It Depends on How You Look at It
-
Kevin Godbee - Mar 4, 2014
- 5 min read
Russ Ouellette
Is there more art or science to the pipe smoking pastime? At least from one perspective, I’m sure that it’s leaning towards art. In my mind, one of the best ways to delineate between the two is the terminology. A chemical compound, for example, isn’t open to interpretation. To borrow an overused and somewhat fatalistic modern phrase- it is what it is. But art, as a category, is awash in blurred lines; one man’s jazz is another man’s rock. Two different restaurants may serve a similar, or even identical dish, but categorize them differently. Styles of painting can sometimes fall between two disparate schools. Of the industries I’ve been involved in, pipe smoking terms are open to interpretation more than in any of the rest.
We just re-launched our website, and on the new format, we had to put characteristics for all the pipes into a tool, so the information would be visible to our customers, and at times it was a struggle. At what point does a billiard become an egg? Is a tall pot still a pot, or does it become a billiard? If a Zulu is flared more at the top of the bowl, is it now a bent Dublin? In the couple of months we spent putting all of these characteristics into our system, we had more than a few disagreements on shapes. In a handful of cases, the manufacturer’s description referred to a pipe as one shape, while we considered it something else. In that case, what should we do?
One of the most difficult categories was freehands. Some people consider a freehand to be a shape. I don’t, but some makers put freehand in the description, so who’s right? The majority of the pipes that use that descriptor are, in my mind, a stylized Dublin, but to simplify things, we accepted freehand as a shape.
Is the stain walnut, pecan, or is it brown? One company calls a stain cherry, and the next will refer to it as mahogany. Some pipes, when sandblasted, look more like a rusticated pipe, especially when a piece of briar with open grain is blasted.
When we venture into tobaccos, it’s as bad, or worse. I view Orientals as a broad category, with Turkish being a subset. Some companies use the terms interchangeably. What confuses the issue further is that the individual varietals used to be available under their own names- Yenidje, Xanthi, Bashi Bagli, Mahalla, etc. Now, much of what’s accessible are blends of different strains, and the lines become even less distinct. To make matters worse, if I’m using a blend, I have to rely upon the supplier’s description. If they say that a blend of Orientals contains Dubec, I can’t dispute it, as it would be nearly impossible to disprove. The companies I buy from are reputable, so I’m not too concerned, but if they wanted to make a substitution, it would be hard to know, unless they told me.
Categories of blends are another area of confusion. In the recent past, the term “English” has meant a Latakia-based blend with Virginias as the secondary note, while “Balkan” referred to a Latakia blend with Orientals-forward. When I first started in the business, in the seventies, English generally referred to tobaccos without a noticeable top-dressing, because, back then, British manufacturers were extremely limited, by law, in the additives they could use.
Greg Pease was the first person, as far as I know, who publicly suggested that we ditch those inaccurate labels, and I’ve tried to avoid them since I read his opinion, because I agree. “Latakia blend, Virginias-forward” is a much more precise terminology, but it’s also more unwieldy so the old nomenclature persists. To break all blends down into “English”, “Non-Aromatic” and “Aromatic” is painting with an awfully broad brush, yet we decided to use those categories on our website, because they were the most commonly used.
The problem for the consumer is that these labels create issues when looking at new blends. A Prince Albert devotee may be somewhat reluctant to try a new blend based upon it being categorized as “non-aromatic”, because, by experience, (s)he may have found that the grouping may also include Virginia/Perique mixtures. But if that person saw that a tobacco was described as a “semi-aromatic, Burley-based” blend, it might be worth a shot.
This confusion is part of the reason that, long ago, we made the decision to include the components in the description of our blends. It’s not as if listing the individual tobaccos will give people the key to recreating it themselves. There are so many factors, aside from components and proportions, that can change a blend, that it would be nearly impossible to reconstruct one from a list of what it contains. Besides, it would probably be more expensive to make on your own. That’s why we have been up-front about what leaf we use.
If we move away from those broad descriptions, how many different labels should we use? I figured that it would take about fifteen distinct divisions to cover everything, but as I soon as I finished my list, I could find examples that didn’t seem to fit any of them. It got to a point where it would almost be easier just to list the components.
After giving this more thought than it probably deserves, I came to the conclusion that it would be very difficult to refine these labels. Firstly, it would be almost impossible to get a consensus on new descriptions. Secondly, we’d have to overcome the intransigence of some people to accept the changes.
Finally, I realized that it might be best to leave well enough alone. I’m all for disclosure and transparency, and I appreciate accuracy, so why would I be okay with the status quo? I’ve had some fun and spirited discussions about pipe shapes and blend types, so a change would, possibly, eliminate a lot of them. Although I would still prefer clarity, I also enjoy the occasional friendly argument.
|
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
6 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.
I can’t tell you how many friendly arguments I’ve had over the ingredient “Oriental”. I just usually say, “Well, let me try a bowl!” Your insight is always an education Russ, Thanks!
It is by all means “How You Look at It”. I can have a fellow pipe smoker tell me he doesn’t like English blends, but when I give him a bowl of a “typical” English blend, he enjoys it. It surprises the heck out of him what the blend is. As far as shapes of pipes, it is all art. But it cannot be truly appreciated until one can actually hold and inspect it. I, for one, need to hold a pipe in my hand to see how it feels. No two pipes are the same, even of the same manufacturer, model and style. This is why I dislike to buy from the internet(unfortunately, due to lack of Pipe shops in Miami). I do appreciate the craft of Pipe makers and tobacco blenders. Thank you Russ for your articles and insights
Loved reading your article! It was very funny also! To categorize points of view!! Freehand or not so much!? Egg or billiard!! LOL. About tobaccos I like the straight forward descriptions. Your definition of English versus Balkan is now my reference about these two styles of tobacco blends. Thanks for the great insights on such an art form: pipes and tobaccos.
I personally like Amphora and Balkan.I tried Erinmore..its very good but so strong..
Thanks for a well written article. I’m glad to read that blenders are sensitive to the issue of informative tin descriptions. Those that I appreciate the most are simple lists of ingredients and amendments without poetical embellishment or promotional hype.
A very provacative article to be sure and I really get what you are saying when it comes to orientals. I too hold judgement on any blends capacity to “deliver the goods” when it comes to pure enjoyment and I don’t have a refined enough pallate to distinguish any given type of “oriental leaf”. I rely on the smoking experience over time and the rotation of briar or cobs to give a more accurate evaluation as to whether the blend is a keeper. I personally tend to gravitate towards Balkan and prefer the complexity experienced throughout the bowl. Thanks for a superb article!