November’s Chill
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Kevin Godbee - Nov 19, 2015
- 5 min read
E. Roberts
The weather’s turning, and so my open rotation turns with it. Unlike previous years, the temperatures here have been on a gradual and steady decline, rather than their usual frenetic rollercoaster ride, and I’ve been allowed the luxury of stepping back and seeing how my palate acclimates and accommodates week by week. Whether consciously or unconsciously, I think all pipe smokers tend to vary their open rotation, at least to a small degree, in accordance with the prevailing climate. It’s only natural, as our perception of taste is a puzzle that is affected by dozens of variables both internal and external; temperature and humidity are obvious environmental ones, while the amount of sunlight we’re exposed to altering our natural vitamin D production is a less-apparent byproduct of the waning days. Common wisdom holds Latakia blends to be winter favorites, Virginias for summer, and cigars for barbeque weather. Uncommon wisdom, namely mine, likes to buck those trends and pay attention to my palate.
Returning from New Orleans in October, I was on a Perique kick for obvious reasons, and smoked through a few ounces of Daughters & Ryan’s SJ Rimboché. It’s a pronounced, sharp blend; I tend to think of it as the extra-extra-sharp cheddar of the tobacco world. The weather was still warm and mild, with temperatures in the seventies and medium humidity, and the dry, sharp smoke was fitting perfectly. I get my SJ in the 14-ounce bags and then transfer it to mason jars, and with one batch in 2013 I tried a little experiment. First, I added 2 ounces of McClelland Blending Perique to make an even pound; then I steamed the leaf lightly in the oven, spreading it evenly on a cookie sheet on the top rack with a pan of water on the bottom rack at 220F for 2 hours; I then transferred the contents to preheated jars, packed them tightly, and baked them at 350F for another 2 hours before finally sealing them. I also prepared two jars of straight SJ with the steam and bake treatment to act as a control. It should go without saying that I was fastidious about the cleanliness of my operation in order to mitigate the likelihood of mold growth, which I’ve been burned by in jarring experiments in the past.
For its two and three-quarter years in captivity, the blend deepened measurably, yet retained all of its sharpness. Opening the jar released an immense stewed plum bouquet that set my mouth watering. But to my surprise, overall it did not sweeten considerably, counter to my anticipations. Both the Periqued-up blend and the control sample still presented a dry, keen, cheddary-sharp smoke. Unadulterated SJ has a lighter-bodied profile, composed mainly of a bright, astringent Virginia riding above the counterpoint of the darker, earthy Perique pepperiness; it’s a smoke that’s rough-edged and acrid in a very good way. My experimental jars retained all of the familiar SJ acerbity, while amplifying the plum and pepper earthiness, rounding out and deepening the mouthfeel and body, and uncovering a not unpleasant metallic tinge to the profile. All in all, not a stellar transformation, but an appreciable difference; the experiment certainly helped my understanding of the effects of time and process with tobacco. I still have six jars resting in the cellar, and look forward to seeing what a few more years bring to the equation.
As October marched on into November, the temperatures crept lower each day. Dipping into the cellar for another tin, I came up with McClelland’s Stave-Aged 35, easily one of the most singular Virginias out there. I’d picked up a few tins when it came out in 2012, and though I had sampled some and enjoyed it at pipe club, my own tins went straight to the vault. This one has "summertime smoke" written all over it: straight Virginia blend, bourbon, that luscious McClelland ketchup …yet here I was, pulling sweaters from the closet and enjoying 35 in the brisk mid-sixties weather.
Opening this tin was a real treat, not the gimmick I had originally thought it was. The inclusion of a chunk of a bourbon cask was something I’d dismissed as cute when I first tasted the blend at pipe club, but then I didn’t have the experience of opening the tin myself—my sampling came from a nearly-empty tin that had aired out for quite some time prior. That’s a shame, because the experience is wonderful. In the tin it’s pure barbeque, with the familiar McClelland ketchup slathered on the charred oak and bourbon aromas like a rack of ribs. Short-cut ribbons of mahogany and chocolate, flecked with yellow strands and pitch-black nuggets cushion the one-inch cube of oak; the wood itself is charred deeply on one face, and is redolent with the sweet oaky whiskey flavor along with a good dose of burnt ends.
The aroma of the tin translates and expands into the smoking experience spectacularly. Its profile is full and satisfying, decidedly on the savory side but with the perfect hint of sweetness to add definition and illustrate the layers of flavor. The Virginia begins with a familiar hay-like taste, dry and bright, but the undercurrent of smoky bourbon comes through after the initial light and lends an ever-increasing meatiness to the bowl. The mouthfeel tingles but does not bite, and has all the feeling of sipping a glass of whiskey and the frisson of warmth that settles into the back of one’s throat. For all this, it’s the char on the oak that truly makes this blend stand out from being just a bourbon-flavored aromatic. It lends subtle hints of its character to the leaf that float in and out of every mouthful: at one turn, it imparts a Latakia-like incense; a moment later and it’s the crunchy bark of a pointed brisket; a few puffs later and I could swear there were Cracker Jacks in the bowl. Add to that how easy the draw and burn are and the wine-like aftertaste, heavy with oak, and this is one hell of an anniversary blend. Curling up in my easy chair with a mug of Earl Grey and a wool sweater, I don’t mind the weather at all.
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 […]
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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! 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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.
Thanks for yet another nicely written and wonderfully illustrated article. I enjoyed my one and only tin of Rimboché SJ straight from the tin. It wasn’t what I would call a Perique showcase, but it was a pleasant smoke with nice balance. So, it doesn’t surprise me that some might try to amp-up the Perique.
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I haven’t tapped my tin of Stave Aged 35. Must have a couple of years on it by now. I think I’ll crack that one open next summer.
Aside from the Perique experiment, I regularly fiddle with the Rimboche by adding Orientals–Basma, Bursa, sometimes some Latakia I have laying around. It’s a supremely flexible mix that makes a great blending base for whatever your tastes.
And Cortez, tear that tin open now! Don’t wait for summer!
Good article.
My tastes in to tobacco blends is not affected by the changes of the seasons.
My tastes are across a broad range from aromatics to non-aromatics.
Only my wife’s presence and complaints affect the tobacco blends that I enjoy.
She hates aromatics the most. She’s a non-smoker and sincerely wishes that I quit altogether.
While she’s at the home place I try to select a blend that is least objectionable.
Sometimes this is very difficult.
The search goes on…
Cold weather brings out the VaPer’s for me too. I love St. James Woods in the wintertime along with the latakia blends.
Cold weather brings out the VaPer’s for me too. I love St. James Woods in the wintertime along with the latakia blends.
Enjoying the change of season but basically smoke what I enjoy at any other time.
Great time for a pipe and a fire.