Ashton Gold Rush Tobacco Review
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E. Roberts - Jun 8, 2023
- 4 min read
While it may seem like an easy gig to review tobacco, I assure you it is harder than it looks. Admittedly it’s no chore to enjoy a new blend on a regular basis. I would wager it’s an exceedingly low percentage of the PipesMagazine.com readership that limits themselves to a single tobacco to the exclusion of the panoply of concoctions available to us in our current golden age. Clearly there is no obstacle to finding another blend; the difficulty comes in making tobacco an essentially new experience, each and every time, to write about. With a limited variety of subject matter, finding and describing the unique nuances of flavor, particularly when wrapped in the familiar, can be a daunting proposition. Effectively, every new blend is a conversation to be had, a discovery to be made, and there is certainly art to this conversation. “If you aspire to be a good conversationalist, be an attentive listener. To be interesting, be interested.” Carnegie was paraphrasing a maxim attributed to the Hellenistic quipster Publilius Syrus and it certainly holds true as an agit of wisdom that has stood the test of time. It is fortunate that tobacco somehow holds a never-ending fascination for me.
And so it is that I am continually (and pleasantly) surprised by the conversations I have had with the Ashton blends of late. They fly just a wee bit under the radar, eschewing the special editions and gimmickry that’s so common in the market now (not to imply those are bad things at all, mind you); a small stable of solid, everyday blends done well is a comfortable niche for them to occupy. It’s fitting for the marque, now manufactured by Kohlhase & Kopp, as the brand was built on genuine craftsmanship and refinement in flavor. In March we indulged our Guilty Pleasures, while this month’s installment will be a timely look at Gold Rush, a straight Virginia blend perfectly suited to warm weather smoking.
The tin, in a lovely orange-gold hue and sporting a halftone graphic of miners toiling away, natch, promises a medium-bodied, easy smoke, “accented by traces of lemon and honey”. High marks for truth in advertising there. Though the burn characteristics perhaps require a bit more attention than is alluded to in the label copy, the flavor and aroma notes are spot on. Particularly when opening the fresh tin and in the first several smokes, a bright lemony note tempered by a background of honey sweetness prevail. The casing is moderate and pitched perfectly to the tobacco—this is by no means in the aromatic category. The leaf inside, mainly ribbon with some broken flake mixed in, is soft and of a uniform cappuccino brown. With some airing out time, the aroma moves through a spectrum of Meyer lemon rinds to white grape must, settling after some time with clear overtones of milk chocolate-covered raisin—who doesn’t love Raisinets?—along with the brighter citrusy and lightly floral notes, despite the lack of burley in the mix. Noticeably absent, or at least relegated to faint background chatter, are many of the more typical Virginia notes: when it speaks of grass, it’s more lemongrass than fresh cut hay, and the leathery notes are equally subdued, more ‘leather-bound book’ than ‘fresh-oiled saddle’.
“It is one thing to speak much, another well.” Sophocles sure hit that nail on the head; it would make a fitting tagline for this blend. The tobacco and I found our common ground quickly and began gabbing away like old chums. While the top of the bowl is a faithful translation of the light and sweet tin note, once the ember is stoked and settled the conversation really picks up. In mid-bowl, the honeyed tones indicated on the tin come to the fore, and gentle waves of spice and green-wood campfire blend into the wildflower top notes deftly. The draft and mouthfeel are perfectly aligned and mild, with no bite unless carelessly overheated. It’s sober, restrained, light. There are no loud pronouncements from the tobacco, no argumentative constituents vying for center stage; but don’t mistake its simplicity of topic as boring or uninteresting. It’s a really good, straight-shooting Virginia flavor with shade, nuance, and turn of phrase, all while retaining a modest humility. Though it’s “just” a straight Virginia, it does this one thing oh, so well. In a literary callback to the last review, Gold Rush is much more Hemingway than Fitzgerald—simple thoughts stated simply, the profound import left to you.
Speaking of light and sweet, I highly recommend this as a morning coffee smoke. The daily return to conscious enterprise has never been a favorite process of mine. I simply don’t function until I’ve had the first pot of coffee, fine motor skills and other higher functions generally rejoin at some point toward the end of the second pot, and I usually don’t smoke until well after dinner time. Something about this blend, though, recommends itself to breaking the fast: the uncluttered flavors, the facile smoking, the light dose of nicotine to gently waken and invigorate the senses. To borrow a phrase from another Hellenistic writer, silence is indeed one of the great arts of conversation, and sitting with the morning brew and a pipe of Gold Rush qualifies that gracefully. It is in these moments of meditative silence that I find the tobacco speaks its volumes. My one disappointment with the blend is the rather dull aftertaste, another point in favor of coffee to wash the palate. The room note is likewise mild and not very indicative of how good the flavor is, though it dissipates quickly. All in all, I’m chalking this up as another win for the Ashton brand, and look forward to my next confabulation with the line.
Special thanks to Kevin at Davidoff’s midtown flagship location for the always-brilliant assistance, and conversation, about the blends.
Written by E. Roberts
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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! 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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.
