Mac Baren HH Rustica Review
-
Kyle Weiss - May 14, 2020
- 9 min read
Let’s take a break from the world’s nonsense for a moment, because something more important is happening. Allow me to elaborate:
When I first heard about Mac Baren’s HH Bold Kentucky being released, I was working as a tobacconist at the local Tinder Box. I picked up the phone and dialed my rep and I had five tins dashed my shop’s direction. This was because when I first heard about another HH release, Old Dark Fired a year prior, I was not yet working as a tobacconist and it was a hard product to acquire at first. My personal history with Mac Baren is much more love story than it is with most people: the first time I dove into Plumcake, and then Virginia No. 1, it was heaven to me. It wasn’t until I began enjoying it and peddling it to customers to try I would get the old timers calling it “Mac Bite” and wincing disapprovingly. Clearly, it wasn’t for everyone. For me, they had a handful of favorites, and that seems to be growing, by my reckon. Perhaps the company had a different way of doing things way-back-when, but whatever incarnation of tobacco they had going on when I discovered them made me truly appreciate their style and approach even more today. With the famous (and serious) HH lines for which they are now widely known, I’m always one to seek out the latest releases.
Henrik Halberg is the current head of the Mac Baren tobacco dynasty. With every other tobacco producer seemingly been acquired or acquiring other companies, different flags are flying over our favorite brands all the time, but Mac Baren is one of the juggernauts in the tobacco world—number two, to be precise. They are in more danger of ever-expanding tobacco regulations than they are of falling under a different banner. As it stands, they are owned completely by the Halberg family. Harold Halberg, the original founder of Mac Baren, gets an honorable shout-out with the “HH” that graces every tin of this series of pipe tobaccos—just in case you were wondering.
Mac Baren has a newcomer to the HH line: “Rustica.” The moment I read about what they were doing with Rustica I had to get my grubby hands on some. I’m not a tobacco historian by any means, but I rather like tobacco history. Tobacco as we smoke it in modern times is not really the “original.” Like everything grown and consumed by humans over the years, tobacco has been selectively-bred, cross-pollinated, manipulated and adapted for our needs, tastes and trade, as well as for necessary growing qualities. Tobacco, more specifically nicotiana tobacum, is what we usually smoke. There are other varieties that helped us get this cultivated joy (or reviled scourge to an uncultured swine) to what we know today. N. rustica is one of the tobacco varietals that was discovered along with its cousins in the Americas during European exploration some centuries back. It was also possibly genetically involved in upping not only the nicotine content but toughness qualities in cultivation in what we smoke today. Also known in Nahuatl as piciyetl and Mayan as ucuch “Aztec tobacco” is still smoked by the rest of the world as you read this, though it likely grew native more southerly of historical Aztec territories. “Makhorka” (махорка) in Russia, campeche (Mexico), thuoc lao(Vietnam), and mapacho (S. America), n. rustica gained quite the international following. It is reported to have as much as 10 times the nicotine content of what we are used to in modern tobacco – quite the warrior’s smoke. “Rustica” by name, the Mac Baren product anyway, is probably not made with genetically-original n. rustica leaf. Instead, HH Rustica is a mixture of our familiar n. tobacum (Virginia) what we now have available as n. rustica. While I like the outlandish idea of Aztec gatherers still plucking the leaf from native, wild patches for me to smoke, I’ll have to make do with the promised punch to the senses when it comes to nicotine and flavor. Here we go!
Upon opening the black labeled and brass tin, Mac Baren shows off its HH line with a pristine gold paper cradle, and three neat rows of perfectly stacked, cut flakes, each being about the size of a stick of chewing gum. The smell is absolutely wonderful: meaty, bacon-like, and buttery. I’d be lying if I said I wasn’t excited. This is the kind of tobacco that gets me excited. I left the lid off the tin overnight, because those hot-pressed flakes are heavy and laden with moisture. This did nothing. Eventually I resorted to roughing-up a few flakes to let them air-dry for a half hour or so before loading into my pipe. Mac Baren flakes can be tough to get lit, and these are no exception. The hot-pressing breaks down a little of the leaf structure so attempting to rough them up to ribbons can actually lead to small balls of sticky, broken tobacco, which don’t fare well to the experience. Leaving them in slightly thicker-than-ribbon strands is the best way to go, I would suggest.
The first puffs, once lit, are like a macuahuitl to the senses. Well, in a good way. There’s a definite and delicate delivery of the Virginia, but there’s a lovely, unyielding spice and punky-wood flavor supported by a grapefruit bittersweet aftertaste. Even out of the gate, the other leaf will not be ignored. The meatiness smell from the tin is not lost, it simply gets transferred to the smoke. I can immediately feel the nicotine rush to my heart, which is either beating in joy or simply being affected by the strength of this mixture. This is the adventure I signed up for, after all.
About mid-bowl, I kept taking note in how many relights were necessary to keep Rustica going. Tamping is almost laughable because of how naturally dense the flakes are by themselves, and a few times I realized I probably could have packed my bowls a little looser. This tobacco really does it for me, and it’s difficult not to overindulge on the flavor components, yet it does take a bit of a skilled hand to manage it at times. At this stage, Rustica is like smoking a beef roast and having a dark Irish beer at the same time. The meatiness will not quit. The tip of my tongue tingled in the best way possible, and the aftertaste is much like angostura bitters (which I adore). The realization is the smoke is not symphonic in complexity, but it is not simple. Retro-haling is an adventure in its own right, and a note of freshly-ground black pepper will delight your nose, or make your eyes water. In either case, it’s a bonus I cannot help but replicate. This is not the most nicotine-rich tobacco I’ve ever smoked, but it’s up there. Quite a few times I found myself getting so heavy in the chair I didn’t want to refresh my cocktail or do much more than stare at the hillside as relaxing tunes bumbled round my ear canals. Ferocious, no; ever present, yes.
In the bowl’s final stages, the tobacco achieves its best burning qualities. I could smolder away and get lost in wherever the heck I was and not think about my puffing. For as much that is going on with this tobacco, it doesn’t lose the Virginia quality that lends both familiarity and a bit of sweetness to the event. The smoke’s balance of bold and gentle is fantastic, and it is remarkably clean in flavor I might add. The meatiness is the dominant aspect for sure, and while it has great body and volume of smoke, it doesn’t coat the mouth in an unpleasant way. The end of a bowl is actually the sweetest part, and though it could be a little ghosting from other blends, the consistency suggests it might not be. Briar that is well-kept and has a good cure will only add to the experience, as Rustica seems to become one with the pipe. There is no heavy “grand finale” with this tobacco, and that’s okay—the show starts strong and ends strong. Delicious.
My final verdict on Mac Baren’s newest HH release are probably not going to be a surprise, but fair is as fair does. My criticisms are how damned dense it is, and this quality isn’t unlike its flake siblings in the lineup. I don’t like the sensitivity one must have while loading a bowl each time, making sure it is just dry enough and the air flow is just right. It can be a bitch to light and keep lit. For me in the end however this is a winner. This is what I needed to fix an ailing and crazy world at the moment. It might take the top spot over the other HH favorites of mine. If I were to use a metaphor as example, I’d say Rustica is like barbecue, real barbecue. It takes effort, time and patience. If you do it right, it will delight. Even if it’s not quite right, it’s still going to be really good. Unless you do something absolutely downright wrong, or simply don’t like barbecue, you’re going to be in for a treat. The room note is pungent but not entirely disagreeable. Pairings for this tobacco in which I had good luck are whiskey, IPA beers, and black coffee. Gin, a favorite of mine, had a weird interaction of the botanical essences, which was a shame. Unless it’s a particularly dark-leafed tea I’d stay away from those as well. As mentioned, these flakes pack a nicotine punch. Do not operate machinery, smoke on an empty stomach or in direct sun. If anything I’ve mentioned thus far has had you saying, “…yes, yes and YES!” you’d be advised to pick up a tin or several—they are in numbered quantities, 7100 tins to be exact.
- Editor Rating
- Rated 5 stars
- Spectacular
- Mac Baren HH Rustica Review
- Reviewed by:
- Published on:
- Last modified:
Full flavored and full strength tobacco - Mac Baren HH Rustica.
Written by Kyle Weiss
More Pipes and Tobaccos Articles
8 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.
nice read
Why all good things are limited 🙂 Interesting article, thanks.
Like Kyle, after reading the description of this new blend, I purchased five tins. Unlike Kyle, I have shown patience. I was determined to wait a year before trying it. I’ve found that most of the HH series Mac Baren blends fare better once they’ve settled a bit with father time.
HOWEVER, after reading Kyle’s review I have decided that RIGHT NOW is a good time to pop a tin, let it sit for an hour, give it a whirl in my one speed food processor and then smoke a bowl – seated and with a seat belt on, of course.
How was it Steve?
Thanks, fellas.
HH blends never inspired patience with me—when I got in the saddle, bucking bronco and all, I just held on. It’s a fun ride. I can only imagine what a year or five might do to these flakes. I’ll have to ask my better half to hide a tin from me to forget about and find down the road. That’s always a fun re-discovery ?
Enjoy your smoke, gents ❤️
Wish I still smoked.
I found this to be good tobacco but a bear to get lit. Once it did get lit it smoked well. For my taste it was only a medium in strength, but your mileage may vary.
HH Rustica has become one of my favorite tobaccos. I enjoy it after a good breakfast with a nice dark iced coffee. I feel it every time I smoke it, and have to sit for a little while to let my head to regain its senses. All in all a pleasant way to start my day.