James Fox – Provost Mixture
-
Kevin Godbee - Mar 7, 2017
- 5 min read
Kyle Weiss
As changes start to happen every year about this time, a reversal of what usually happens around October–I start finding I want a little less Latakia and a little more Virginia. It’s true across much of the pipe world: all roads lead to Virginia…once they are cleared from snow, that is. I’ve spent some considerable time inside as the Wild West has been inundated with rain, and in my case, a lot of snow. I’m ready for some sunshine.
James Fox tobaccos aren’t as big a name in my neck of the woods as far as pipe tobacco, yet I do remember spending some time with the company’s products a while back. My predecessor Mr. E. Roberts tackled another James Fox product, Dorisco, which I also dove into in a more casual manner over on another forum. I remember having a good run-in with Campanile as well. As my tastes have been seasonally migrating, I shrugged and nodded as a random tin chose itself for me and fell out onto the floor as I rummaged through my cellar…
…this tin was James Fox’s “Provost Mixture,” as I noticed it came to a rolling stop on my cheap Pergo wood flooring. I don’t even recall when, where or how I originally acquired it. Picking it up and examining it, the packaging displays more E.U. visual propaganda and scare-tactics of the evils of smoking than anything. There isn’t any label art or a description anywhere; barely a logo–though a little research through their home page describes the tobacco as such:
“In this mixture, the sweet American Cavendish tobacco, which gives fullness and body, has been mellowed by the addition of choice bright Virginias to give a cool and satisfying blend.”
The tin upon opening reveals what I consider a “just-right cut” of calico tobacco ribbons inside, smelling gently of plums, raisins and figs. Granted, this is what I find to be the signature of a good Cavendish tobacco usage, not one that is amped up with sauce, smells and humectants. It’s uncommon for blenders and mixers in the pipe tobacco world to use quality or un-mucked-with Cavendish. I have recently, however, discovered that there are hidden gems and new treats that feature this traditional method of treating tobacco, and I have sheepishly enjoyed them. My hopes were I would enjoy Provost Mixture just the same.
One quality I remember from James Fox products I have tried in the past is the damned stuff packs and lights well. It’s a small thing to be pleased by, but if I’m driving or simply looking forward to a book and a puff, this is a plus for me–not every day is a flake/plug/rope kind of day. Provost Mixture is no different in the James Fox lineup, which I consider user-friendly tobacco.
The initial flavors are indeed sweet, and thankfully, not cloying. It’s definitely that “good tobacco” kind of sweetness; think sugar cane and raisins. In the first quarter of bowls I smoked, Provost became a little bitey. However, this might have had more to do with my winter system chemistry trying to switch its flavor requests than a fault of the tobacco itself. As I kept smoking, this quickly disappeared and the tobacco opened up a little. If this happens to you, stick with it. This is what I’ve enjoyed about decent Cavendish. Rather than the sickeningly-sweet blacks and tooth-hurting maple of brown, pumped-up Cavs, they lend a soft, silkiness to the smoke. About halfway down the bowl, sweetness makes way to a much more industry-standard Virginia experience, which is exactly what I wanted: warm days, easy-going Virginias. This tobacco shines not only halfway through the bowl, but it takes a good half a tin to really dial in the tobacco’s liveliness. There’s a slight spicy edge that comes on and sticks around, one that I enjoy. The Virginia leaf lends a clean, almost tart cranberry upper-palate notes and…you’ll have to forgive this unusual flavor comparison: butter lettuce? Laugh if you will, and you should, but it has a garden-like freshness to it. This is not a complex tobacco, nor is it particularly subtle. The end of most bowls finished pleasantly, and at no time did it get tarry or swampy, but had a balsamic-like tone to it. Which is good, because butter lettuce and balsamic go really well together, and I’m chuckling to myself right now thinking about it being a “salad bowl.” Don’t mind me; it’s the cabin fever. I should get out more.
Normally I smoke stronger tobaccos, and I initially choose slightly smaller pipes (less than Group 3) when jumping into this tin of Provost Mixture. I found myself re-loading bowls because I wasn’t quite finished enjoying my puffing, and over time, I proffered a larger gauge and size of my pipes. Cobs were a fantastic choice, as were some larger Petersons and Comoys I had on hand. As an overall performer, this tobacco is quite tolerant. Slow and steady smoking seems to suit this tobacco best no matter where in the bowl you are. It doesn’t showcase any former tobacco flavors or ghosting from which a pipe may suffer, and the only warning I may have is for the fast-puffers out there. Nicotine in this stuff is a solid medium. If you want to get the spins, just smoke more. It smokes cool and pleasant enough that back-to-back bowl smoking was not a problem. It’s is a tobacco to take into public: at my shop, not one objection was made as to the room note. It’s not the kind of tobacco I’d suggest pairing with too many adult beverages simply due to its not being a very weighty smoke, but coffee was a smash-hit beverage with it in my book. In fact, this really is a great morning smoke and when I managed to enjoy it the most. I could see Provost Mixture really doing well with some age on it, so make some space in your own cellars for a few tins to sit a while.
It doesn’t surprise me in the slightest that James Fox made good use of the misunderstood and unused tobacco known as “Cavendish.” Quickly dismissed by staunch non-aromatic smokers like myself (guilty!) there’s a world out there where it resides as a useful component. Provost Mixture is one I’d push aromatic-exclusive guys to give a shot, if anything, to push them to the “dark side” of non-aromatics. As the sun tries to warm up frozen stoops and icy porches, each day getting longer, I’m looking forward to getting back into my warm weather routine. This is the kind of smoke both worthy and unpretentious; it’s easy to not be sure about it, then suddenly finding it in high favor–it’s the change that is most welcome.
[Editor’s note: Cavendish is a process rather than a type of tobacco. It can be made with Burley or Virginia tobaccos, but the manufacturers usually don’t provide the information of which one they used. Read about Cavendish Tobacco here.]
Written by Kevin Godbee
3 Responses
Smokingpipes.com Updates
132 Fresh Peterson Pipes |
24 Fresh Brulor Pipes |
48 Fresh Ropp Pipes |
9 Fresh Ashton Pipes |
36 Fresh AKB Meerschaum Pipes |
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.
Many thanks for the review!
Nice review!
Thanks guys.
Also, I wanted to thank all of you for my year anniversary writing for pipesmagazine.com…it’s been a blast so far, Kevin has been very kind to me and the feedback has been great. Here’s to another year!
KW