Missouri Meerschaum Country Gentleman
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Kevin Godbee - Nov 6, 2018
- 4 min read
Kyle Weiss
I’m finally getting around to trying some tobacco I’ve wanted to try for a while now, from a company for which I have always had a fondness. I remember buying my first cob pipe about seven years ago. I was told it was cheap, disposable and in not many more words that the pipe was uncool. It didn’t have a white spot, perfect grain, and wasn’t made of actual meerschaum—it was Missouri Meerschaum.
Almost immediately the charm of the low-brow idea of this hokey pipe grew. I fielded questions like, "Is that a real corn cob pops?" To which off course I had plenty of snarky retorts, like, no, I couldn’t afford the real thing, it’s made of paper. To this day I still have my first Washington model cob, named after the small Missouri town from which so much cob pipe history hails. I have at least a dozen and a half more, because to this day they charm me and perform admirably.
What I needed to do was try Missouri Meerschaum’s tobaccos, blended by Russ Ouellette. In the past I’ve had hit and miss experiences with Russ’ efforts, which I can squarely blame my tongue and not him. Never one to generalize, my sense of adventure piqued when I read about MM’s Country Gentleman tobacco. A cob pipe shape with the same namesake, Country Gentleman tobacco is described clearly on the simple folding pouch:
"Flue-cured leaf with a bit of dark-fired and Perique; smooth and unflavored."
There’s nothing fancy about any of it, and that’s fine with me—smoking quality is not something that can be hidden by packaging and marketing. The smell in the pouch is of carob and apricot. It smells sweet, just barely, but not offensively. The tawny and wrinkled ribbons are packed pretty good in the pouch, so if roughed-up too much you may have a tough time getting it closed. To be honest, I’d ditch the pouch Country Gentleman comes in and put it all in a mason jar with a good lid.
Loading a pipeful is straightforward, but there’s a resistant spring of the tobacco which seems to come from heartier leaves. If you use the provided pouch packaging, your tobacco might be a tad dry, which means lighting is a cinch. The first light gives a wonderful nutty and molasses blast, but soon subsides to a leathery and spicy smoke. It’s right at the point where I like my Perique, especially if it is mixed with Kentucky or other dark-fired components. It isn’t a sweet tobacco, and it isn’t flavored. The "seasoning" sweetener all pipe tobacco has (whether you like it or not!) is here just as it should be: a little pinch in the mix to bring out character, not create an aromatic.
Midway through the bowl the tobacco really mellows out. The Perique achieves almost a red pepper quality warming the mouth rather than nibbling at the soft parts. There’s
an oaken, barrel-aged quality to the smoke here, and boy does it make for a good match to morning coffee. It’s at this point the nicotine, a bit slow in the uptake at first, starts to kick in. I do like a good nicotine punch, and while Country Gentleman doesn’t give me the sweats and the shakes,
it gives a nice heavy-in-the-chair feeling. Smoke this tobacco and drink a neat
dram of whiskey. Nothing fancy, a bourbon, a rye, or if you’re desperate—Canadian. You’ll thank me later.
The parting dregs of the bowl when the smoldering is nearly over is pleasant. Back comes the Perique to say hello, a wood and tannin dryness come about and just like that—it’s over. I think subsequent bowls of Country Gentleman never needed more than a single re-light, and for those who like to forget about their smoking so they can task freely, this is a bonus.
I liked this tobacco. I wasn’t sure it was going to be for me, but with some pretty bold character, a nice price point, great performance (especially in the cobs for which it is intended), my only criticism is the packaging. This isn’t the kind of tobacco you’re likely to cellar and wait a decade for the gifts of aging, but having tobacco fall everywhere and possibly dry out too much could be a hassle. If someone is so inclined, jar it up and let it age—see what happens. Why not?
A lack of pretense and posh image is partly why I fell for Missouri Meerschaum’s humble pipes and I’m glad there’s an equal tobacco to match that spirit. I can put aside my snobbish, quasi-educated leanings and let my simple breeding out for some fresh perspective, which I enjoy. The history, location and truly American background Missouri Meerschaum boasts is well-deserved. Sure, it all seems quaint, but don’t underestimate a product that’s been around in the same capacity and quality longer than most. Since almost anyone can enter into pipe smoking and collecting at the cob level, I’d suggest giving their tobaccos a try as well.
Written by Kevin Godbee
6 Responses
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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.
Well there’s nothing like a touch of the plague to usher in the changing season. Leaving the airport just when the first advertisements for all things pumpkin spice began to appear—lattes, muffins, shampoos, trash bags, and myriad other concoctions—so, too, my ability to breathe freely disappeared. The unfortunate side effect of losing one’s sense of taste and smell for weeks is the utter inability to enjoy tobacco. Not that I consider myself an expert on anything but my own tastes, but be forewarned that this review was made with mildly impugned sensory equipment. Just when a comforting pipe was most needed, its comfort was denied. Be that as it may, the road to recovery found me limping along on one lung this past month, trying to wrest the particulars of two blends on offer from Sutliff: the latest 175th Anniversary blend, Silver Quarter, as well as their spooky seasonal Maple Shadows II. Silver Quarter is a new style on offer from Sutliff, their first coin-cut blend. 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The tin notes are, forgive the pun, on the nose for a good VaPer blend: mild tart sweetness peeking out from behind dried hay and slight chocolate undertones, with a lightly tannic finish of weathered oak. It is always a joy to prepare a coin cut, my preference being to put a few in my palm and vigorously warm my hands together to fully break them apart. These well-formed discs pack and light easily, and smoke with little prodding to the end of the bowl. For technical points it scores well—it smokes light, and it’s easy to tend the ember. While it gets sharp after a few quick bowls, pacing should be heeded to easily smoke down to the heel without inviting bite. Of the flavor, though, I am left a bit wanting. There are tart and high notes aplenty, but very little of the lemony citrus I would anticipate, as well as scant midtones; they tend more toward the red wine-vinegary and sour. 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Bewitched by a dissonant charm, we’ve created Maple Shadows. In a season that is defined by the unlikely harmony of treats and frights, we’ve joined the enchanting sweetness of maple with the earthy spice of Dark Fired Kentucky for a smoking experience that captures the senses with an otherworldly fusion of flavor. This may be the best aromatic blend Sutliff’s ever made—and they make a ton of them. First off, it’s not overbearing in the least—quite the opposite, it is also one of the more restrained aromatics they’ve ever made, with a clear but very light topping that melds oh-so-well with their choice Kentucky added to the mix. Opening the tin, the sweet maple is up front and center, but so too is the must of fallen leaves, bready pie crusts, and a crackling fire in the hearth—a perfect invocation of Herbstdüfte in a can. Packing best in an open and capacious bowl, the flavoring is subtle, and recedes to the background while puffing. With a sweet coffee or tea to accompany, the aftertaste of the maple is reinvigorated on the palate […]
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Great review, can’t wait to order some, sit on the porch and watch these beautiful Nevada fall sunsets
What lighter is that?
Russ understands many genres of blends, and his Americana blends are right up there with the best. He has a natural understanding of how leaf works together to give a relaxed but superb smoke.
This tobacco is one of my favorites, and your review is spot-on. But you don’t have to use a cob to channel your “inner rustic” — this blend just fine in any pipe; and like you said, with morning coffee it’s “to die for”. Great review and pix.
In general,I tend to like this type of mixture.So,after reading Mr. Weiss’s entry,I ordered four pouches.I tried it for first time last night.Great flavor! So……….I ordered eight more pouches.With some aging,this will be stellar.I recommend this to someone wanting to ease into the realm of Perique mixtures,as it doesn’t knock your socks off right away.
Thanks, guys.
I can’t stress it enough—whether short- or long-term, properly jar this stuff. The smoking and aging gods will reward you.