Aromatics One More Time
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Kevin Godbee - Mar 7, 2019
- 6 min read
Fred Brown
I’d no more love just one kind of woman than drink only one kind of wine—from the lyrics in “Berkeley Woman,” written by Bryan Bowers and made popular by the late John Denver.
For the last few months, I have been working on an experiment that strikes at the heart of pipe smoking: Aromatic tobacco blends vs. non-aromatics tobacco blends.
Many of us begin our pipe-smoking journey with aromatic tobaccos, or doses of black cavendish (itself not an aromatic) with food-grade or other flavor additives applied.
Back in the day, say the 1950s through the 1960s and ‘70s, aromatics were de rigueur, and not a jumping off point for arguments.
To be sure, there were great Virginia and burley blends available at the time. But aromatics appeared to me to be at a high water mark then as well.
Just think of the codger blends or over-the-counter fare.
It also seems to me today you have to be in one camp or the other, aro or not aro.
I know some say they like both as a change of pace from one or the other. I do, as well.
Like many of you, my first pipe tobacco back in the early 1960s consisted of cherry smash, vanilla, honeydew, and anything else that was in the blender’s kitchen spice rack.
My tongue paid a heavy price.
I graduated to Yellow Sail at the advice of a wizened tobacconist. Then I found Edward’s Pipe shop and lordy there were many great tobaccos in that shop.
I smoked much Bishop Burley, Buccaneer, and a ton of Scottish Moor, which I did not consider to be an aromatic at the time.
With Edward’s, I ran the gamut of their house blends and pipes (all oil-cured Algerian briar). Fortunately, I still own a couple of Edward’s Algerian briars.
It wasn’t until I began reading and learning about English blends, Virginia blends, flakes, and other forms of tobacco that it dawned I was missing an entire world of tobacco.
For me, moving to English blends, Virginia-Perique blends, and burley forward blends was a revelation.
Then one day I found Cornell & Diehl established in North Carolina at the time.
Craig Tarler and his wife, Patty, were sweethearts with vast tobacco knowledge.
Craig began moving me toward a more balanced approach to pipe smoking.
In the next several years with C&D, I discovered pipe smoking nirvana: great Virginias of various colors and strengths; beautiful flakes, fabulous burleys, and aromatics that made up for all the bad years and road rash tongue.
I drifted from blend to blend, always looking for that next great tobacco thing, whether it was an aro or not.
Mostly I stuck with Virginias and flakes.
Until. . . . Until not too long ago I began yearning for the taste of aromatics again.
Maybe I am trying to find that young pipe smoker I once was. Or, perhaps my body chemistry has changed, and I hear the siren call off that aromatic shore.
I began looking over the aromatic tobacco landscape and discovered there are some outstanding blends alive and well from a variety of blending houses.
We are in a tobacco blending renaissance, despite the harsh breath of federal regulators lurking in the shadows.
Yes, last year we lost the great McClelland Tobacco house of superb blends, a blow to be sure.
Quite possibly there will never be another tobacco blending manufacturer such as Mike and Mary McNiel.
But there are some gifted and talented tobacco artists around today: Russ Ouellette at PipesandCigars. Com, and of Hearth and Home fame; Cornell & Diehl now count more than 300 blends in their stock of fabulous tobaccos; Seattle Pipe Club’s Joe Lankford is a masterful tobacco blender.
There are others who put us in the hands of what can only be described as the Leonardos of tobacco blending.
You may not like aros and refuse to smoke them. But, in my estimation, if you are not now smoking aromatics, you are missing an extraordinary time in tobacco history in the U.S.
Of course, all our tastes are different, just as no two fingerprints are the same.
So, what strikes my fancy either in an aromatic or non-aromatic tobacco may not suit you.
But do not be deterred because that would deny you one side of the story and enjoyment.
If you refuse to try aromatic tobaccos based on some experience, it might be time to rethink that.
Besides, you should be potty trained by now.
The art of pipe smoking is low and slow. Go easy on the puffing, and your tongue will thank you. And you’ll find a new world of taste in an aromatic.
It is true that most of our tobacco blends have something added to make them fire up our taste buds.
Yes, even non-aromatics have been “juiced” to a certain extent.
You do not have to take my word on this. Check out the inestimable G.L. Pease on the subject of casing, sauces, and added top flavorings on Pipedia.org, the wiki pipe place.
“Very few tobaccos on the market today are not cased to some extent. Casing is the process of adding sugars and flavouring agents before the leaf is further processed. “The raw leaf is soaked or sprayed with a heavy solution of sugars and flavourings like liquorice, (sic) vanilla, molasses, tonquin,(sic) and so on.
“The amount of sauce absorbed by the leaf depends on the method of application, the structure of the leaf, and the length of time the leaf is in contact with the sauce before further processing. The leaf is then processed as usual. It can be conditioned and cut or pressed and held to allow further fermentation. It can be heated, steamed, toasted, or just allowed to ‘bulk’ in the atmosphere.
“Raw tobacco, especially burley, usually doesn’t taste very good, and can have poor smoking characteristics.
“Very few smokers have ever experienced tobaccos that do not have SOME (Pease’s emphasis) sort of casing applied.
“It’s not the casing that turns smokers of ‘pure’ tobacco off; it’s the excessive use of flavourings. When used delicately, they can enhance the flavour of the tobacco itself. When used heavily, as in most American style aromatic tobaccos, they can overpower the underlying tobacco flavours.”
So, whether your tastes in tobacco have evolved or remained secluded and locked on one type of tobacco, you can see that all tobacco seems to have some help with flavorings.
Uh, I have attempted to smoke a raw, just-off-the-stalk tobacco leaf.
Do not try this at home, or without professional assistance.
Many a tasty aromatic tobacco, such as C&D’s Black Frigate, Russ Ouellette’s Bold Rum, J.M. Boswell’s Piper’s Pleasure, or a host of other names, aros can give you a boost just when you are looking for a difference.
For example, we all know that C&D has some of the finest burley tobaccos extant. And yet, 91 of its 300-plus blends are straight aromatics.
Yes, you can certainly find the goopies that will transform your pipe into glop.
Some aromatic blends will surely send you hunting the “ghostbusters.”
Don’t write off some of the aros. Just get out your trusty cob and give an aro a go.
A cob can take anything you toss its way and keep on ticking.
Even though my experiment is not intended to satisfy the scientific-minded among you, or even claim to be highly qualitative, it is, simply stated, a prompt to give aromatic tobaccos a chance. . . .again.
 Fred Brown is a journalist who lives in Knoxville, TN. He will write this column for PipesMagazine.com monthly. He can be contacted at tennwriter@bellsouth.net. |
Written by Kevin Godbee
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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! 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! 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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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Yeah, absolutely. I enjoy a well-balanced tobacco-forward aromatic, and occasionally a strongly flavored sweet, rum or whiskey. Non-aro blends are first in my heart, but I wouldn’t miss the aromatic change of pace. Over ninety percent of pipe tobacco sales are aromatic, so it is the backbone of the industry and supports the non-aromatic blends; remember that.
I agree with you, there are a lot of tasty aromatics out there, I’ve always had a healthy appetite for flavored tobacco’s, mainly of the old world scented tobaccos that are popular in the UK. Also, if a lot of aros don’t satiate your nicotine desires it’s fun to play around with beefing them up with other blends. A favorite of mine is what I call Autumn Bogie, which consist of a 50/50 mix of C&D’s Autumn Evening & GH&Co’s Brown Bogie. It’s just like anything in this world, there is the good, the bad and the ugly in every genre.
I started out with drug store aromatics — most possessing a chemical or “plastic-like” aftertaste. Then I abruptly dropped them when I discovered English style blends and other high end natural blends.
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Over the years I’ve discovered that there are three kinds of aromatics: (1) the above mentioned drug store stuff — designed to deliver nicotine and regale the wife’s nose, not your palate; (2) natural tobacco blends with either a topping or a non-tobacco amendment such as deertongue; (3) Cavendish blends — cased, but much less artificial tasting, and aimed at the tastebuds rather than the wife’s nose.
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Despite your entertaining inspirational piece, I think I’ll put off any return to the world of tutti-frutti until I’ve exhausted the mind boggling variety available in the world of (so-called) natural blends.
Appreciate the article. It’s interesting that most blends have some sort of topping, and i’m fine with that. To the blends I like, their creators are genius, as each pipe smoker may feel the same on their favorites. Side note, thank goodness Prince Albert & Carter Hall remain available widely. Started with them, and their still a staple in my cellar.
Nice article very interesting and informative coming from a beginner pipe smoker. Look forward to reading some more, thanks.
I started with aromatics and I smoke non aromatics way more often. Though there are some really good aromatics. I feel about aromatics about the same way I feel about ordering dessert. I prefer good food but sometimes something sweet and rich just hits the spot.