Dunhill Pipe Tobaccos Now Coming mid-November 2010
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Kevin Godbee - Oct 11, 2010
- 1 min read
The latest news on the availability of Dunhill Pipe Tobaccos in the U.S. market is that they are in production now, and will be available in mid-November 2010.
Many pipe tobacco consumers eagerly await the return of Dunhill tobaccos to the U.S. market, while others have shunned the brand. Some pipesters post of their ill will in pipe smokers forums as a result of Dunhill’s past retreat from the U.S. market. They feel that they have been taken for granted and ignored. Others feel that the new production will not match the quality or taste of the old production. The initial promises of September availability, which then changed to October, and now to November are fueling further resentment and skepticism in the pipe community.
Even so, retailers report high demand, amidst myriad inquires and expect to sell-out almost immediately. Even though some pipe smokers are angry and concerned about the quality of the new production, there are a vast number of pipe enthusiasts that have never had the chance to try Dunhill tobaccos in the past and are enthusiastic to do so.
This reporter has never smoked the older Dunhill production, but has had the opportunity to smoke the new production. Everyone of them has been excellent. So even though there are frustrated defecting consumers from the Dunhill tobacco brand, our guess is they will remain in high demand and experience brisk sales.
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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.
Good question Kevin.
“Are you pissed about past unavailability of Dunhill tobaccos and refuse to buy them when they come back, or you can’t wait to get your hands on some?”
There are some great bulk blends that are attempts at cloning the Dunhill taste, but just don’t quite cut the mustard. And, as I’m not fully versed on the reasons that prompted the decision to pull Dunhill tobaccos from the US market, I will not hold that decision against them.
I for one will celebrate the return of those classics to the US market.
Personally, I have smoked Dunhill Tobacco for the last 25 years. I think Dunhill told us what their plans are when the pulled their tobacco from the market in America and cut back on selling pipes and increased their clothing inventory in their shops. CAO has been talking about bringing back tobaccos for years, and Dunhill most recently… seems to me they are talking. It’s like we hear from the movie stars, any publicity is good publicity, even if it’s just talk.
It always takes longer to get stocks together , ship , and get them in the distribution system than first estimated . Good things are worth waiting for and I for one am patiently waiting for Dunhill to get back to the U.S. market . I’m glad they found a distributor in the U.S. . Thanks for the updates and the e-mag in general . Many thanks , Yarekim
This is good news. More choices in the marketplace is never a bad thing.
It’ll be interesting to see the return and taste them. I’m awaiting them patiently. I have nothing to compare them to but Esoterica as it was suggested that they were picking up the slack left by Dunhill. We shall see.
I never want to see a good tobacco leave us. Having said that however, the marketing manager in me has to say that the way Dunhill handled their business was very bad, many of us have moved on to other blends now.
I live in Japan, so I have access to Dunhill Blends. I Like My Mixture 965 and EMP. I look forward to smoking Nightcap, but the Pipe shop I go to in Tokyo is not aware that they are even going to bring back this blend.
That said, I think Dunhill makes some good tobacco. I personally like Squadron Leader by Samuel Gawith as my current favorite English blend.
Dunhill Nightcap is my main tobacco and it is a really great smoke. I am hoping this and EMP plus Alfreds Own will come back. I think the Dunhill Tobac is actually the best around, I have my cellar full of it. Here hoping it does not change too much.
I’m looking forward to giving them a “retry”.
They have done a very poor job in public relations in my opinion and a lot of us have moved on to other brands and blends. Until they get their act together and become a dependable resource, I will not be switching back, I might buy a blend of theirs now and then but none will be my mainstay.
Man I am seriously looking forward to smoking Dunhill. For many many years I only smoked a couple different tobaccos regularly. And, it seems that Dunhill slipped by me. I have since joined in to a few forums on all things pipe and tobaccos and been hearing alot about the Dunhill family of tobaccos. Now I am looking to see what the fuss is about.
Who’s excited ? I am !
I was a late comer to Dunhill tobacco and missed all those years that pipesters enjoyed. But I did manage to get some vintage Dunhill and really liked most of their blends. I really like Nitecap but my favorite is Early Morning Pipe. I hope that CAO is not just blowing smoke that they will deliver the tobac in November. It will be welcomed. Regarding the imitations, they don’t get close and there are a few reviewers of these tobacs that speak highly of them. They are good but no substitute.
I have been ordering Dunhill from Europe for some time now and I find that the Orlik (the current maker of the brand) has done a fine job with some of the blends and a poor job with others. I enjoy Early Morning Pipe the most and I find it very close to the Murray’s edition. I have compared the two side by side and while I prefer Murray’s, the Orlik EMP is still quite good. The 965 however has a similar taste, but really lacks the body that made 965 the outstanding blend it was at one time.
I would like to think that CAO is aware of the high demand that we will all have to deal with at the onset. I am hoping that this is what is causing the delay. It may be better for CAO to keep us waiting while building ample stock rather than have the American pipe smoker have to deal with the same type of nonsense that Gawith smokers are currently dealing with. CAO has one chance to make a good first impression. Hopefully Dunhill will be worth the wait.
Chris, that is my understanding, that they are trying to build ample stock, which is the reason for the delay.
I am beginning to wonder if Dunhill tobaccos are coming to the US. First they said August, then September, then late September or early October, Then late October, then late October or early November, then mid-November, now late November. I smell something fishy.
I would surely be interested so see if what all the anticipation is about is going to be close to what I expect in an English blend that sports the name ‘Dunhill’ and will probably be gravely disappointed if it’s not really close. I enjoyed the full line, ie. EMP, London Mixture, Standard Mixture Medium, 965, Nightcap.. even Aparatif and Durbar….. each having it’s own personality and nuance. With all this waiting and putting it off until a later date and more waiting, it better be good.. or this girls gonna be upset.. haha!
What are you all talking about when you say “COA”? I have no idea what that stands for? To stay on the subject, I am very much looking forward to the return just to see what this legendary tobacco actually tastes like? Think it might be, like most popular items, just a bit over rated.
Vid
Here in the UK we’ve had them for a few months but not Nightcap which I have to order from Germany. Whoever is running this show is doing a bizarre job of it!!