A Glass of Tobacco, a Bowl of Wine
-
Kevin Godbee - Aug 3, 2011
- 8 min read
By G. L. Pease
I frequently mention wine and pipe tobacco in the same puff of smoke. It’s usually an off-hand, casual remark, and it wasn’t until I was challenged by a friend, a devotée of the grape, but no fan of the leaf, to defend what seemed to be a somewhat tenuous position that I started to examine it more closely, and wound up finding even more similarities than I’d previously thought possible. On the surface, it might be difficult to imagine two things as different as a bottle of wine and a tin of tobacco sharing many similarities; let’s start at the ground, and work our way up.
Though there are many species of tobacco, quite a few of which are grown as ornamental plants for their showy leaves and fragrant flowers, that which finds its way into our pipes is of a single species, Nicotiana tabacum. (N. rustica is sometimes grown for smoking, or for the production of chewing tobacco or pesticide, but it is much to harsh and too strong to find its way into our pipes.) Similarly, the majority of grapes cultivated for the production of wine are of a single species, Vitis vinifera.
Within these respective species, however, there are many varieties, each having it’s own distinctive characteristics. With tobacco, we have, oriental, burley, Virginia flue-cured, Maryland, and Kentucky varieties, amongst others, each with its own personality, flavor, aroma and burning qualities. In the same way, vines bring us grapes like Cabernet Sauvignon, Pinot Noir, Chardonnay, Sauvignon Blanc, Zinfandel, Syrah, and many others, each being distinctive and possessing unique characteristics of taste, aroma, and color.
But, it doesn’t stop with the plant. In the world of wine, terroir is a term used to describe the land and conditions in which the grapes are grown – the soil, the climate, the topography of the vineyards, and even other plants that grow in the vicinity of the vines create an aspect of the finished wine that goes beyond the basic varietal characteristics of the grapes themselves. If the soil is rocky, the wine may exhibit mineralic qualities. If aromatic herbs are grown nearby, the wine will take on some of those aromas. A vine grown on a eastern slope with sunny mornings will produce a very different wine than the same vine grown on an western slope and getting more of its sunlight in the afternoons.
Tobacco can also exhibit terroir, though usually not in as obvious a manner. Soil, climate, irrigation and cultivation techniques, when combined with the tobacco’s genetic stock, affect the leaf’s nicotine level, sugar and acid content, aroma, flavor, and burning qualities. A burley plant raised in the rich, fertile soil of the Carolinas, for instance, will yield a very different leaf from the same plant reared in Brazil. Flue-cured tobaccos from the south of France, most often robed in a bright golden straw color, are mild, slightly tart, with wonderful sweetness, while the same leaf grown in Malawi tends to be darker, stronger more oily, and less sweet. Each style has its place, and some blending houses show preference for one style over another, using their preferred leaf to its best advantage.
Turning our attention to the path from raw ingredient, grapes or tobacco leaf, to finished product, we can also find some interesting parallels, both in method and approach. Some wine makers, especially the larger, mass-producers of bulk wines, will assert a specific style upon what they make, blending grapes from different vintages, different estates, even different varieties, and using vinification techniques designed to lend greater consistency to what ends up in the bottle. These wines can be of good quality, and will taste very similar from year to year, but they’re never going to be gold medal winners.
Others will use all of their skills and experience to let exceptional grapes express themselves with a purer voice. This is the approach most often taken by the best vintners, frequently making wines from the grapes of a single estate, or even a single plot. These wines will change from vintage to vintage, and there have been years in which some producers were unable, or unwilling, to make a wine because weather conditions resulted in an inferior harvest.
Most of the big pipe-tobacco operations (and virtually all of the cigarette companies) tend to operate more similarly to the bulk wine producers, striving to manufacture as consistent a product as possible by blending different crops and using sugars and flavoring agents to make final adjustments. Smaller blending houses seek out the best possible leaf, and endeavor to create the best blend possible from that leaf, consistent with the style of the blend being produced. (See last month’s column, Hobgoblins of Consistency, for more.) Working this way, one vintage of a particular blend might be slightly different from another, but they’ll show sufficient stylistic similarity to make even the astutely critical smoker happy. Some blending houses go so far as to package limited edition, single-vintage tobaccos produced from a specific crop with exceptional characteristics.
Leaving the mass-market products aside, and turning our attention only to premium wines and tobaccos, let’s look at aging. Like fine wines, the best tobaccos improve with time in their tins. And, also like wines, different blends have different life-expectancies before they go "over the hill." Biological and chemical processes begin to take place as soon as a tobacco is tinned, and the changes can be dramatic, depending on the blend itself, how long it’s left to sit, and the conditions under which it’s aged. Ideally, tins or jars of tobacco and bottles of wines should both be stored in a cool, dark, relatively dry (ca. 60% R.H.) place.
The most noticeable changes occur within the first few months, with 12 to 18 months representing a good starting point for those new to experiencing aged tobaccos, though changes are very detectable after about six months. At about five to six years, real magic often takes place, with the tobacco exhibiting greater complexity and smoothness, and often tasting and smelling quite different from its younger form.
As with great wines, whose corks can fail in the bottle, aging tobacco doesn’t always go the way we want it to;. seals can break and tins can rust, or, in extreme cases, mold can develop. Here, we’re a little better off than the wine collector. While a failed cork guarantees a ruined wine whose destiny it is to be poured down the drain, a broken seal or pin-holed tin doesn’t necessarily ruin the contents, though we may be robbed of some of the wonderful byproducts of the long aging. Frequently, the tobacco can be carefully removed and rehydrated, and will deliver an excellent smoke. (Mold, on the other hand, is disastrous, though fortunately relatively rare.)
Different tobaccos, like different wines, have different life expectancies, too; it really depends on the blend, and what our expectations are from it. A tobacco or a wine with good structure – that quality that allows it to stand up to the years – can go decades before beginning a slow decline, while one that lacks body in its youth will just get weak. Some feel that Latakia blends, particularly those blends that rely on the youthful exuberance of that leaf for their character, begin to go too soft after a few years, and can become flat, while virginia blends are almost universally accepted as worthy of long-age. (I’ve smoked some virginias and virginia/perique blends in excess of 60 years old that were sublime, showing no sign of being beyond their prime.) And, while Latakia blends do soften over time, they also develop new complexity and wonderful aromas that, if you’re willing to forgo the campfire and leather intensity of young Latakia, can be delightful in their own rights.
Just as a great wine opens in the glass, allowing some of the off-flavors of age to dissipate to the air, and gradually offering up deeper aromas, tobaccos with even a little age under their belts are often improved by being allowed to breathe a bit. Though there is nothing more enjoyable to me than that first whiff, and the first bowl from a long-aged tin, over the years, I’ve learnt to anticipate that, in fact, the last bowl is often even better than the first, especially if stored in a jar with a little head space, because the tobacco has had some time to breathe.
Finally, in order to fully appreciate a wine or a tobacco, the right vessel must be used. A great wine in a paper cup certainly won’t show its best, and a great tobacco in a bad pipe isn’t likely to be a particularly enjoyable experience. Taking some time to explore a tobacco in different pipes often provides some wonderful surprises, and once in a while, we find those special combinations that deliver the sort of smoke we never forget. To this day, I can easily recall a bowl of ten year old Drucquer Red Lion that I smoked out of an especially lovely Barling Quaint that belonged to a friend and fellow collector, and that was nearly 30 years ago!
We’ve only scratched the surface, here; this is a weightier subject than can be treated fully in a short column. We could go into comparisons of specific wine types with specific tobaccos, or how tobaccos enhance other gustatory experiences, and vice versa, or things I’ve not thought of, yet. I hope, however, that there’s been some drink-for-thought in these brief words, and that this might stimulate some readers to dive into the deep waters to explore more fully on their own. Exploration is, after all, a big part of the enjoyment of our pastime.
Your turn.
-glp
Since 1999, Gregory L. Pease has been the principal alchemist behind the blends of G.L. Pease Artisanal Tobaccos. He’s been a passionate pipeman since his university days, having cut his pipe teeth at the now extinct Drucquer & Sons Tobacconist in Berkeley, California. Greg is also author of The Briar & Leaf Chronicles, a photographer, recovering computer scientist, sometimes chef, and creator of The Epicure’s Asylum. |
[Editor’s Note: If you’d like to read more about wine, check out our Wine Column.]
Written by Kevin Godbee
16 Responses
Recent Posts
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 608. Our featured interview tonight is with Nathan Davis of Greywoodie Fame. Nathan has been known as one of the biggest fans of Kaywoodie, and now he owns the company. Nathan started as a collector of Kaywoodie, then became a dealer and launched his Greywoodie site. Kaywoodie is a 173 year old company owned by the same family for four generations until now. He goes by CrashTheGrey in the Pipes Magazine forums, and is also the organizer of the Capitaland Pipe Show, and has his own podcast. We’ll hear first hand about his exciting journey, and what he has planned for the future of Kaywoodie. At the top of the show, Brian will dispel some myths about the bottom of the pipe bowl.
Pundit is a pipe smoker who never sleeps. No, that’s not right. Pundit is a pipe smoker who is always thinking about pipes and tobacco. Even in his sleep. Well, that’s close enough. It’s May. Blooming flowers, weeds, trees, and grass, have taken over the yard, and pollen scatters and sprays like rain. We asked for spring, and we got it in barrels. But this is also a time when thoughts turn to new pipes and new tobacco blends. It’s like that runaway elephant when it freed itself recently from a circus show in Butte, Mont. The Pundit herd rules, but it is too large, despite thoughts and urges for more pipes and more tobacco. What to do? If you are like Pundit, you eat, sleep(less), and think pipes and tobacco blends. Right now, everywhere, all pipes, all the time. Call it pollen-crazed mind. And just so you know, Pundit has already set aside a stash for new pipes. We’ll just let the herd run amok. It’s the Butte syndrome. Now that we’ve settled the weather and runaway elephants issue, it’s time for a couple of Pipe Lessons from the Past: Do take your pipe when you go fishing, say. Your pipe pal tends to calm the nerves when the big one takes the bait, doncha know. I once hooked a large brown trout while fly fishing a pristine Missouri trout stream. Its waters glimmered in the early morning dawn and trout were rising to a variety of emerging bugs. Mouth open, pipe drops to the bottom of said stream and heads out toward somewhere in Missouri with the rest of the brown trout. Leaning over to quickly grab the disappearing pipe, my brand new German-produced Puma trout knife drops from the leather sheath dangling from a leather strap around my neck. Don’t become wildly flailing with excitement when you hook the big one and lose a pipe and knife worth more than said fish, hand-tied trout fly, line, and rod and reel! Patience, as in pipe smoking, pays off. Do keep your precious pipes clean with regular pipe cleaners and solutions. I used soft and bristly cleaners with alcohol (50 percent isopropyl). In some cases, it took stronger stuff, grain alcohol, or even special pipe sweetener found at pipe and tobacco brick and mortar shops and online. Uh, I hope it doesn’t need to be said that you don’t drink grain alcohol. A dab on a bristly pipe cleaner will do. Do not ream out the inside of the bowl with that hard-won cake buildup with a pocket knife. Pundit ruined a beautiful Peterson with a pocketknife, ala Jack the Ripper. You can find great tools for that job. In fact, for newbies and veterans alike, check out the Smokingpipes.com “How to Clean a Pipe.” It is a Master Class on the proper way to clean a pipe, inside and out. Do store your treasures in pipe racks. It keeps them safe and out of harm’s way. Refrain from tossing pipes into an old shoe box or drawer. That’s the heartless approach. Do not try to move your pipe racks if fully loaded with pipes. Invariably you will come down with a case of the jitters, like yours truly. Pipes will rock and roll like Elvis and invariably one or two will hit the floor. I broke the stem of a one-of-a-kind Pete, and the tenon out of a wonderfully carved Danish. Mind you, this was in one big rattle-and-roll. And one more final painful lesson learned from the past: If you drop a beloved meerschaum on the floor, it being composed of ancient sea critters and sea shells, will shatter into a thousand and one shards. One of my treasured meers hit the floor and scattered like so much white dust across the floor. Pipes are my BFFs. I have learned over time they deserve attention and TLC. Ok, time for a note or two from Pipe Smokers of the Past : One fellow who was rarely seen without his pipe is Harold Wilson, two-time former United Kingdom Prime Minister. He ran the political show from Oct. 1964 to June 1970, and again from March 1974 to April 1976. Wilson was born March 11, 1916, in Huddersfield, West Riding, Yorkshire, and died May 24, 1955, in London. He was looked upon, politically speaking, as the people’s Prime Minister who smoked a pipe and was down-to-earth, just a regular guy. I’m an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat—Harold Wilson And one from America’s tinsel town, Glenn Ford, a longtime actor not only famous for his roles but also for his pipe smoking. He loved Dunhill pipes, naturally. Glenn Ford, Gwyllyn Samuel Newton “Glenn” Ford, was born May 1, 1916, in Sainte-Christine-d’Auvergne, Quebec, and died Aug. 30, 2006, in Beverly Hills, Calif. Ford’s movie and television career began in 1937 and lasted until 1991. He won a Golden Globe Award as Best Actor for his performance in Pocketful of Miracles in 1961. If they try to rush me, I always say, I’ve only got one other speed and it’s slower—Glenn Ford And a Pundit parting thought: Pipes and books are two good friends to have.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 607. Our featured interview tonight is with pipe maker Brian Laurent. Brian has worked with his hands since he was 14-years old. He’s been a woodworker for over 20 years. After he became a pipe smoker, he started making pipe racks, and then graduated to making pipes. He also enjoys painting, working on hot rods, cooking and baking. For his regular job he is a dental technician, implant specialist, and full mouth reconstruction specialist. 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.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 606. Our featured interview tonight is with Per George Jensen. Most pipe enthusiasts know Per as the longtime Mac Baren Tobacco Company spokesman. Last year he made some changes in his life. He got married, moved to Germany and parted ways with Mac Baren, but not with the tobacco business. He is consulting with Sutliff Tobacco Co., and he created the popular and unique signature tobacco series, “Pipe Force”. Tonight’s discussion will include details on Per’s line of blending tobacco, which has something for everyone. You can smoke them straight, but if you want to blend tobaccos, we will have some good advice on this episode. At the top of the show, since it’s springtime, Brian will discuss seasonal tobaccos and answer two questions that come up often.
His grandfather came to the US with a $50 gold coin in his shoe, opened up a cigar shop, and his most famous customer was Babe Ruth. He holds the record for the longest slow smoke in the world at over 24 hours, and he is the only man who stopped Chuck Norris from round-house kicking the Nording Pipe Statue. The most interesting man in the world, Jonathan Goldsmith, stopped by the Chicago Pipe Show this year to get kissed on the cheek by Neal Osborn. Wait, what? OK, I kid. Jonathan came to honor his friend and fishing buddy Steve Norse of Vermont Freehand at the annual Doctors and Masters of Pipes award dinner. Steve was one of the two recipients of the Masters of Pipes award and asked Johnathan to show up and add some color to his acceptance speech. Slightly overshadowed but no less important! Jay Furman was also honored as this year’s hobbyist Master of Pipes, joining me and a pipe-star-studded list of great contributors to the hobby and profession of pipes. Jay is a character in his own right. While I don’t know him as well as I would like, I’ve learned that he’s a kind-hearted collector who started the Artisan Pipe Makers Club, a place where new artisans learn, grow, and are challenged. There are around 60 artisans who participate, collaborate, and learn. Jay and Mike Bishop also started the Long Island Pipe Club, which has around 50 members and meets twice a month on different sides of the island. What is not featured here are pictures of the Doctors of Pipes. Both recipients were unable to attend: Marco Parascenzo – Doctor of Pipes, Trade/Industry Regis MacCafferty – Doctor of Pipes, Hobby Please join us in congratulating these newly inducted Doctors and Masters of Pipes. It is a great honor, and each of these men embodies what our hobby and industry strive to do: grow, educate, and cultivate its future. I encourage everyone to attend the dinner next year as it’s always illuminating. And now, on with the show. Sort of. You may be wondering what the most interesting pipe smoker in the world smokes…. I didn’t miss the opportunity to chat with this incredibly nice man, whom Brian Levine and I also remembered from one of our favorite TV shows, the A-Team. He was also in many other shows from the 80s, such as Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, Dallas, and MacGyver, just to name a few. Jonathan: I actually enjoy simple and readily available tobacco like Captain Black or some black cavendish from my local cigar and pipe shop in Vermont. What about your first pipe? Jonathan: I picked up my first pipe; I think it was a billiard when I was in London many years ago at a place called James Fox. How often do you smoke? Jonathan: Almost every day. I enjoy a pipe in the morning and a cigar in the afternoon. I want to thank Jonathan Goldsmith for taking a few minutes to sit down with me and being gracious enough to snap pictures with many of us at the show; it was a ton of fun and made this year’s show even more memorable! This year, the Chicago Pipe Show kicked it up a notch with a new location, new signage, new pre-registration and payment system, new show executive staff, and lots of new surprises. Now, Tim Garrity, President of the Chicagoland Pipe Club, tells me that over 400 attendees were at the show, but they are still tabulating the numbers too, so this is subject to getting updated and expanded. We do have our dates for next year at this same location – the first weekend of May at the Hyatt Regency, Chicago O’Hare. Of course, like any good Chicago show, there was plenty of room hopping and the announcement board. The signage this year was super helpful in knowing where to go when to go, and what tables our favorite vendors were at. While the show was jam-packed, the spacing of the tables allowed everyone to move around freely and didn’t feel over-crowded as the tables and isles were spaced out to allow room for vendors and collectors to stretch out. The smoking tent was hopping all the time, but luckily, air flow and some great air purifiers by Lake Air kept it fresh. As usual, there was a great sample table with tons of things to try in the tent, and on your way to the tent, there was a conveniently placed cash bar. This year the tent was 25% bigger than last year, although you wouldn’t notice because there were more people at the show! Kaywoodie is under new Management. At the show, I chatted with Nathan “Greywoodie” Davis about how he came to take over the 173-year-old company. Tell me how this happened. Nathan: This month is my 5th anniversary of Greywoodie opening. I was friends with Bill and had a huge collection of Kaywoodies – I approached him about having them available outside of brick and mortar. He had no online presence and didn’t sell direct. He said if I wanted them to be more available, the best thing I could do was quit my job and sell them myself. He was mostly kidding because I had a really good job in the legal profession, but I wasn’t happy so one day I did give him a call and said “hey whats your minimum order,” and he said “You didn’t just quit your job because I was joking?” I did and I started out that way as an online retailer. So, in working with him, we did exclusives, and I learned about pipe making from him, both production and hand-made. We brought back some historical lines as well, and soon enough, I was helping to make the pipes I was buying from him. It was great for him to get my labor […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 605. Our featured interview tonight is with Pete Prevost. Pete is a pipe maker and the President of the BriarWorks pipe factory in Columbia Tennessee. BriarWorks is a a pipe maker co-op with several other pipe makers, including Todd Johnson, who co-founded it with Pete. Brian and Pete will be talking about what’s new at BriarWorks, and how they are getting ready to attend the Chicago pipe show. (This was recorded before the show that took place last weekend.) At the top of the show, Brian will give his report of his travels and what happened at the Chicago show.
Great article..as per usual Mr. Pease!!!
Fantastic analogies…
Great article as always, Greg. I would add that coffees and teas take their place with these gustatory experiences that reflect the complex interactions of grape, leaf, or bean with our palates; fleeting moments that a life spent capturing would not be considered wasted.
Thank you, gents. And, I agree about tea and coffee being equally in their place here, and, even some fine spirits!
Thank you Greg.
That was a great read.
I’ll re-read it later this evening with a bowl or two of Haddo’s Delight and a dusty old cob-webby bottle of wine.
This post is simply stunning! I love tobacco almost as much as I love wine. 😉 Now I need a glass of Chambourcin.
I also find it interesting that the same things that will ruin a bottle of wine or a tin of tobacco, especially the mold, are the same things that will ruin a book. We must be kind and gentle servants to our earthly pleasures.
Another great article, Greg!
G.L. Please. He’s not just a master blender, but a master writer.
I kid you not, I’d buy a book if G.L. Please wrote one.
As a bit of a brewer myself, I often find comparisons between fermented beverages and tobacco. Thank you for the thoughts Mr. Pease!
This article has been waiting to be written for a long time and was prologued in the “….Consistency” thread; excellent precis of what could be a doctoral dissertation!
A couple of thoughts:
“Different tobaccos, like different wines, have different life expectancies, too; it really depends on the blend, and what our expectations are from it. A tobacco or a wine with good structure – that quality that allows it to stand up to the years – can go decades before beginning a slow decline, while one that lacks body in its youth will just get weak….”
Wines with really good structure not only benefit from aging but must be aged as the structure would be too firm for immediate drinking; is this so with tobacco blends?
Wines without quality do not benefit from aging (age crap and you get old crap); is this too applicable to tobacco’s?
The terroir question is crucial to wine and tobacco but some also say it’s the most important factor in choosing good briar.
“While a failed cork guarantees a ruined wine whose destiny it is to be poured down the drain….”
I bet it goes into your cooking pot – mine does!
“….the last bowl is often even better than the first, especially if stored in a jar with a little head space, because the tobacco has had some time to breathe)”
How often the last glass is the best (or, indeed, the only good one) if the wine hasn’t been aired long enough!
The wine and tobacco pairings is a different subject; more research is needed over many bottles and many bowls!.
Is that a Sanda pipe in the picture? Fail. Haha great article though!
Thanks for another great article that hits most of the major parallels between two epicurean experiences; and suggests yet another article examining exactly how they might intersect, or be enjoyed together. Your mention of terroir also reminds me that the vocabulary of oenology may prove useful when applied to tobacco (which was touched upon in “Don’t Think Of A Purple Giraffe.”
.
I was particularly taken by your recognition of the importance of pairing wine to glass and blend to pipe — both presumably driven by geometry; this, while discovering just how successfully one of my under-used bulldogs tamed one of the sharper Va.’s in my cellar.
.
Thanks for delivering much to think about and experience. 🙂
Jim wrote: “Wines with really good structure not only benefit from aging but must be aged as the structure would be too firm for immediate drinking; is this so with tobacco blends? Wines without quality do not benefit from aging (age crap and you get old crap); is this too applicable to tobacco’s?”
While a well-structured wine won’t be as fully enjoyable in its youth, it won’t be bad, per se. I suppose the parallel doesn’t quite hold, though, as a great tobacco blend should taste good right out of the gate. It won’t have developed its complexity, and may be somewhat out of balance, but it shouldn’t taste bad. And, personally, I think poor blends are just like poor wines in the respect that aging will not transform them into something wonderful.
“The terroir question is crucial to wine and tobacco but some also say it’s the most important factor in choosing good briar.”
I’m of the belief that the terroir of the briar may play a role, but it’s not as significant as some would have us think. How the briar is handled after digging, how it’s cut, boiled, cured, aged, and where it’s aged, all play a role in the smoking qualities of the finished pipe. Then, there’s that little bit of something inexplicable that makes the difference between a good pipe and an exquisite pipe.
“The wine and tobacco pairings is a different subject; more research is needed over many bottles and many bowls!”
Agreed! Salut!
Cortezattic writes: “I was particularly taken by your recognition of the importance of pairing wine to glass and blend to pipe — both presumably driven by geometry; this, while discovering just how successfully one of my under-used bulldogs tamed one of the sharper Va.’s in my cellar”
While glass geometry is an important factor for tasting wines, the fact that glass is completely neutral, and briar, much less so results in a significant deviation in the analogy. Frankly, the taste of a specific pipe with a specific tobacco is not something that can be predicted with any accuracy using any sort of metric. I’ve got pipes of all shapes and sizes, many exhibiting a preference for one style of blend, or even a single blend. Sometimes, it’s a subtle thing, sometimes a dramatic one. But, when that special combination reveals itself, I’m not going to argue about why; I’m just going to enjoy it for as long as it lasts. (I first stumbled upon the way virginias bloom in pots quite accidentally, by eschewing the conventional wisdom that “pots are not flake pipes.” Why not? So, I tried it, and found it fantastic. I love full Latakia blends in smaller pipes, because they can intensify to the point of palate fatigue in larger pipes to me. Different pipes, different tobaccos, different folks. That’s all there is to it.
Very nice analogy between the aging of wine and tobacco. Personally, Coffee or a spirit would be my choice for pairing with tobacco. Wine with food.Different strokes for different folks as they say.
Doc, I totally agree. In fact, I’ve been banging my head trying to figure out if there is ANY way that a wine/tobacco pairing could be done. As for wine with food, how about wine as food. During the ridiculousness that was going on in California during the 1980s, the term “food wine” was coined, which I always considered ludicrous. Fortunately, most vintners have gotten smarter, and understand that wine is supposed to go with food, so the term is redundant. (I’m nearly as opinionated about wines, spirits and food as I am about tobacco!)
Some beers are certainly sturdy enough to stand up to a good tobacco. In fact, I think the problem might be finding tobaccos that stand up to the beers! A California style IPA with JackKnife might be a good starting point. Perhaps a nice Belgian with a VA/perique blend, or a Heffeweizen with a pure VA. An ESB might make a nice pairing with a medium Latakia blend, a dry Stout with something heavy, and a malty Scottish style with a burley blend. There might be something there!
Cheers,
-glp
I agree with Doc’s & GLP’s pairing comments. I’ve found that a smoky, peaty lowlands single malt or a blend like Johnny Walker Black or Chivas works well with the VA/VAPER blends I like but, oddly enough, not so much with latakia-heavy blends. I’ve found that Irish and Canadian whiskeys are, at least for me, a much better complement to the latter.