Billy Budd Blonde
-
Kevin Godbee - Aug 10, 2018
- 5 min read
Kyle Weiss
Being both apprehensive and excited about the news of an additional "Billy Budd" offering by Cornell & Diehl, I took my time once a tin arrived. It’s been hot this summer and in the West, the fires have been destructive and have made the air tough to live in. Waiting for the days to be clear enough to read and write let alone taste the tobacco was challenging. I can’t complain too much, but at least us Westerners don’t have to deal with tornadoes or hurricanes.
It’s daybreak here in sagebrush country, gifting a stillness to the crisp and clear air. The respite from the heat and smoke have the Cooper’s hawks nesting nearby in a noisy kerfuffle, as their two petulant fledglings learn to fly and hunt. They are causing amusing havoc with the resident quail. My tomatoes are watered and ripening, and I have coffee and C&D’s Billy Budd Blonde smoldering away in a cob. Most importantly, I can sit comfortably and do my job of opining about this new blend.
"A blend of bright Virginia flake, white Burley, chopped cigar leaf, and a touch of Perique, Billy Budd Blonde is a sweet sequel to the blend originally created for C&D’s late friend Sailorman Jack," the somewhat boring tin reads. Will it hold up like the original, though?
I have no issue repeating the answer to the question, "What is your favorite tobacco?" when it comes my way. The more often than not I reply, “Billy Budd”—it’s not my top overall choice but it often gets frequently chosen. It has been this way for quite a few years now. The original differs greatly from this new product, being richer and having a Latakia-lean to the mix. BB Blonde is a "VaBurPer," which is a fun thing to say, with the intent of a lighter, fresher smoke without the Latakia. In the tin, this new tobacco has a curious makeup. There’s obvious blobs of pressed tobacco mixed with ribbons and rougher-cut chunks. It suggests part of these tobaccos are pressed and then mixed with the cigar leaf later. Unlike the original BB, the smell is diminutively sweet and a little tart.
When I first started loading bowls to smoke, I was taking time to break up the pressed leaves and mix them more evenly with the rest. This proved futile, as one morning I mindlessly loaded a bowl as I would most other tobacco. There was no change in flavor or performance. Lighting is an easy task and immediately the smoke delivers all of the flavors of the bright Virginia and the Perique. There’s a fleeting natural sweetness that goes away as quickly as it arrives. I’m pleased to say the Perique is applied smartly, as there’s just enough to tingle the nose and the tip of the tongue. Holding this together is the nutty smoothness of some damn good Burley, which is high praise from me. Burley has the tendency to be love or hate in a mixture, and this too is balanced nicely. These qualities hold steady and true until at least halfway through the bowl, where the Virginia loses its citrus poise and leans grassy, the Burley mellows to a hush and the Perique peppers the tongue in a subdued manner.
At the halfway mark there’s a consistent calm in the smoke, and I found myself getting consistently lost in the act of smoking itself. This is an important aspect for many, myself included, because the only and best distractions while smoking should be pleasant observations and pauses of noted enjoyment. What once was citrus and buttery goes to savory and almost pine-like. There’s no trace of sweetness, but there’s also nothing astringent or bitter. The trade-off is the liveliness of the smoke diminishes during the middle point, and if you like the punchier, fresher flavors in the beginning, I suggest choosing a smaller pipe and partake of a reload later—you’ll be happier.
Three-quarters to the end, Billy Budd Blonde lounges further in an even mellower experience than the middle. With the volume turned down this far, I found myself wondering if I was smoking at all, and looking with slight frowns into the bowl. Much like Bette Midler singing Peggy Lee about life, "…is that all there is?" Normally my smoke-to-the-heel-of-the-bowl satisfaction is a thick and robust experience with Billy Budd original, while the Blonde fades into the ethers. It’s a nice change.
My conclusion about Billy Budd Blonde is this: First, it has big boots to fill (for me, anyway) compared to its older and stouter brother. Those looking for the bold, tarry, smoky and more nicotine-heavy experience may be disappointed. Second, the more submissive nature by comparison to the original is a good thing because it should be different, and the tobacco is justified with a utilitarian-yet-quality character. It holds its own without being troublesome. Lastly, this tobacco can join the smoker for quality downtime at any point in the day, with just about any beverage or experience, in any sort of pipe chosen, which makes it flexible–especially sharing the trouble-free performance of its sibling. This is the spirit that made the original tobacco such a hit with yours truly. Add to that a mellower nicotine experience and a good room note, this could very well be a hit with many out there. My one criticism is I believe some aging in the tin would do this tobacco a great service and may spread the flavor consistency through each bowl thusly.
C&D did a good job with this one, and I hope it does just as well as the original. Time will tell if I put it into rotation religiously. Billy Budd, the original, is one of those tobaccos I can’t explain why I go for it as frequently as I do. It’s uncomplicated, unpretentious and not particularly refined. It’s more trusty old hammer than it is a beautiful painting. It also tends to be something I go for in cooler months, which I hope hurry up and get here. For now, however, Billy Budd Blonde will be a lovely newcomer to enjoy through late summer. I hope to get to know it even better in the future.
Written by Kevin Godbee
5 Responses
Recent Posts
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.
That’s a nice looking cob, Kyle.
Not much mention of the cigar leaf throughout the experience. Way in the background?
That morta you sold me seems to prefer burleys. I may have to introduce it to Billy!
Jay
Jaytex: You know what? The cigar leaf is so mute in the smoking experience I forgot to mention it. Not kidding. Summarizing from notes I was so focused on what was there rather than what I was told was there…
…I guess that’s an answer in and of itself. It’s been a long month. 🙂
That morta would absolutely make a knockout of the Billy Budd Blonde, I suspect. My other morta is in heavy rotation for Billy Budd original, so I had to smoke something that didn’t mix the flavors. Hence the cob you see there, a Missouri Meerschaum diamond-shank “Fifth Avenue.” I’m guess it’s a late 1970s/early 1980s make.
Good to hear from you.
The original Billy Budd has never seemed extra strong to me, more high-range medium. Whether I’d enjoy a tamped down blend along these lines, I don’t know. I do the occasional extra mild blend, Spilman Mixture for example, but that is determinedly subtle; that’s its calling. I’m also intrigued that C&D has generated extra versions of Old Joe Krantz, another of my favorites in the original. How these avatars of successful blends will fly remains to be seen. So long as they don’t supplant the originals, i may give them a shot at some point.
Thanks for a nicely illustrated and well written review. This blend was definitely off my radar, but your review hit all the check-points I normally look for when deciding on whether something new is worth sampling.
Of course, Cortez. Feel free to follow up with thoughts here. I’m curious as to what others are going to say about it.