Crowd-Sourcing Reviews
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Kevin Godbee - Jul 20, 2015
- 6 min read
E. Roberts
You asked for them, and here they are. Back in April I asked you, our loyal PipesMagazine.com readers, what tobaccos you’d like to see reviewed. While I intended it to be followed in a most timely manner the next month, there were a few blends I’d had on backlog that got in the way of the schedule. Sometimes it takes a while to get a handle on a blend, a process that can stretch for several days or even weeks—and the best blends, of course, we can spend a lifetime teasing apart, a most delicious riddle for us pipe enthusiasts. So, without much further ado, the labor of many, many pipefuls of tobacco, I finally offer you an opinion on some reader selections.
McClelland’s Tudor Castle. Jack Swilling (if that’s his real name) writes that he’s "newly intrigued" by McClelland’s Tudor Castle blend, a VaPerO touting bright and red Virginias, top-grade Yenidje, and a touch of St. James Perique. For him, the Oriental component really brings the blend together and "makes the magic happen"; being a big fan of Virginia-Periques with Oriental myself I placed an order for it immediately, figuring it couldn’t be so bad that I wouldn’t want to smoke through three tins of it. The short story is that I’ve found a new entry into my top five VaPerOs. It’s a brilliant blend in all regards—the presentation of the richly fermented and loosely packed flakes, the succulent sweetness that arises from the interplay of the tobaccos, the full-bodied mouthfeel and aroma, and the delightful woodblock-style tin art that I’ll assume was drawn by Mary McNiel. The full two-ounce tin is brimming with the dark, damp flakes that exude a hint of the trademark McClelland ketchupy scent, doubtless owing to the red Virginia. After a short drying time, the rubbed out flakes burn cool and steady, with a sweet consistency that hints at cola nut, sweet tea, and candied pecan, with just a tinge of the sour saltiness characteristic of the Oriental leaf, and occasional peppery retorts from the Perique. A flexible smoke, it performs well in a variety of pipes, tall-bowled chambers faring best. I’m thankful I took the gamble on buying extra tins for cellaring, as the ones I received were dated 2015; if it’s this good now then a few years should really bring out the magic.
McClelland Tudor Castle Arcade. Since I was taking a gamble on the Tudor Castle, I figured it wasn’t much of a stretch to try out the other label in the series, Tudor Castle Arcade; honestly, I haven’t been truly disappointed with a McClelland tobacco to date. I was also intrigued to discover the blend contains Syrian Latakia, as there are fewer and fewer left as the years go by, with no more to come in the foreseeable future. These three tins were dated 2009, so they arrived with at least five or six years of aging under the belt, a very telling milestone for aged blends. I am happy to report, albeit with some trepidation, that Arcade exceeds its predecessor in flavor. I say with trepidation because I’m now worried I won’t have time to stockpile the blend before you lot buy the tins out from under me; it’s at the top of my cellaring list for sure. The same Virginia-Perique mixture is there from TC, with its high, winey notes and cola sweetness and aftertaste, complemented by Katerini leaf with its floral overtones and the fabled Syrian with its pitched muskiness steering the ride. The balance of savory with salty and meaty highlights over a rich bass sweetness reminds me of a favorite Iranian dish—fessenjoon made with duck.
SettersBrace wants to know how Squadron Leader with Perique rates. Now to segue into another Latakia blend, again containing Perique, but sporting a different complexion altogether: SmokingPipes.com’s recent limited-edition offering of only 2,000 tins, affectionately acronymed ‘SLAP’ on the forum. While not a regular production tobacco, I know readers will be seeing some of these on the sale or trade aftermarket eventually. Maybe. It’s really quite good, unsurprisingly; the Cypriot Latakia brings a hide glue dankness to the smoke, as opposed to Syrian’s sweeter tart notes. The parchment-like nose is further enhanced by the Perique, which responds to the Oriental leaf with a more pronounced peppery aspect, dark and sharp on the retrohale. The cut is a perfect ribbon, packed to the brim in the square 50g tins with British racing green label. The tin note is starchy and sour, promising a rich blend even without age. Particularly suited to large, long-lasting bowls, and amicable to DGT, the tobacco is given to slow and contemplative smokes, evincing a shy peek of spiciness with a gingerbread and hard cider mid-bowl; a hint at which direction the effect of several years will have on mellowing and sweetening the mix. Right now it’s young, a little on the dry side, with a slight phenolic tilt. If you had the luck to snatch up a few, you will be rewarded handsomely. Smoking it now, while still so young, I find a smoky black tea—Harney & Sons’ Russian Country with a spot of cream and brown sugar fills the bill nicely—really illuminates the details in the flavor profile. Thanks for the suggestion from reader SettersBrace, and apologies to those who didn’t score a tin.
The Irish are coming! The Irish are coming!
Breaking news: new Peterson tobaccos coming to the States! The Irish are invading, and their vanguard lineup is varied and venturesome and…oh, very well, on with the verbiage.
Hitting our shores now are a flight of 40g packets bearing the Peterson marque. The pouch is more prevalent packaging for the European market; in the States it’s gaining traction though, thanks to the resurgence of roll-your-own in the past decade. The blends are all new inflections bearing romantic Irish names: Aran mixture, a tobacco-centric light vanilla; Connemara Black, a tart cherry Cavendish; Irish Dew, a stalwart Virginia-burley; and Wild Atlantic, a salty yet mild English blend. The art on the packages looks great, and the overall presentation of the fine ribbon contained in the blends is effective at invoking a tone from the start. All offer a moderately complex smoke, flavorful with good leaf, ready to pack and smoke straight from the gold-lined pouch. Aran is a light, nutty take on an ever-so-lightly cased vanilla, great for an afternoon on the go. Connemara Black is akin to another of my Peterson favorites, Sunset Breeze—the topping rides atop the Cavendish, a fine duet and a good dessert smoke. Irish Dew is nutty and clean, a no-nonsense tobacco that makes a great companion for a cold beer or tea. Wild Atlantic isn’t nearly as tempestuous as the name would imply; it’s rather on the mild side, but with a full-bodied and comfortable English flavor. They’re all good, easy-going blends, and I’m very interested to see how these work out for Peterson in the North American market. My buddy Conor from Peterson was kind enough to send pictures of the packets suitable for framing, and also some glamour shots of the Peterson seasonals—here’s a sneak peek at this year’s Holiday Season blend!
Sneak Peek!
Want to get in on this? First, if you’ve tried the tobaccos reviewed, leave a comment to let us know how your experience was, whether similar or completely different. It’s always good to bounce ideas off fellow smokers to more fully flesh out one’s own experience. Second, if you have a suggestion for another reader review, leave that in the comments below too, and if selected you’ll receive a few ounces of recent blends to taste for yourself. Special thanks go out to readers JackSwilling and SettersBrace for these submissions; I’d have reviewed all the suggestions, but there’s only so much one guy can smoke at a time. And watch this space for the upcoming review of Seattle Pipe Club’s Potlatch!
The spoils of my labour—a lot of cleaning to do.
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.
Tudor Castle – Yes, goodness for your pipe.
My name is John, but my alter ego is Jack Swilling
Love theses reviews/news/updates from you Mr. E. Roberts, if that is your real name.
Now I want to try some Arcade based on this write up.
Thanks again Mr. Roberts and the reviews were great! We are on different sides of the fence when it comes to SLAP but diversity IS the spice of life they say. Great work!
Always fine reviews, Mr. Roberts!
Another good set of reviews, Bill. I love that pipe rack you have there.
@kcghost — it’s a classic (but seldom send) Decatur Industries pipe tree that I scored for a steal at the NY Pipe Show a few years back. The notion is that once the tree is full I have to clean the pipes…sometimes it even works.