Rules? What Rules?
-
Kevin Godbee - Aug 7, 2014
- 5 min read
Russ Ouellette
In my early twenties I was fortunate to become friends with Mel Feldman, who owned The Smoker in Albany, NY. Mel was kind enough to spend hours talking to me about blending tobacco, which led to some admittedly amateurish attempts at creating my own mixtures. With a little perseverance my work became good enough that we offered a few of my blends at The Pipe Den, also in Albany. They did reasonably well. Well enough, in fact, that some of them were used by other stores in the chain. As I did more blending, I tried to codify things so I had firm guidelines to follow.
In the ensuing years, I read a number of books by people who had a lot more experience than I did, and spoke to a number of blenders to glean as much information as I could with the goal of creating a set of rules to make my efforts as successful as possible. I discovered that opinions differed greatly, even among well-respected blenders and shop owners, but there had to be hard-and-fast rules, right?
From the books I had read, it seemed that most of the authors wrote that a blend shouldn’t contain more than 10 or 20% Perique, and Latakia should be kept at no more than 30%. Something didn’t ring true, as I was fairly sure that Balkan Sobranie Original Smoking Mixture contained more than 30% Latakia. Lane’s bulk blend BS-005 definitely had more than that. As far as Perique went, I couldn’t be sure, but I swore that I had smoked blends that had in excess of 20% of the deeply fermented leaf.
Some of the books said that Orientals and Turkish tobaccos shouldn’t constitute more than 20% of a mixture. But not all Orientals are that assertive, so there must certainly have been some blends with a healthier share than that. The picture didn’t seem any clearer from my reading and discussions. What muddied the waters even further was the lack of consistency in terminology.
Cavendish generally referred to leaf that has been sugared or flavored and pressed for a period of time, then it was sliced and tumbled out. But some black Cavendishes are made of cut leaf that’s toasted and/or steamed without the use of pressure. In fact, I learned as time passed that some "Cavendishes" were just tobaccos that had a top-dressing and were never pressed at all, except during cutting.
Let’s not even get into the English vs. Balkan confusion. When I first started in the business, the term "Balkan" was never used except as a part of a brand name. Back then, "English" tobaccos were ones that were largely unadulterated, so most of today’s "English" blends would fall into this category, but so would a Virginia/Perique blend without any top flavor. This came from the fact that, in the past, the British government had strict guidelines regarding what could be done to tobacco, and the use of flavorings and additives was greatly restricted.
Flakes are pressed whole leaf that is sliced after being removed from the mold, so imagine my surprise when I ordered some Virginia flake and got yellow leaf that had been cut into pieces about ¼" square. Apparently flake-cut tobacco meant something different in the US than in the UK. How could I put together a set of rules or guidelines when there was so much confusion in usage and terminology?
Fast-forwarding to the beginning of Hearth & Home, I found myself fighting against the walls that had been erected by the experts who wrote those old tomes. I felt that I was really taking a chance with one of my earliest blends. Larry’s Blend contained 67% Latakia by weight, and had about 25% Turkish, so I was breaking two of the "rules" with this concoction. Larry Loerzel, for whom the blend is named, really liked it, and I did too. But I was concerned about selling it because it was so unconventional by the standards I had read about. I needn’t have worried as Larry’s Blend has been hugely successful, being one of our best-selling tobaccos for almost nine years.
The success of that blend helped me to come to a conclusion– there are no rules, other than the ones that a blender has to comply with legally. Since then, I have used 25% Perique in a blend that also has toasted black Cavendish in it (Obsidian). A number of my later blends are very Orientals-heavy (Sweet & Savory, Magnum Opus, WhiteKnight), and yet they’ve done well. I’ve done a blend with 30% Latakia and a Bourbon top-dressing (Missouri Meerschaum American Patriot) that’s been well-received. When I was challenged to make a bacon-flavored tobacco, I mixed dark-fired Kentucky, with a hickory smoke aroma, with a maple-flavored base. I did it because of the challenge, but it’s turned out to be pretty popular.
My conclusion is that rules apply when there are universal truths, and those don’t exist when it comes to flavor. Many people would shudder at the thought of chili peppers being combined with chocolate, but it’s been done for centuries with Mexican molé, and now you can find dark chocolate bars with chilis added.
Not only do different people have different tastes, but some people can’t even taste certain things, or, at least they can’t taste them well. I’ve tweaked an experimental blend because I wasn’t happy with it and found that the new version to be satisfying, but some of the people I had sampled it to couldn’t detect any changes. That alone is an indication that rules don’t apply to matters of flavor.
I’ve said a number of times that when my work day is over and I have to clean off my work area, I could take the leavings from the top of the bench, put them in a bag and somewhere, someone would smoke those scraps and declare them to be the greatest blend they’ve ever tried. The upshot is that I’ve decided to not worry about rules anymore and just trust the old taste buds.
|
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
8 Responses
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 637. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Nate King. Most people know of Nate as an excellent pipe artisan. He also has an honorary Master of Pipes degree from the Chicagoland Pipe Collectors Club, and is a member of the prestigious Confrérie des Maitres Pipiers de Saint-Claude. To be inducted into the Confrérie, this past May Nate travelled to Saint-Claude, France with master tobacco blender G.L. Pease, who was also inducted. It was quite a time in France, and at the ceremony. We’ll hear all about those adventures on the show. At the top of the show we’ll continue the virtual tour of Brian’s pipe collection with six of his Satou Dublin-shape pipes.
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.
There are quite a few examples in other industries, crafts, hobbies, etc. where individuals chose not to follow “conventional wisdom, and theirs are household names.
Come to think of it….the Oulette name is well represented in my abode!
As the great philosopher Toucan Sam says…..”follow your nose, wherever it goes”, Russ.
Many of the greatest inventions come from thinking outside the box.
As my philosopher friend, Paul, says:
“Rules are made to be broken”.
“If nobody ever broke any rules, they would have no need to exist”.
I, for one, am glad you’ve relied upon your own good tastes / senses.
Keep up the great work!
I suppose even a loose canon will hit the target sometimes! 🙂 Keep breaking the rules Russ, you’re doin’ just fine in my book.
Nice article.
And like others have said, keep breaking the rules.
Nice article.
And like others have said, keep breaking the rules.
Great essay. I know from experience that two people can sit down with identical pipes and smoke the same blend at the same time getting a completely different profile. Enjoy some of your blends and others I say what the hell were you thinking. That is why there are so many different blends. What a sad world this would be if we had no choices, keep up the good work.
I actually gave up the quest to create those “rules” quite some time ago. What made me write this piece is that I’m working on a new blend that is a pretty radical departure from the norm, but the early test is pretty encouraging. That caused me to laugh when I thought about how silly it was trying to create guidelines for something so subjective.
A good parallel is watching TV cooking shows about BBQ. One pitmaster is telling us to never remove the silverskin from a rack of ribs before smoking them to keep them from drying out, while another says that the marinade won’t penetrate the meat properly if you don’t remove it.
Russ
Russ – surprised in your comment about the bacon flavored tobacco, that you did not mention the name. I have actually bought your Vermont Meat Candy blend (the bacon flavored tobacco.) It’s EXCELLENT. It burns well, smells great and truly does remind one of bacon.