Versatile Virginia
-
Kevin Godbee - Jun 7, 2013
- 5 min read
Russ Ouellette
As you might guess, I love working with tobacco. I equate my profession with that of a chef; each component having unique properties that make it a valuable addition to a blend. Of all the available leaf that’s out there, nothing is more versatile or widely used as what we most commonly call Virginia. To the government, this leaf is referred to as flue cured. The name addresses the method used to cure the tobacco. The individual leaves are tied in "hands" and attached to a pole and hung in a barn. Indirect heat is introduced by pipes, or flues, that run throughout the building. The heat "sets" the leaf, so its color and chemistry become stable. This tobacco, also called brightleaf, and has two qualities that set it apart—it’s high in natural sugars and relatively low in oils. Its nicotine content ranges from low to moderate, but different methods of processing can increase the content significantly.
Flue Cure Barn Near Lawsonville, NC © 2011 Phil Ross (Used with permission)
Before going into the uses and character of Virginia any further, one thing that should be noted is that the name is a bit of a misnomer. Although Virginia has been grown in the state bearing that name, historical evidence shows that it was first developed in North Carolina (Carolina tobacco is an offshoot of Virginia). The name aside, this leaf is grown in a number of regions in the U.S., Canada and countries in the Balkan region, Africa, South America and Asia.
Virginia is used in virtually all kinds of pipe tobacco blends—Latakia blends, Virginias, Virginia/Periques, Orientals, Burley blends and aromatics may all contain some brightleaf. Some darker, fire-cured varieties are used in snuff and chew, and Virginia is used in the majority of cigarette blends. Some of the finest quality cigarettes are made strictly of flue cured tobacco.
What makes this leaf so versatile is that it responds amazingly well to processes that are used to develop certain aspects of its chameleon-like character. In its most natural state, it tends to be lemon yellow to gold in color and has a pronounced sweetness with a marked acidity that some people describe as citrusy. That sugary sharpness can be used in concert with other leaves to make blends more balanced or to add another element of sweetness. Processing the tobacco a little differently will change the color and the flavor profile, bringing out toasty or bready notes, dark dried fruit or even a spirits-like aspect.
Two commonly used methods for artificially maturing the tobacco would be the use of heat and/or pressure. Heat will help caramelize the sugars and add some depth. In the case of stoving, which involves toasting the tobacco on a metal surface until it blackens, the flavor becomes fairly intense, but can also tend to burn a little hot.
Pressing or twisting Virginias bursts the cell walls allowing the fluids to co-mingle and also can caramelize some of the sugars. The tobacco will develop a depth of flavor similar to that of long term aging, but in much less time. Properly done, notes of dried fig and plum can become evident, and are signatures of flue cured tobaccos that have been aged.
In practical use, Virginias by themselves are a wonderful smoke, if a bit hot due to the high sugar content and low oils, which can slow down the burn rate. Some people find them to be somewhat one dimensional and delicate. While that can be true, it doesn’t have to be. Using darker, pressed and/or heat treated varieties in concert with lighter leaf will produce a fairly complex profile with a fair amount of depth.
In Latakia based blends, flue cured leaf can add sweeten, and an extra dimension, complementing the smoky leaf or adding a brighter component. It will also make these blends much more interesting with a fair amount of age on them, as the maturation of the Virginia(s) will bring a whole new element into play.
In concert with Perique, brightleaf really sings. The spice and deep sweetness of the dark, fermented tobacco from Louisiana brings out a different character from flue cured tobacco. These mixtures tend to have sweetness, depth, body, fruitiness and/or pepper, and they can be a bit heady, so they should be enjoyed slowly. Perique does for Virginias what mushroom can do for a steak.
Oriental blends can suffer because of the pronounced natural flavors and aromas of these sun cured tobaccos, but with the judicious use of Virginias, they become a chorus in harmony. The sweet notes of flue cured combine beautifully with the floral and umami aspects of Oriental and Turkish leaves. In fact, I would have a hard time imagining an Oriental blend without the use of Virginias.
Burley tobaccos, at their lightest, have a slightly sour nuttiness, somewhat like a walnut or pecan. At their darkest, they have a barnyard or cigar-like quality that can have heavy spice notes. Add dark fired Kentucky to the mix for smokiness, and the combination is huge and bold. But if there isn’t a certain amount of sweetness to tie it all together, straight Burleys can easily be overbearing, and that’s precisely why Burley blends without a significant top dressing commonly include some Virginia (think Half and Half, Burley and Bright).
Many aromatics contain some Virginia, and some are completely made of brightleaf. The natural sugars reduce the need for sweetened syrups. The fruit and confectionery flavors work particularly well with flue cured tobacco, because more natural essences can be used without the need for added sugars.
Every time I experiment with Virginias, I seem to discover something new. I’ve often thought about seeing how many different blends I could come up with by using the same blend of flue cured tobacco and processing it differently. When my schedule lightens up (which should be somewhere around 2018), I might just give it a try. But based upon what I’ve observed so far, the possible blends could wind up in the dozens.
If there’s a more versatile tobacco than Virginia, I’ve yet to find it, and if you look around, I’m sure that you’ll find some new favorites in the mix.
|
Russ Ouellette is the blender/creator of the Hearth & Home series of tobaccos for Habana Premium Cigar Shoppe and www.pipesandcigars.com in Bethlehem, PA. 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
11 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
New Cigars |
107 Fresh Savinelli Pipes |
6 Fresh Savinelli Autograph Pipes |
9 Fresh Ashton Pipes |
3 Fresh Lasse Skovgaard 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.
Another informative piece, Russ. Thanks.
Having lived a large part of my life in North Carolina, I was always fascinated by tobacco barns, and they were everywhere. I never knew how they worked….
Great article Russ -Thanks. Interesting insights on how Virginia interacts with the other leaf in our favorite blends.
Great article that packs a ton of information in a concise, easy to understand form. Well done and thanks, Russ!
Great article, Russ.
It will give everyone who reads it a better understanding of the characteristics of Virginia tobacco.
Russ said, “I’ve often thought about seeing how many different blends I could come up with by using the same blend of flue cured tobacco and processing it differently. When my schedule lightens up (which should be somewhere around 2018), I might just give it a try.”
.
I, for one, have been enjoying the product of your attempts to create a dizzying array of blends from Virginia leaf, and can’t wait until that schedule of yours opens up. Cheers!
Thanks for a very informative and interesting article on this amazingly versatile tobacco variety.
Fascinating article! “Perique does for Virginias what mushroom can do for a steak” is an apt analogy– one of the best things I’ve read in a long time.
I like how you simplified the descriptions and explained so clearly the different characteristics of the tobacco.
Very informative!
VAs and VA/Pers are my favorite blends.
I now know a lot more about Virginia’s, where they come from, and how they are used and cured for pipe tobacco
Thanks
Allan