2016: Out With The New, In With The Old
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Kevin Godbee - Dec 7, 2016
- 4 min read
E. Roberts
The year’s come and gone, as they always somehow do. World events have been both bitter and sweet, as have personal ones. We’ve raised a bowl to a few broken pipes this year, sadly, but have seen many new pipers take up the mantle. The pipe world stands its ground against encroachment from taxes and regulation, not to mention the flux of social mores, and still we thrive, evidenced by the unprecedented addition of artisans, blends, and new blood to the hobby. One is reminded that the more things change, the more they stay the same. For this holiday respite, we’ll look at a blend that changes every year, yet remains of the highest quality.
After my exploration of Craftmans Edition, and enjoying many social events accompanied by that crowd-pleaser, the impending turn of the calendar found me in a more ruminant frame of mind. Selecting a tobacco to chaperon my soul through the finale of 2016, I withdrew from my cellar a selection from holidays past: McClelland’s Christmas Cheer from the 2011 vintage. While my mandate with these reviews is limited to blends in current production and widely available, the Christmas Cheer line offers an interesting loophole in that it’s made annually and expressly intended for cellaring and ageing. For those who are unfamiliar, McClelland produces a limited run each year of a single-harvest pure Virginia; the 2011 release captures “ripe, orange-red, flue-cured” from a 2007 crop grown near Wilson, North Carolina. To my estimation, reviewing a fresh 2015 tin would be a disservice to its intent; rather, a moderately aged tin is a more accurate representative of McClelland’s design. I know this intimately, as my own Cheer collection began in 2010, and while I enjoyed those tins while green, I learned the deeper appreciation of aged vintages too late. Hence, my existing cellar begins with 2011. I think a solid four years in the tin is a good milestone for tasting, when the blend has fully embraced its profile.
If a typical blend is a panoramic vista of flavors, then Christmas Cheer is a telescopic zoom into the heart of what makes Virginia tobacco so damn good, and so essential to the blender’s palette. Popping the tin, already bulging with internal pressure, the trademark sweet tang discharges loudly in a whooshing elegance generally reserved for women in velvet evening gowns. While resplendent with the ketchupy sweetness McClelland is known for, this vintage is not overwhelmed by it; vying for equal olfactory measure are metallic tones, burnt sugar edges, and a more pronounced earthy cast that one normally finds with dryer bright Virginia-burley blends. After a day of off-gassing and acclimation, the ketchup is subsumed into a more leathery, earthy bouquet that retains tartly sweet overtones. The flakes themselves are luscious and chocolate-hued, weighty and marbled and dense; in fact, they exhibit much reluctance in breaking apart, speaking to their extended stay in the presses. After a good rub and nominal drying time, my pipe loaded and tamped, I begin my note-taking and general rumination on the year.
Midwinter spring is its own season
The weather, normally my nemesis at this point, has been uncharacteristically mild; all the better to tease out a Virginia blend. Typical of hard-pressed flakes, Cheer takes some attention and tending both in preparation and execution. Once lit, the flavor sings here, truly sings. The aroma in the tin transforms completely, the ketchup giving way to high notes of citrus peel that call to mind the clove-studded oranges of holiday feasts. For a straight Virginia, it isn’t bitey or sharp in the least; it insinuates its brighter flavors in concert with the underlying body effortlessly. I recount from my notes that a freshly opened tin back in 2011 was, “somewhat lacking in flavor and direction, exceedingly mild…still smooth and lovely, a little sting, not enough body or range.” Time has certainly worked its magic here, as the midrange balance is extraordinary, full of the salty timbre of driftwood and nutmeg’s piquant savor, with vanilla smoothness enveloping the bitter cocoa and leathery low end of the spectrum. Sidestream smoke is charming, ethereal, and spicy: the room note speaks of the parchment of old books, and memories of Christmas dinner around an open hearth.
While the dead leaves still rattled on like tin
Seeking a companionable beverage to pair with the pipe, I uncork a Laphroaig PX Cask single malt to exhilarating effect. If ever there were kindred spirits, they are these. Taken with sensible dilution of a couple of ice cubes, it shares many of the same flavor notes with the tobacco, adding its own smokiness from the splendid Islay peat. The whisky’s finishing in sherry casks provides the bright sweetness that mirrors the rich stewed fruit flavors of the tobacco; sips taken in turns begin to confuse the brain whether one is taken from the glass or the bowl.
For many the new year is a time to reflect on the physical—lose weight, get in shape, make more money—but heed this reminder not to neglect the mind and soul: for those of us accustomed to the briar, it pays to flex the muscle of introspection with a pipe. Would cellar and time allow it, a vertical tasting of several years’ tins of Christmas Cheer would truly be an exercise in tobacco decadence. It is my own habit to tuck three or so tins of Cheer away each year, to be enjoyed at unknown dates in the future, and it’s worthwhile advice to recommend the same for you who love truly singular Virginias.
And the end of all our exploring
Will be to arrive where we started
And know the place for the first time.
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. Naturally a Virginia-Perique, it is enhanced with a traditional core of black Cavendish. In the tin it holds much promise, with a lightly bready and very woody, if ever-so-slightly sour, aroma. After some time acclimating to air, the bouquet softens further and offers hints of the burley with some chocolaty notes wafting through the more dominant dry grassy aspect. The tin art is of a coin-style bas-relief bust, presumably of a founding Sutliff brother, à la The Old Boss On the reverse of the tin we find the blend’s description: Reflecting on Sutliffs 175 years of tobacco excellence, we came across a brand that embodies true value, SILVER QUARTER. This name pays homage to Sutliffs roots, the legacy of two brothers who popularized pipe smoking in the burgeoning mining society of San Francisco. We celebrate this heritage with a coin cut composed of the finest African Virginias, complemented by a core of Perique and Black Cavendish. The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. The flavors are muted, also, lacking the sweetness and piquancy of other marques—the small measure of Perique tickles the nose now and again with peppery hints, and there is a smidge of a deeper sweetness to be found in the Cavendish from puff to puff, but overall it lacks some dynamism. The Virginias, to my palate, come off a bit on the dry side, and here they dominate the blend. The aftertaste and mouthfeel are neutral, again evincing more of the dry, woody, tartly tannic end of the spectrum. The blend has plenty of polish, but not enough depth or richness (*yet) to make it a standout. Here, comparisons are inevitable: Luxury Bullseye Flake has more sweetness, both from its Virginia as well as its Cavendish, and a better finish; Davidoff is similar but with a pronounced umami that is absent here; as for Escudo, I haven’t had any fresh tins lately so it would be unfair to compare. While it rates as a solid, fairly mild smoke, particularly to lovers of the genre, it does not surprise with any exceptional flavors. To be fair, all the boxes have been checked for the blend to benefit from some real aging, and it would be worth checking in on this after a couple of years sealed away. I’ve set half my tin aside to sample again in a month or two, in case I’m merely suffering from the lingering effects of parosmia, and will amend this review in that case. Maple Shadows II, on the other hand, made up for the weeks of sniffling and sneezing I’d endured. Offered in a full 8 ounce tin with delightfully spooky Halloween art, it’s (hopefully) enough to last through the season. Somehow I had missed this last year, so it’s a real pleasure to get some in my candy bucket this year. As the chilling winds of autumn draw eerie prattle from contorted, deciduous limbs, we find ourselves possessed by the spirit of the season. Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 632. Our featured guest on tonight’s show is the host of the Pipe & Tamper Podcast, Mike Murphy. Brian and Mike will have an extended chat revolving around the days before, during and after the Las Vegas International Pipe Show. We will hear about their travels to the show and the anxiety of Hurricane Milton bearing down on Florida at the same time while running a show and not knowing if your house is going to be there when you get home. In the end, the show went great and our homes survived, although many others in Florida were not so lucky. We’ll have clips from the show, and shoutouts to other podcasts and vlogs that were broadcasting from the pipe show.
Vegas Baby The show started out strong on the 14th floor hospitality suites hosted by the Vegas Pipe Show and Smoking Pipes as well as room hopping to carvers, estate sellers, and vendors to pre-game for the festivities. If you’re interested in what that looks like I’ll refer you to last years pipe show round up. I circled with Brian Levine to get the totals in comparison to last year: This year’s show numbers: 108 Exhibitor tables, 445 attendees, 3,250 Raffle Tickets, 100ish dinners, 172 Rooms in the Hotel. Last year, by comparison, 107 exhibitor tables, 425 attendees, 2,200 raffle tickets, 104 dinners, and 175 rooms on Friday and Saturday nights. We were at capacity, basically, when it came to vendor tables and the dinner, so there is no physical room for growth at this point except for attendees. That said, we filled that smoking lounge to the brim. New Carvers Spotlight Garret Woo (Pipes by Woo) How long have you been carving? Garret: I’ve been carving since 2021, and I’m guessing your next question is probably how’d you get started carving? James: Yes. Garret: In 2021 I took a break from my full time job – that included machining and assembly work and I thought maybe it was time I made something that I would like and I started looking at youtube and Instagram and putting together my shop. I did struggle on the stems to start and there was a lot of failure at the beginning. James: How many pipes have you made so far? Garret: I number my pipes, so I just finished up 186. James: What is your favorite shape you’ve been making? Garret: I really dig Canadians and pipes with longer shanks and lovat Canadian blends. I like to play with different shapes of stems on the longer shanked pipes. The billiard would be my go-to shape but I want to learn more techniques on freehanded shapes. I like to put brass and copper adornments on my pipes with my machining background it helps. 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Chris said he was able to use this to slow down his cadence, which, of course, could mean you could get a slow-smoke training pipe to teach yourself to perform better. If you’re interested in learning more or want to check one out, you can contact him on Instagram: Copper Beard Pipe Works The Negative Space The show was buzzing about one specific pipe, which had everyone guessing how it was made. I chatted with Adam Davidson briefly about it. James: How did this idea come to fruition? Adam Davidson: Smokingpipes.com had an expo back in August open to all of the makers they carry. The theme was to make a pipe utilizing bamboo. Given that the last time we had the expo I made a smooth Almond with three bamboo shanks, […]
Ah! Christmas Cheer! One of my absolute favorites. I enjoy this blend only during the Christmas Season and I’m always looking forward to each issue. I have several in my collection ageing away to enjoy each year.
Redolent with …. Something! Just had to use that word. Enjoyable description; thank you and best wishes for the holiday season.
Thanks for yet another enticing review.
I’ve been smoking a pipe since 2009 but I just recently found a new love for VA tobacco’s so I bought my first tin of Christmas Cheer in 2015. I have not yet tasted it and don’t plan to until Christmas of 2020 as I think 5 years in the tin will be just about right. Since the new FDA regulations are threatening our hobby we all love so much, I have since bought several tins of the 2016 & 2017 CC blends to enjoy in the future years. I look forward to the day I get to try these.
Great review!
Looks like we better stock up on Christmas Cheer 2017. FDA Santa will not be delivering after that.
I recently happened upon a 2015 tin of Christmas Cheer. I have never tried these blends but had read about them online. I was surprised to find my tin right there on my local cigar shop shelf. I will let it rest until 2021 Lord willing. Good review! I have lately developed a taste for straight Virginia so I’m happy for this new addition to my modest cellar.