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Kevin Godbee - Jun 4, 2014
- 4 min read
E. Roberts
As a New Yorker, I’m a sucker for anything related to my City. Call it hometown pride, a sense of nostalgia elicited, or simple local fandom, but I’ll freely admit to feeling my heart strings tugged at when I hear Billy Joel or Alicia Keys sing about it, when John Sterling intones "Ballgame over! Yankees win! Theeeeeee Yankees win!", or even when I see a tourist with an "I ♥ NY" tee shirt (ok, I admit it, I own one myself). So it is with much anticipation that I open my pouch of Tobacco Galleria Blue Note, from Sutliff. Named in honor of the Blue Note Jazz Club in Greenwich Village, it’s an aromatic blend of burley, Virginia, and Green River Black Cavendish.
The original Blue Note Jazz Club, NYC.
Among us tobacco snobs, pouched pipe tobacco sometimes gets an undeserved bad rap, much more so here in the States than in Europe, where pouches are more common even with premium brands. Let us not forget the fabled Balkan Sobranie, which pouches still fetch stratospheric prices on the resale market. Many premium marques including Capstan, Erinmore, Condor, and Mac Baren are successfully marketed in pouches abroad; here in ‘Merica we tend to think of pouches as being strictly "OTC" or "drugstore" blends, though it’s not always the case that these are intrinsically inferior blends.
The Blue Note Jazz Club is a rarity, one of those legendary places that sprung into being in my lifetime. It’s still in its original 3rd Street location, in the heart of the Village, most of which is owned by NYU these days. Once the hub of counterculture and cheap rents, the neighborhood today teeters between overpriced condos and a perpetual Spring Break atmosphere, fueled by the nearly 50,000-strong student body and no shortage of bars and nightclubs. But the Blue Note has managed to successfully capture that certain something that made the Village "The Village". Stepping into the always-darkened interior, one is immediately enveloped with the intimate vibe of the evening’s jazz ensemble; the feeling of a throwback café where revolutions could foment and hearts could be broken. No longer one of a kind, there are now Blue Notes in Tokyo and Nagoya, Japan, and also in Milan, Italy.
Blue Note (the tobacco) manages to invoke some of that underground jazz feeling from the first light. In the pouch it’s soft and moist even after a few days open, evidence of a medium amount of humectant. The aroma is sweet and yet hard to pin down; like a rhythm section operating in 5/4 time, the beat flits between vanilla, fruity, and bourbon notes, always just one step ahead of your perception. The burley and Virginia are ribbon cut, with plenty of chunky Cavendish sprinkled in, so the packing is easy to manage, as is the burn. Lighting it up, there’s a brief smokiness that is quickly tempered into a nice balance between the sweet and savory elements. For the smoker, the tobacco flavor comes through in equal measure to the sweet aromatic taste, while for the bystander the aroma heavily favors the sugary Cavendish, with more of a background note of the tobacco. It is definitely a crowd-pleaser, tailor made for enjoying in mixed company. Not at all a complex smoke, this hits its middle-C and stays there, from top to bottom, consistently from bowl to bowl.
It’s a real crime that this can’t actually be enjoyed in its namesake bar. There are scant few places left in New York, and elsewhere for that matter, where one can feel free to light up and enjoy a drink and live music, like adults were once able to in this great country. Were personal freedoms such as this still the norm, I imagine Blue Note would be a great blend to sit and take in a McCoy Tyner set, or even to be one of the cool cats up on stage making the music. This of course brings to mind images of John Coltrane, Charles Mingus, Ron Carter, or even The Great Godbee, jamming out under the spotlights, pipes precariously dangling from their teeth. Alas, I fear these are memories of a time that’s fading into oblivion, excerpts from an earlier age.
Overall, Blue Note is a mild and pleasant experience that doesn’t challenge any notions of what an easy smoking aromatic should be. The room note is really its strong suit; it’s got an almost magnetic quality that will draw compliments from twenty paces out. Like a good jazz tune, it swings along effortlessly and elicits applause from the crowd. It is somewhat handicapped from the humectant use, which seems a bit heavy-handed and probably unnecessary—without it, this pouch would be very easy to smoke through before it even had time to dry out. Regardless, it’s a good choice for those times when you don’t want or need to concentrate on the riotous interplay of exotic leaf in unique and fanciful combinations, when you just want a steady background smoke that leaves you free to concentrate on your music or your mood, and one that will get you invited back to the party.
Written by Kevin Godbee
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When I first started with the pipe as a quirky and precocious teen, the only tutelage I had at my disposal were scenes from old movies in which a well dressed chap would stick his pipe into a pouch, scoop tobacco into the bowl and press it down unceremoniously with his thumb. Then, with great flourish, he’d strike a match and light the thing with all manner of cinematic excess, puffing up vast clouds of smoke falling just short of completely obscuring his visage. While it may look good on film, it’s a terrible approach to actually enjoying the thing. Somehow, though, this “technique” seems to have survived in the contemporary vernacular, at least to some extent, even with bit-loads of information handily at our fingertips that should dissuade us from the practice. But, at the time, this misguided approach was all I had; it’s no wonder my early days of puffing were fraught with difficult lighting, harsh, bitter smokes and tongue bite, all culminating in a fireproof mass of ye old soggy dottle in the bottom of the bowl. Ultimately, the resulting frustration made me give up the pipe, at least for a while. While the idea of it was still very appealing, the practice of it was not. It wasn’t until a few years later when, still full of curiosity and romantic notions of pipe smoking, I wandered into a real tobacconist’s shop, and learned my “method” was a long way from the techniques that would bring me to any sort of pipe smoking bliss. So, after my poor start, and under the guidance of someone who actually seemed to know how to do it right, I was given the opportunity to approach the process anew, this time with much greater success. 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Before we begin, I should tell you: this tobacco review is being written by an A.I. Not the fancy new GPTs or their ilk; no, this is last century’s meat-and-bone, all-organic model. To be fair, a large part of what we call knowledge is merely the accumulated perceptions and impressions gathered from a life wandered through, synthesized into a spongy mass of what-it-is-that-we-think-that-we-know. The algorithm for this prompt is simple enough: pump thousands of bowls of smoldering plant matter into a gaping maw, cross-reference the chemical sensations with all other matter previously ingested or inhaled, sieve it all through the diffuse and fractal twin lens of memory and emotion, and churn out a panoply of adjectives that attempts to convey the sensations to someone who hasn’t experienced it yet. Odds are that a diligently trained monkey could succeed half the time; if this reviewer nears fifty-one percent then that would qualify as an unrivaled success. There must have been some similar musings perambulating through the mind of Per Jensen when he began his mad scientist routine at Sutliff with the Pipe Force project, which brings us to the current mixture under the microscope—Sutliff’s Pipe Force: Episode I. Here again are the unusual ingredients that engendered the series, with the stoved Rustica being the defining voice in this composition. From the tin: The Latakia-forward English mixture offers plenty of smoky flavor from the fire-cured leaf, which is artfully harmonized with floral, earthy Stoved Rustica. A mixture of high-grade Virginias imparts a natural sweetness. Katerini, the sole Oriental component, offers herb and spice notes bringing complexity and nuance to the flavor profile. It’s certainly Latakia-forward, with the stoved Rustica doubling up on the rhythm section like a second bassist. A first whiff from the tin releases the aromas of shoe leather and hide glue in a base of clay soil with a campfire wafted over it like last night’s beach party. Once it’s been accustomed to oxygen again, subtle hints of sweetness poke through from the Virginias: lemon rind, light milk chocolate, the dregs of a peaty Scotch, and muddled cherry. Old regulars like fresh-sawn oak and tilled earth are there, of course, with distinct notes of truffle, creosote, damp peat, and pine bark mulch. As an aside, I’ve been re-potting my camellias and the similarity of aroma to the ericaceous soil mix is notable; the Katerini really brings the unique depth of its vegetal complexion when supported by the Rustica and afforded more voice in the mix. 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Thoroughly smoky with lemony, grassy highlights from the Virginia spectrum, it soon segues into the mid-bowl profile: heartier, smokier, with the flavor leaning to the mildly acrid and tangy tinge that is the campfire-esque signature of English blends. Caution advised, it can turn overly bitter if pushed—this is where one’s sipping technique is required to maintain the fullness of flavor through to the heel. I did tend toward a lot of relights, though it may have as much to do with technique as with the blend. Pacing is also important as the nicotine starts to manifest; though the Rustica’s contribution has been tempered well by the stoving, it can certainly upend an empty stomach. At the end of every bowl, the mouthfeel somehow gets better. The balance of sugars in the tobaccos would seem to be spot-on in this regard. I started out my tasting in cobs, then cut short an unpleasant bowl in a meer, and finally landed on my best instrument with the lovely Dunhill 4427 pictured, a quaint group 4 shell briar with a gentle curve and Cumberland stem supporting a perfectly executed acorn bowl. It surprised me here, as I’ve learned through the years that I generally have the best experience with English blends in large, wide bowls. With this blend it seems that to get the best out of the Katerini’s somewhat diaphanous influence the smaller bowl fared much better. Room note is very English, so the company you keep will either love it or hate it, and it doesn’t linger too much. I find it paired best with a strong coffee; Sumatran beans complement the flavors well, as do Ethiopian if a lighter brew is preferred. Overall impressions of the blend are that it’s a curiously interesting take on the English genre, almost a reductive reconstruction of the theme using the unique components. 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I sell this at the local shop I work at on Saturdays, I bought a few for myself as I liked it and wanted to try it since Dan’ Blue Note is so good. Its a fair contender, but needs drying time as stated. People love the smell.
I feel duped. I saw Latakia ………and like a moth to the flame…..
Good review though.
The Great Godbee indeed!
Yes, there is NO Latakia in this blend. But thanks for reading!