King Charlemagne and the Dog Days of Summer
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Kevin Godbee - Aug 14, 2014
- 3 min read
E. Roberts
This is the weather I live for—hot, humid, and hot. What some disparagingly refer to as the dog days of summer, I refer to as thank God I’m sweating. All the important work of the beginning of the season has come and gone, and it’s finally time to kick back a little and not worry, not even think, about a thing. The stove hasn’t been used in a month and I gave the maid a week off—it’s all delivery, no cooking in this heat. This is the uncomplicated time of year, and I revel in it.
Sutliff’s Charlemagne, a simple aromatic of burley, Cavendish and Virginia, is an equally laid-back accompaniment to this season of sloth. It’s just "aromatic"—no claim to any exotic fruits or tropical flowers, merely a mild sweetness riding on the back of the flavor of tobacco. In truth, there are hints of pecan shell and cocoa, owing to the burley component and accentuated by the topping. Opening the tin, it pronounces an aroma that is most akin to the general mélange one smells walking into a tobacconist; a sort of universal pipe tobacco bouquet. Packing the pipe and striking a light, it just does what it should, and no more: it burns easy, tastes lightly sweet, and produces a fair amount of sweet smoke. And when that bowl’s done, it’s easy to pack another.
Deciding that this is probably a good driving smoke, I grab a small meer and a cob along with the car keys, destination unknown. It’s moist in the tin, but I don’t wait for it to dry out—just pack the sticky threads right in there, check the rearview mirrors, light up and peel out. Cruise down the side streets and cut through neighborhoods, never really pushing it past thirty on the speedometer, adjust the sunglasses and take in the scene. Pretty girls out flaunting it in their summer dresses, families lugging barbeque paraphernalia to the park, hoodlums on bicycles plugged into their iPods, mechanics changing tires on the street, a young couple anxiously helping their toddler navigate the sidewalk in his racecar. The sun setting out beyond Jersey, and the light glinting through the canyons of ManhattanHenge. A jaunt through the Bronx, parts of it stuck forever in the 1970s, and a late dinner out on City Island when the craving for lobster suddenly beckons.
It was easy to smoke through four bowls in two pipes and two and a half hours of driving, just watching the City go by. I didn’t think about much anything, and the tobacco didn’t complain one bit. It held its own against my open-window cruising in a decidedly non-pimped Toyota without air conditioning; it stayed lit, and really, I needn’t ask for more from it.
Over an outrageously calorie-laden dinner of lobster, crab and scallops, I ponder the tobacco’s name. The view from the deck of the restaurant into Long Island Sound is a perfect backdrop for such meditations, though it’s unfortunate that I’m prevented from enjoying a post-prandial smoke here as well (thanks again, Bloomberg). At any rate, Charlemagne was the "Father of Europe"; King of the Franks and the first Holy Roman Emperor. Half the languages of Europe derive their word for "king" from his name. By all accounts, he was a big man with big ideas, and has inspired countless stories, not the least of which is Sir Christopher Lee’s epic heavy metal trilogy CharlemagneProductions.org.
The image on the tin is ostensibly King Chuck himself astride his throne, passing judgment or some other kingly sort of thing. This tobacco version of Charlemagne does not aspire quite so high. It’s an allright smoke, not an epic one, and that’s okay. If everything epicurean had to be filet mignon to be enjoyed, then we’d have no McDonald’s, I always say. Sometimes you’re in the mood for a smoke that isn’t challenging, isn’t layered and nuanced and profound. Sometimes you just want a smoke that plays the background, and creates a little buffer between you and the sultry summer air. Driving home in the evening heat, absentmindedly flicking through the radio dial, pondering the fate of kings and empire in the new century, I mull over an often-attributed quote from Charlemagne: "Right action is better than knowledge; but in order to do what is right, we must first know what is right."
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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.
That’s a good recommendation for an everyday smoke. Sutliff does aromatics well. I have enjoyed Great Outdoors and Taste of Summer, and this sounds like it is in the same tradition, not epic but a relaxing, undemanding smoke. Also, I like the urban adventure woven into the review.
Thanks for the review.
While I’m admittedly not the biggest fan of hot humid days,unless there is a beach nearby, this article’s enticing tone made the idea of a nice long smoke on a hot hot day so appealing I might just have to try it. Beautifully written.
I am not a fan of the goopy wetness of a lot of sutliff tobaccos, but this one sounds worth a try. Thanks for the review. However, I am more curious about the meer that you have in the last picture. Can you tell me anything about it? I have one that is almost identical. Same general carving and same stem color. I cannot find anything on it, as there are no markings other than “Made in Turkey”.
Thanks in advance,
JP
I discovered Charlemagne and find it a nice change of pace from my other regular brands. Definitely worth trying.
@d4klutz – That’s a fairly generic, small meer with nothing to identify it other than the fact it was gifted to me by my uncle; you can read about it here: http://bit.ly/passmatch . As I recall, it is Turkish, and is a great little smoker that carries a ton of sentimentality with it.
Very enjoyable read.
A good job as always.