Bespeaking a Kindly Heart
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Kevin Godbee - Oct 8, 2015
- 6 min read
Fred Brown
Recently, I opined about a story I had read in PipesMagazine.com concerning a veteran pipe maker and how much I enjoyed the piece. Today, just as we are blessed with a plethora of beautiful pipes and fabulously blended tobaccos, we are likewise fortunate to have very talented writers writing about our pastime.
I sent a note to the author, who will go unnamed at his request, expressing my thoughts about how well written the story was and how it had struck me.
I didn’t think anything more about it until I received a large box of aged tobacco tins from the author.
It is an amazing gift!
The gift overwhelmed me. It was a treasure trove of aged tobaccos.
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The youngest of the tobaccos is a decade-old tin of Dunhill Early Morning Pipe. There is a 12-year-old round tin of Dunhill’s My Mixture and a 21-year-old tin of Butera Latakia.
Now, I know that old-time pipe puffers have always been very generous with their stashes. They like sharing and seeing other puffers enjoy their blend choices.
That is one of the truly wonderful aspects of our hobby. We share either our knowledge, our recipes for homemade tobacco blending, our aging tins, and even in some cases pipes themselves.
And, yes, I have given pipes and received pipes as gifts. It is just part of who we pipe smokers are.
To say that I was just completely blown away with this box of aging tobacco is putting it too mildly.
I would dearly love to mention the author, but he has asked me not to in fear of—and get this—hurting someone’s feeling about not sending a gift to others.
So often today, we are too busy to remember kindnesses. Life is too bristly and full of too much bustle. There are scam artists, seemingly, behind every gesture. Or so we think.
So many pressure points today grab our attention. Too much bad news. Too many forces on the periphery of our lives taking us away from what is important. Too much noise.
I have shared tobacco and even gifted pipes to friends, with nary a thought. It is just something old-timers are wont to do.
The old guard relishes helping or advising a youngster with selection of pipe and tobacco. They are sincerely eager for new puffers to get it right so the experience of smoking a pipe will be both enjoyable and a lifetime adventure.
I remember one such fellow helping me, back in the dark ages of my college days. I wanted a pipe, mainly because I thought it was cool and I could not stand the smell of cigarettes.
And then there was my grandmother, Maude. She smoked a cob, and anything Maude did was right! I wanted to be like my grandmother, stalwart, honest, hardworking, pipe-smoker.
My first pipe mentor was an old-timer (time has erased his name from my memory) in the Royal Cigar Co., in Atlanta, Ga.
He showed me several pipes that were out of reach at $20 for a college student struggling to not only stay in school, but also to pay for the education. I worked several jobs in the summertime to pay for my college tuition, buy books and extra bucks for fun was limited.
The gray haired gent in the Atlanta pipe store handed me a basket pipe. "It’s a second by a big name pipe manufacturer," he said. "It’s not good enough to have their name on it, so I’ll sell it to you for $5.
"What’s wrong it with it?" I asked.
"It’s got fills and a different stem. We stamp our name on the side of it, Royal," he said.
"It will smoke just as good as one that would cost you four times that."
I bought it. The mentor then walked me over to a wall filled with hundreds of round tins filled with tobacco. No jars, just tins.
"Here," he said, "start with this."
It was an English blend. Being an English major in college, I was thrilled to discover a pipe tobacco blend in honor of my two passions in life: reading and writing.
He packed the pipe for me, making me watch.
"Not too hard. You just let tobacco fall into the pipe, tap gently with your finger, fill more, tap just a bit harder, and then fill the pipe and tap the top with a bit more pressure."
"Notice", he said, "the fresh tobacco tends to bounce back up when you light it." Now, he said, "This is important: tamp it with a tamper." Of course, I did not have a tamper, so he gave me one. I still have it today.
"Tamp gently and re-light the pipe."
I did as my mentor instructed. Lit the pipe with a match (I still use matches today instead of a lighter) and puffed. Then I puffed some more.
"Now, not so fast on the puffing," he said. "Don’t worry if the pipe goes out. It is supposed to. Go slow. Enjoy the process and the taste. Let it come through your nose. Feel the creamy smoke."
What a wonderful introduction to this magnificent pastime.
That is how it began for me, a pipe-smoking veteran taking the time to share his knowledge, showing me how to smoke a pipe and pick out tobaccos.
It was a wonderful lesson, and I never forgot that moment. It was and is a great example of what my author friend did for me with the gift of a box of tobacco tins.
As my author buddy wrote me, pipe-makers need to remember that it is not all about making money. Yes, so many great pipe-makers today earn a living creating marvelous examples of true art.
But pipe-making, tobacco blending, is also about the pipe, and not necessarily about the money all the time.
I think we have to remember those college students out there who are looking for a mentor in our hobby.
I have watched prices of pipes soar. Pipe tobacco blends are expensive today. What I paid for blends in the 1960s has escalated to 10 times those prices. Of course, prices have risen along with everything else. It is more expensive to blend a tobacco and more expensive to make a pipe today. Tobacco regulations are draconian. Federal tariffs are outrageous, as are taxes on tobacco. All these issues are reflected in the cost of a pipe or tobacco.
But we still have to remember that we need young men and women coming to this hobby to keep it alive, give it new energy as well as to keep it interesting.
Like my pipe author pal, we do that by reaching back to a time when old pipe pros took a moment to be generous and sincere about the passion of pipes and tobaccos.
I am referring to a time that bespeaks a kindly heart.
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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. 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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. The smoky Cyprian Latakia, in turn, is backed by equal earthiness from the Rustica, which overall exhibits a profile similar to dark-fired Kentucky; it leans more toward the woody and vegetal end of that spectrum, echoing and amplifying those traits of the other constituents. The tobacco is presented pressed and cut into a couple of thick, hearty flakes in the tin, lightly moist and easily crumbled to prepare—I prefer mine with a bit of drying time. The out-of-this-world tin art for this episode in the series is Major O’Meara smoking a cavalier. In the absence of confirmation, I’m going to hazard a guess he’s of the Ithklur species. The first taste from the light is sweet, with hints of that milk chocolate dancing around the edges. The Virginia leads the smoke through the top of the bowl, and orchestrates it well. 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. This blend, if nothing else, expanded my vocabulary of sense perceptions with the uniquely treated leaf. While the average human can distinguish approximately one trillion (1,000,000,000,000!) different aromas, multiplied by seven basic tastes, and wholly dependent on variables from body chemistry to atmospheric conditions, our overworked and underpaid simian brains can’t effectively catalog them all. Our pet adding machines are exceedingly good at this, however, and someday soon they’ll be the ultimate and unequivocal authority on what something tastes, smells, looks, or even feels like. Until that time, friends, revel in the moments that can be stolen to savor over a bowl of Pipe Force: Episode I.
Great story. Old Mr. Peretti did just that for me. It’s lasted a lifetime and he’s still fondly remembered. Smart man Mr. Peretti, turned a kid into a lifetime customer. But he also managed to pass on the passion.
Excellent story, Fred. The kindness and comradrie that comes with the pipe smoking hobby does really help the new comer. Even though I’ve been smoking a pipe for years, I’m still learning from those “old-timers” with far more experience. I think that often, a new comer may be intimidated by the plethora of options in pipes and tobacco and they don’t know where to start. Not only should they be unafraid to ask questions, but those of us with some experience should also watch for them and be willing to help. It’s what’s best for the longevity of our hobby.
And I’m still looking forward to meeting you at an upcoming Smoky’s pipe night.
Sir. I love your work. I could listen to you smoke all day.