’s easy to understand where the rumor got started. Half of the statement is true. Latakia is made by hanging tobacco in a building. The tobacco used in Syria is Shek-el-Bint (var.), and in Cyprus, it is made from Smyrna. The leaves are hung and a fire is built, but that’s where the truth and fiction diverge. No camel dung is used in making Latakia. The fire usually uses oak (Syria) or aromatic woods like Juniper (Cyprus). That’s the reason for the “campfire” or “beef jerky” aroma. The rumor started because camel dung is used as heating fuel in the Middle East, just as buffalo chips were used by Native Americans. It doesn’t take much of a stretch to see where someone trying to be funny or attempting to be a know-it-all would make such a comment. To put it to rest once and for all, there is no poop-flavored tobacco currently made.
2) Cavendish is a tobacco.
There is no tobacco plant called Cavendish. These tobaccos were originally made by pressing tobacco leaves together, sometimes using heat as part of the process, and frequently by adding flavorings (liquors, syrups, etc.). The tobacco was usually allowed a fair amount of time to mature, marry and assimilate the flavorings, then it would be cut like a flake, and normally tumbled out so it looked like a ribbon cut or a broken flake. Black Cavendish confuses the issue further by using cut tobacco that is typically treated with sugar water and then toasted until nearly black, which caramelizes the sugars and gives the tobacco a brown sugar aroma. What’s confusing is that most of the tobaccos we know of as Black Cavendish (Lane’s BCA, Altadis ZBC) are toasted Black Cavendish with flavorings added, which makes them moist, whereas toasted Black Cavendish tends to be dry. Making things even worse is that through common usage the term has come to mean any tobacco that has been flavored with a casing and/or top dressing. For the record, Cavendishes are usually made of a Burley or Virginia base (often using both) with the possible addition of some Oriental tobaccos as well.
 |
 |
3) Virginia and Burley are grown in the U.S. and Orientals are grown in Greece and Turkey.
Although a good portion of both Virginia and Burley tobaccos are grown in the mid-Atlantic states of the U.S., they can, have, and continue to be successfully grown in many different places throughout the world. African Virginias are used by many of the European pipe tobacco companies (like the Lakeland tobaccos), and Mexican Burley shows up in a number of well-known blends. In recent years, much of the U.S. Virginia crop comes from Maryland and states other than Virginia. Orientals are certainly grown in the area where Turkey and Greece meet (especially the area known as Thrace), but they are grown in a number of the former Soviet bloc countries as well. The only thing about Orientals is that planting them outside their original growing region changes the climate and soil conditions which seems to affect these varietals more so than other strains. In fact, at one time, because of the growing popularity of cigarettes containing Oriental or Turkish blends, an attempt was made to grow these tobaccos in the United States. The experiment was a failure, however, as the plants yielded tobacco that was virtually identical to Burley, due to the American climate and soil. The only tobacco I can think of that is only grown and processed in only one country (other than certain strains of cigar leaf) is Perique, which is grown in Louisiana (St. James Perique) and Tennessee (Acadian Perique) and processed strictly in St. James Parish, Louisiana. (More on Perique in, “The Mystique of Perique“.)
 |
 |
 |
|
4) Moist tobacco is fresh, dry tobacco is stale.
The correct statement would be- “Moist tobacco is moist, dry tobacco is dry.” The first point is that no one that I know of enjoys smoking fresh tobacco. Tobacco needs time to properly dry and cure before the processing even begins, otherwise, the resulting blends would be unpalatable. The notion of moist and fresh being desirable started with advertising for blends that came in sealed tins and pouches, which tended to be more moist, especially those made with a significant amount of casing and/or top dressing. I find that tobacco stays lit better, delivers more flavor and actually burns cooler if it’s a bit on the dry side. Moist tobacco requires more frequent puffing to get the burning temperature up high enough to keep damp tobacco lit, which leads to hotter smoke, which also contains a significant amount of steam, which is more likely to burn the tongue. Also, adding moisture to tobacco is cheaper than adding more tobacco, so you get more for your money with slightly drier weed. I know I’m not alone in this, as Craig Tarler of Cornell & Diehl and I have discussed this subject and are in agreement.
5) Tinned tobacco is better than bulk.
Put simply, there are some tobaccos in tins that are of average quality or less, and there are some excellent quality bulk blends. Would anyone call McClelland’s 5100 or Cornell & Diehl’s Pirate Kake low-quality? I would hope not. All of my own Hearth & Home tobaccos are available in bulk and tins. What’s the difference (other than cost)? One is in bulk and the other is in a tin. The tobaccos are identical. But here is where I think the misconception, at least in part, comes from. When you tin a blend, it takes longer to get to market because of the time it takes to package it, and sometimes due to shipping. Since the tobacco has had more time to age and marry, people may detect a difference and assume that there is something about the blend itself that has changed. In fact, if you put the bulk in a clean jar for the same amount of time as the tinned tobacco, the blends should be virtually identical.
 |
 |
These are just a handful of “urban legends” about pipe tobacco, and I hope you’ve found them informative. If you know of any other mistaken beliefs about tobaccos or pipes, please email me and I will address them in a future column.
Whatever you do, have fun!
|
Russ Ouellette is the blender/creator of the Hearth & Home series of tobaccos for Habana Premium Cigar Shoppe and www.pipesandcigars.com in Albany, NY. He has been a pipe smoker and blender for over 30 years, and enjoys feedback from the pipe smoking public. You can reach Russ at russo@pipesandcigars.com or by calling 1-800-494-9144 on Monday, Wednesday and Thursday from 9 am to 5 pm and Friday from 1 pm to 5 pm. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
21 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
8 Fresh Claudio Cavicchi Pipes |
New Cigars |
3 Fresh Ser Jacopo Pipes |
6 Fresh Savinelli Autograph Pipes |
24 Fresh Brulor Pipes |
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.
Thank you Russ,
You answered a lot of questions I have had but never verbalized.
I love latakia blends, and have always believed the “legend” was a load of camel dung.
Excellent article!
Thanks
Thanks for a great explanation of the myths and fallacies Russ. But more importantly, I want to personally thank you for H&H’s terrific blends!
Awesome article ! ! ! We pipe smokers love to know E V E R Y T H I N G about our pipes and tobaccos now don’t we?
Thanks for the clarifications Russ. These misconceptions are more
common to the Pipe smoking community than the reality. It’s good
to have things addressed.
Great article Russ!
Very informative and interesting!
Excellent article. Enjoyed reading it.
Russ,
Thank you for an interesting and informative article. Learning about pipe tobacco increases my enjoyment of it.
Excellent information- thank you for posting it.
Excellent, thanks!
Very informative! Thanks for the article Russ.
-Andrew
Russ, very interesting and well written. Thank you.
Thanks Russ for clarifying these myths.
Very useful article, thank you very much
Very good and informative article!
Thanks for sharing.
Very informative. Thank you. I have to say, though, I always get a kick out of telling people that camel dung played a part in the process of getting my favorite latakia blends ready to smoke!
Thanks, Russ. I’ve been smoking pipes since 1964, and believed all this time in the camel dung myth, so thank you for setting me straight. BTW, I love your “Larry’s Blend”, especially in the summer, as it is a very mild Balkan and won’t overpower me sitting on my porch in 90-degree weather like we’re having today.
Russ:
Excellent read and information. I have smoked pipes, like you, for the better part of 40 years. I started when I was in college. Couldn’t stand cigarettes, and still can’t. But loved my pipe. I bought tins and tins and tins from an Atlanta store, until I discovered an old Edward’s Pipe Tobacco store. Then I began bulk blends. There was something bout the old tins with crinkly wrapping inside that I loved. But the bulks were a bit cheaper. Anyway, the thins still hold a kind of romance for me. Thanks for the memories.
A truly enlightning piece of work Mr. Ouellette. I learn something new every day. thezman.
I usually dislike informative content, but I like your article. You have a great insight and talent. I honestly enjoyed reading this information. Thank you.
You’re incredible Russ. Thankyou for all the info..