Don’t Think of a Purple Giraffe
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Kevin Godbee - Nov 1, 2010
- 8 min read
By G. L. Pease
In some ways, what follows is sort of a continuation of my last column, The Fickle Nature of First Impressions, so if you haven’t read it, it might be a good idea to give it a look. Basically, I discussed how our perceptions can be somewhat capricious when exposed to novel things, especially within the context of something as seemingly simple, yet deceptively complex as pipe smoking. There are many variables – the pipe, the tobacco, the smoker’s mood, the weather, what we’ve eaten, to name just a few – converging on that last puff from a great smoke, and a change to any one of these things can affect our experience in surprising and sometimes surprisingly significant ways. Amongst those myriad variables are all the things related to discernment, and that’s what we’re going to look at here.
What’s the difference between the expert taster and the neophyte? Experience and focus, mostly. We all have roughly similar hardware, and our innate abilities are close enough for jazz, yet how we perceive things can be markedly different. (Of course, some people are born with a greater than average ability to taste or to smell, but unless those native abilities are cultivated, even the super-taster has no real edge over us.)
Our ability to discern flavors and aromas is largely based on training, whether consciously or unconsciously. Much of this training happens mostly automatically. We learn to recognize bananas as different from hot dogs fairly early in life, and as we grow up, the list of what we can identify grows without much attention being paid to it.
The average adult is capable of recognizing over 1000 different flavors – a pretty impressive number.
If you sat down and started listing all the tastes you can think of off the top of your head, you’d likely run out long before approaching 1000, but the rest of them would still be there, waiting in shadowy doorways to pop out when you least expect it.
What’s different about the experts is that they’ve learned to focus more acutely on what they’re tasting or smelling, and to make associations that aren’t necessarily natural to the rest of us, and to build their vocabulary to be closer to those 1000 flavors. When we taste a grape, there’s no doubt that we’re tasting a grape, but if the same flavors were present in a steak or a cocktail, the connection might not be made so easily. But, we can all learn to do what the experts do, and, I believe that by doing so, we can derive greater enjoyment from our pipes and tobaccos.
Each of us has our own unique sensory library that we hook into when we taste or smell something. Of course, there is much overlap, at least within a given culture, but it’s the stuff outside of the intersection where the interest lies. And, pipe smokers do have their own culture, in this respect. Mention leather and smoke, and immediately, Latakia will likely come to the mind of a pipe smoker, while memories of horseback rides on the beach and driftwood fires might be conjured by someone unaccustomed to our peculiarities. That’s what I mean by sensory library. It’s not the words we use, but the memories of the experiences themselves. (From this point on, by the way, I’ll use the words taste and smell more or less interchangeably, so where you see one, you can just as easily plug in the other.) Here’s an example to illustrate this point.
I was tasting a couple wines with some friends the other night, and we were having our usual good time puffing smoke over what we thought about them. In one of the wines, I picked up on something a little unusual, and with my typical lack of concern for the linguistic conventions laid down by some of the more humorless wine people* I’ve been acquainted with, I described what I smelled as "old bicycle inner – tube." It fit. (Robert Mondavi, one of my early mentors in the art of wine tasting, would have been pleased.)
One of my friends didn’t quite get what I was on about at first, but the next time he poked his beak into the glass, the light went on. As an avid bicyclist, this is a smell I’m sometimes more intimately familiar with than I’d like to be, while for him, the same smell is tangled with long dormant childhood memories. What was an easy recall event for me required some prompting for him. But, when he got it, he couldn’t let go. He now noticed the aroma effortlessly. The smell had always been there, but it was lurking just beneath the threshold of his perception, not because the apparatus didn’t trigger, but because that trigger didn’t hit the long – dormant neurons that associated it with bicycle inner-tubes. Once that memory was refreshed, though, his recall was instant. (Fortunately, by the way, the smell dissipated as whatever was causing it slowly volatilized from our swirling glasses.)
Tasting tobacco is a lot like this, if slightly complicated by the involvement of the pipe, and its ghosts, and their interactions with the tobacco we’re smoking, and all the other stuff I talked about last month. Often, once a flavor or aroma in a tobacco is pointed out to us, perhaps through a review or the label’s description, it becomes obvious, whereas before that revelation, the same taste may have remained partially or even completely submerged. I can’t count the number of times I’ve been smoking something while reading a head-scratcher review of the same or a similar tobacco, only to have what the reviewer mentions suddenly appear from the mists. I’d bet something similar has happened to most of us. Once we pick that thing out and stick a label on it, we’ll probably never miss it again, even when it appears in other blends.
There’s been no sudden change to the apparatus. We’re using the same nose and tongue we’ve always used before these turning points. The difference is in the brain. New connections have been made, or old ones reinforced, and once these pathways are strongly established, next time, the recall will be effortless and instantaneous. Think of black pepper. Don’t sneeze. It’s kind of like a magic trick. Once you know the magician’s secret, the trick never looks quite the same again.
In fact, all sensory experience is like that, all little brain tricks, like a giant "Where’s Waldo" puzzle. Once you find him in the jumbled chaos, he almost magically jumps out of the page every time you look at it. Or, like the hairy wart on great – aunt Hilde’s nose that you can’t stop staring at once you notice it for the first time. Don’t think of a purple giraffe. Notice how quickly images can be brought up where none may have existed before.
Since I’m in the position of tasting tobaccos at all stages of their evolution, I am consciously aware of things in their smoke that the average pipe smoker may not be. So, sure, I probably pick up things that most won’t, at least at first, simply because they’re right on the page in front of me. A friend of mine, a professional opera singer, hears things in voices that I don’t – until he points them out to me. But, as with anything else, everyone can learn some of the tricks, and so sharpen the acuity of their tasting.
The most important part of developing discernment is to focus attention on what’s being tasted, and try to fit apt descriptions for the various flavors, doing so as specifically as possible. Don’t settle for "citrus" when "pith of ripe grapefruit," or "oil from lemon peel" is more accurate. Look beyond the clichéd terms in use every day, and find those things from your own experience to describe what you’re tasting. In very little time, the experience will be noticeably enhanced by this procedure. (Though, every once in a while, Latakia will produce a flavor that I, for years, have been trying to pin down. It’s as familiar to me as the smell of a rose, but I cannot for the life of me name it, and it drives me crazy. It becomes like a song in my head that will not leave. One of these days, I’ll figure it out.)
I’m not suggesting that anyone would want to always smoke this way. There are times, as I mentioned last month, when just sitting down to a good puff is reward enough. We don’t always have to engage critically, when sometimes simple relaxation is sufficient. But, overall, at least for me, the experience of pipe smoking has been greatly enhanced the more deeply I’ve engaged with it, so a little mental effort along these lines once in a while seems to be grey matter well occupied.
Try it. Take some notes next time you light a bowl. Describe the flavors, the way the smoke feels in your mouth, the aromas in the tin, in the pipe, in the smoke. Refine your descriptions throughout the bowl, getting more detailed as you go. In no time, you’ll be describing things just like the experts.
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. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 634! Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Warren Ertle. Warren is an extremely accomplished musician with a PhD in music. He started early as a percussionist in sixth grade. Later his grandmother got him a cheap Casio keyboard which he taught himself to play. He started playing in blues bands in high school, and has been a pianist with jazz big bands for years. Even though he was already a professional musician, he took his first real piano lesson when he enrolled in college with his studies in classical music. He is of course a pipe smoker. At the top of the show we will have an Ask the Tobacco Blender segment with Jeremy Reeves. Jeremy is the Head Blender at Cornell & Diehl, which is one of the most popular boutique pipe tobacco companies in the USA.
Soon now, supposedly, our neighborhoods will shift from grinning pumpkins, skeletons in various assortments, and zombies dashing about to pretty reindeer, angels, and flashing lights illuminating homes with sparkling stars and laughing, scurrying Santas. But, lest we forget, there is the turkey season, fancy pie aromas wafting from kitchens, and a national pardon of a big Tom Turkey. Remember, now, that only one of these holiday personalities is a pipe smoker. And that is the hefty, bearded fellow in a bright red suit sitting in a sleigh with a herd of deer hitched up and ready to streak across the globe, bringing tidings of joy and many presents. Ok, the scene is set for the next couple of months, right? So, before we get too far off the beaten path, let’s just take a deep breath of fresh autumn air, shall we? Ahh. That’s better, isn’t it? What’s got the Pundit in a snit is not all the Halloween spooks who came a-jostling for candy. Or the wild turkeys gobbling in the backwoods or all the fuss and feathers over the big one—Christmas. No, it is that we might need to take note of all the little things that mean so much to us. Like a good sunrise (seriously, Pundit has not gone all Pollyanna.) Mayhaps we need to appreciate more of what we have than what we have not. Or something like that. Like, a good pipe in the morning with coffee as the dawn brings us coolish weather now that we have flipped the calendar to autumn. But it also brings beautiful leaves that have become a spectacle of technicolor in the wind. It is the little things. The rereading of an enjoyable book and finding something you did not see or learn in the first go-round. Or a stunning phrase you commit to memory with the re-read, while smoking that favorite pipe. And you notice a superior puff that just seems to be different. It’s in the air and the seasons of meaningful little things. It’s aromatic! Or perhaps it is that sense of satisfaction knowing and appreciating you made it to another day. With the world in a kind of rinse-and-repeat history, reminiscent of a Shakespearean play, it is perhaps a good moment to remember some of Pipedom’s philosophers whose cogent thoughts brought light to clear a path in the mists of confusion and confounding opinions. Ok. No gloom and doom. Just some down-home thoughts. Think of times in the past when history was running off the rails. It took our pipe-smoking thinkers (the mind workers of the world) to speak of better pathways to more light. Think for a moment, with a pipe in hand, these wizards of the world and word: Albert Einstein, J. R.R. Tolkien, Mark Twain, Sir Arthur Conan Doyle, Edwin Hubble, Bertrand Russell, C. S. Lewis, and Jean-Paul Sartre. All learned and enlightened. They offered wisdom instead of storms of meaningless roads to nowhere. All while smoking their pipes! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. Now, if you have read some of the great authors of the past and present, their pipes were always nearby. Reading Sir Arthur Conan Doyle can be a three-pipe problem at times. S. Lewis and Jean-Paul Sartre require time with your pipes to reflect on the existential problems and solutions these authors provide in learned novels and other narratives. Or take Edwin Hubble and Bertrand Russell, philosophers of another world. Pipes are required for reading. The quantum lode of ideas Pundit is attempting to sort out is that our pipes are relaxing and stimulate our thoughts and creativity. Especially in these last months of the year. Many times Pundit has had that light bulb flick on while smoking my beloved pipes. And friends in Pipedom, it ain’t easy to turn on the lights in Pundit’s rock pit head. Now it’s time for a quote from a Pipe Smoker of the Past. Shelby Foote was born Nov. 17, 1916, in Greenville, Miss., and died June 27, 2005, in Memphis, Tenn. A fact is not a truth until you love it—Shelby Foote. A parting thought: It is said that famed Southern author William Faulkner carried a packed pipe in a coat pocket wherever he went. That’s one effective way to deal with workday conflicts and confusion. A calm and objective judgment in our everyday human affairs, as the quantum man said.
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 633. Our featured guest tonight is Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and the accompanying online store. We’ll have JD and Brian talking about what’s new at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, Brian will discuss tobacco growing, what happens to the leaf, and provide updated information on where tobacco is being gown today. Tobacco production originated in the United States and we were once the #1 producer. It’s quite different now.
“What’s the difference between the expert taster and the neophyte? Experience and focus, mostly.”
… and memory I think Greg; hinted at above but I really do think, as in wine tasting, the ability to recall a taste matters more (or at least as much) as the simple ability to taste. Again, as in wine, the only way to develop taste memory, if it isn’t there naturally, is by side by side tasting.
Some smokes memories last for years but, I would suggest by external association – at the bus stop on the way home from college, a first date, walking down the drive at Hampton Court – otherwise it’s a deliberate cultivation of comparisons and a trip to log them in to Hannibal’s memory palace.
Good point, Jim, and quite right!
The connection between memory and olfaction is very strong. I still recall my first love when I smell the synthetic green apple scent that’s used in some shampoos.
But, memories aren’t always reliable, and it turns out that every time we recall something, the process of ‘re-remembering’ it alters the memory sufficiently that, over time, it can be quite different from what it was originally. Of course, producers of things (like tobaccos) use this to advantage. Remember how dramatically a blend like Balkan Sobranie changed, albeit in subtle increments, over the years, but those whose taste memories were routinely ‘adjusted’ by continual smoking noticed little of these changes. Only those who smoked it, stopped, and then years later, returned to it were likely to scratch their heads about the difference found in the leaf in those later tins.
I think the whole issue of recall and comparative tasting is a great subject, if a complicated one. Maybe a future column.
-glp
It’s truly amazing how the 4 or 5 basic taste bud sensitivities: sweet, sour, salty, bitter, and, some assert “umami” can combine to form the 1,000 flavors you mentioned. Greg, I think you’re getting right to the heart of the psychological aspects of the epicure’s art.
I’m glad to see someone else acknowledge that a big part of taste discernment is the development of a descriptive vocabulary, and the feedback loop which that facilitates with memory.
So much to discuss about this article, but I won’t hog the bandwidth here. Thanks for articulating the ineffable!
Enjoyed the article! Greg makes a viable point of once something is bought to your attention it takes command. One thing he didn’t mention was the pipe that is smoked. I can understand why, as identical pipes can smoke differently much as the same brand “identical” musical instrumentals can play differently for the player and sound differently for player & listener. Great article. The illucivenous of pipe smoking is like the onion that has many layers. Much like
improvising in jazz..the more you find out the more you realize what you don’t know. The never-ending book. Thanks Greg!
Ah, but I did mention the pipe in the previous article! Glad you enjoyed it, Funn.
And, Cortezattic, bring on the disucssion. It’s certainly welcome.
-glp
I have always hd trouble identifying, putting words to some tobacco blends I taste. Straight VA for instance. Comforting aroma for sure. They call it sweet tasting, haylike, etc. I never would in a million years come up with grassy, haylike taste. I occassionaly as a kid wound up with grass in my mouth playing a rolling around and such but never saw it as sweet. It was usually more bitter/acrid to me. And haylike? Can’t say that I’ve consumed much hay either, if at all. In the case of VA tobacs I have learned about breath smoking and can find comfort in what the fuss about straight VA’s is. I’m smoking MacBaren’s VA #1 as I write this and MB is known as hot. I’ve had it as a torch and as a pleasant experience. Nuff on slipping into a review,forgive me. If VA’s are grassy and haylike and that’s what it’s called that I’m tasting, so be it. I never knew what that ‘smell’ was in the tobacco shop at the mall was when
I was in my very early teens but I knew I liked it. Few friends said it smelled to them like old socks burning but it intrigued me. Starting pipes and thru Dad’s ionfluence tobacs at 16, I found that it was an english blend called Balkan Sobranie. You know I bought some. The older gentleman behind the counter told me that the thick, heady smell was him smoking Balkan Sobranie. Yup, thick heady, almost stinks but I like it. If leathery, woodsy is what that thick, heady aroma is then so be it. If it really is socks, guess what, I still like it, English blends are the grail of pipe smoking to me whatever the description.
Is there any particular way that I can enhance my vocabulary or whatever it is to more accurately decsribe what I experience while smoking my pipe and tobaccos? Sometimes your tin descriptions defy tastes as some are described as symphonic revolutions and not a word of tobaccos. However your descriptions do justly fit and gets me wanting to purchase different blends. Cumberland is wonderful and tickles my fancy and Barbary Coast takes me back to my drinking days, in an affectionate manner. It was me that messed up drinking. Thsoe are just wo that stand out to me currently. thank you and hope to see some suggestions on my question.
Descriptions are hard, especially for the guy writing the label. (That would be me.) Once in a while, I’ll talk about the various tastes that I get, but someone else might find something completely different. And, I’ve never quite got the ‘hay’ thing, either, but I do get ‘grassy’ from some virginias.
Going back to the wine tasting thing, I’ll share a story. As a novice wine-guy, I one day found myself sitting in a big room with a bunch of other pretty much novice-folk, and at the end of the table was Robert Mondavi. Bob was a legend in the Napa valley at the time, and we were all feeling, at least I was, more than a little intimidated to be doing a wine tasting with him. There were glasses and pens and little pads of paper in front of each of us, and he gave us the instructions. Smell the wine. Swirl it in the glass. Smell again. Write down what you notice. Then, taste. Aerate the wine over your tongue. Breathe retro-nasally. Notice and write. Then, we’d discuss.
We all pretty much froze.
“Don’t worry. There are no wrong answers,” Bob said. (Turns out, he was one of the nicest, most down-to-earth guys you could ask to meet.)
So, we did it—sniff, swirl, sniff, scribble, taste, slurp, whooosh, scribble—and then started discussing. Our experiences were often quite different from one another, but the more we talked, the more we all learned, and the more we began to taste. Someone says dried apricot, and even if you didn’t taste it the first time, there’s a chance you might the second. Or the third. It’s a process of development.
In describing Laurel Heights, I wrote, “The flavours are deep and round […] subtle notes of orange peel, roasted oats, leather and peat. The smoke develops richness as it progresses, delivering a long, clean finish […] hints of malt and grapefruit.”
Believe me, it took quite a few bowls to dig all that out of there but I’ve since had more than one person tell me they can discern every one of those flavors, even if it was a bit of a stretch. Others have told me they found things that I missed. Excellent! One of the reasons I like reading the more thought provoking reviews of my own products is to read about others perceptions of things that I’d missed.
The point is, developing the vocabulary is just a matter of doing it. If you think you taste grilled hamburgers, write it down. (Tasting an aged tin of Mephisto, once, I tasted BBQ brisket. True.) See how your perceptions change and evolve over time. It’s fun, and it may or may not enhance your enjoyment. If it doesn’t, it’s easy enough to stop. 😉
Enjoy,
Greg
I have found that it helps me to ask my girlfriend, Laura, to smell an opened tin of tobacco and tell me what it smells like. Then I smell it again, and I can detect what she got. I also asked her son once when he was here.
Some of the tin aromas I was able to write about in past reviews that I only detected after asking someone else to take a whiff have been; barbecue, Fig Newtons, raisins. Actually, I personally detect raisins and apricots quite often.
I’m still searching for a “old bicycle inner – tube” blend. 😉
Next time I get a flat, Kevin, I’ll hook you up.
-glp
“I have always hd trouble identifying, putting words to some tobacco blends I taste. Straight VA for instance. Comforting aroma for sure. They call it sweet tasting, haylike, etc. I never would in a million years come up with grassy, haylike taste …. hope to see some suggestions on my question.”
A thought for Tony. I don’t find straight Va. to taste like the taste of hay but it’s taste is reminiscent of the smell of hay! Smell and taste are inextricably bound together (as in wine again). The plot deepens.
I find compound flavors to be a stumbling block, especially when the marriage is thorough. One famous example is McClelland’s description of their tinned blending Perique: “…somewhere between the fragrance of cooked fruit and the mustiness of mushrooms…”
Now, that takes some powerful imagination — identifying a flavor as some esoteric combination of olfactory memories. Nonetheless, I think McC’s call is pretty close on that one, but only because I can taste it and reflect on their observations.
In this regard, I’m beginning to practice with food, trying to envision the result of spice combinations.
Compound flavors do muddy the waters a little. A couple different things can happen. Two or more different tastes can each retain their own identities, though more difficult to distinguish because of the combination, or they can integrate so completely that they form an entirely new taste. I’d speculate that the latter is rather rare, but warrants further investigation.
For me, much of the fun is in the exploration, and the more we pay attention to what we taste, the more we taste. The naming of flavors and aromas isn’t the important part, but it’s a useful technique for focusing the attention. If you look at a brick wall, you see a brick wall. If you count the bricks, you see the wall in a completely different way. Recording our observations when we enjoy a smoke is just a way of “seeing” our experience in a different light.
I enjoyed reading your article Greg. I’ve been smoking a pipe for going on 28 yrs and am just now beginning to taste the differences in the tobaccos that make up a blend. Don’t know why it has taken me this long. May be that I just didn’t concern myself with the type of tobacco, but more so with did I like the blend or did I not like the blend. I can pick out latakia in blend, but who can’t. Now when it comes to oriental and turkish I have a problem. Perique makes itself known quite well. Virginias have got me stomped, unless I’m smoking a straight Virginia. When I smoke a pipe I find I enjoy it less if I try to disect the blend. At my age (63) my taste buds arn’t what they used to be and my sense of smell is going very quickly. Although I agree with everything you’ve written and I still try to pick out the various tobaccos in a blend, I gain more pleasure from just sitting back and not worry about the ingrediants. I have the upmost respect for your expertise and your blends, but I guess you just can’t take the Codger out of the Old Codger. Thanks Greg for all you do for us .
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It´s not easy to learn the differenses when you never know for sure what the blenders do with the tobacco. To have a chance getting it right i guess you need to have all the baccy fresh from start, no blenders involved. I have smoked so called 100% perique from blender and the original stuff from DA MAN and it was not the same stuff in a million years not the same baccy even. The differense was like water VS 100% alcohol so for a mortal like me it´s very hard to notice the differense.
I am in agreement with you Greg, especially the approach that if we are going to do something, why not do it with some intellectual engagement and curiosity.
Here’s something I wish was available – a chart of typical flavors to look for from principal tobacco types of blends – we have a great poster of wine flavors in our bar, everything from plums to stones to butter, leather, peat etc.,. each pictured in a grid of wine glasses, something we picked up in Argentina at Mendoza, so it is in Spanish as well, just for fun.
But following on what you say about being able to find a line of flavor after it is pointed out, there must be many pipe smokers like me who are self-taught, and don’t really know what to look for in an oriental, or perique, or red virginia, gold, burley etc.,.
Not the primary and obvious – we all get the raisins and stewed fruit in stoved sweet virginia, or the nutty toasty oatmealy elements of burley. What I am talking about is a reference point for common, less common, and unusual elements in the major tobacco groupings. And somebody explaining what the dickens tonquin or deertongue or some of the more esoteric toppings and flavorings resemble.
I can “get” the dominant notes in many popular tobacco – the anise in Orliks Golden Flake, the vinegar in so many MacLelland blends, caramel/vanilla in some virginia flakes. But what else might I be looking for and what is the universe and lexicon of possible notes and flavor? I suggest the business of tobacco is perhaps behind the times in relation to other “tasted” products in not being more forthright and providing better education for the interested consumer. Descriptions like “a sophisticated blend sure to satisfy all the day through” I find baffling. Hat’s off to you as I have found your labeling among the most straightforward and descriptive, and as a result I will try any blend you bring out on faith of the description if it suits my tastes by description. But having a more organized frame of reference sure would help me raise my level of understanding.
that´s my thought too if i only know english better it´s what my post would have said.
Great comments, gentlemen. And some wonderful ideas presented. I like the idea of presenting the different inherent tastes of different leaf. This is complicated, however, by the new flavors and aromas that arise from combinations of multiple tobaccos, and the additional characteristics that arise from aging, especially when aging in these combinations.
Yesterday, I opened a ten year old tin of Ashbury. Even though I’ve had quite a bit of experience with aged weeds, and even though I know this tobacco very well, I was nevertheless surprised by what I found in the aromas from that tin. It was remarkable. Dozens of new smell and tastes, few of which would be found in a new tin, or in the individual components aged as long. It’s a living thing!
-glp
the pipemeetings at Vollmer&Nilsson is often a deepdive in aged tobaccos and what is a better spice to a smoke, then good friends and food.
I am smoking G.L. Pease Westminster right now, and on a re-light 2/3rds through the bowl, I got a little taste of Pizza crust, like when you get a piece that is a little burnt on the bottom.
Side note: The tin of open tobacco pictured at the beginning of this article is actually G.L. Pease Westminster, and the actual tin I am smoking right now.
And at the end of the bowl it tastes like Cafe Mocha.
Mr. Pease I really like that guy’s chart idea. Granted it would take alot of the mystery out of some blends but hey man it would,in my opinion, help jumpstart new pipesters. And more ladies may fair well in considering taking up our art by knowing that aromas and tastes aren’t all masculine and tuff guy oriented.
I’m gonna straight up ask you. Will you consider putting together a baic chart?
The best time for me to find out those intricate tastes and smells in pipe tobacco is the early morning or the late night, when the air is fresh and other unknown conditions make my perceptions more sensitive. In other times I feel my self numb and can hardly taste what I am smoking; I know this is a sin for a pipe smoker. And yes, when one figure out certain taste in a pipe tobacco, it brings back–most of the times– a memory closely connected to it. It is, then, something similar to rejoicing in an imaginary world of memories and feelings. Taste and smell have such magical effect when it comes to memories; it is as if you live those past moments with all the feelings associated with them in a flash.
One thing left I couldn’t achieve; it is to decide what is this or that little taste in the tobacco. But I like this game, I think it develops our sensory and intellectual faculties although each of two is somehow opposite of the other.
I’ve found that the Pipe Tool App for iPhone has been a tremendous aid in helping me to recognize and keep track of the various blends I come across in my quest to broaden my tastes in tobacco. I have old favorites and relatively new favorites, but the habit of trying something new every month or so has greatly enhanced my enjoyment of the pipe. Thanks, Mr. P, for an excellent article.