Curing the Rough Edges
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Fred Brown - May 1, 2023
- 5 min read
Ahh, just the thought of April showers bringing May flowers is enough to demand a commune with flora and fauna, to look up and around and admire nature’s latest colorful canvas.
And, likewise, May is the perfect time to roam the hills and dales with a fine briar and a pouch of your favorite blend. The weather is generally exactly right for walking and puffing (a pipe, that is, and not from an uphill huff and wheeze).
The Pundit dons walking shoes each May, searching for some of the more elusive wildflowers in the mountains and the flatlands. It is a fun, rewarding, and energizing experience.
Not to mention some needed exercise in the old-fashioned way—walking.
Take the beautiful and elusive fire pink wildflower (Silene virginica) in the family Caryophyllaceae. This beauty of the wilds is a Pundit fav. Unfortunately, some reports say this gorgeous wild thing is becoming harder to locate. I have found that to be true as well.
These Merry Month of May wildflower jaunts always go better with my pipe. That is especially true when I find a new wild plant with which I have never crossed paths before.
Out comes my handy-dandy plant identifier on the old smartphone, take a seat in front of the new marvel and contemplate its history with a pipeful.
Take time to enjoy your surroundings and savor the natural world around you, including the briar and leaf, another aspect of nature’s bounty.
With this spring’s arrival, the Pundit has found new loves among freshly minted blends. At times, I do return to some old familiars—Sir Walter Raleigh, Half & Half, Prince Albert, etc., the drug store blends of yore.
On a nostalgic note, the codger blends return me to college classroom days when many of my profs in English lit and history puffed the aforementioned tobaccos.
I relish those fond memories and can even recall the herbal-like scent in the classroom as smoke sifted out over aspiring scholars.
Now, some favorite offerings for out-and-about walks from the minds of Jeremy Reeves at Cornell & Diehl, say, or the mystical intellect of G.L. Pease, both of whom have fashioned some of the fine blends in the past dozen years.
Pundit is just featuring a couple of the master blenders here. Lo, there are so many great tobacco blending gurus today that it would take a long shopping list of names to do the subject a deserved justice.
So, just a couple the Pundit is trying as of this writing.
Folklore: Ran across this blend from Reeves C&D Small Batch production last year. Cellared for a bit of aging and preparing now to break it out for the real test—outside on a “naturalist” walk, ahem and ahem!
The original blend description said Folklore paid “tribute to the traditions and customs of cultures across the globe. . . Small Batch Folklore celebrates five distinct flue-cured varietals, elevated by delicate accompaniments of genuine St. James Parish Perique, lightly smoke-cured Kentucky, and exotic Kasturi leaf from 2015.
“This solid-brick crumble cake is rich and elegant, with notes of sweet fruit, citrus, warming spices, and woodsy undertones.”
The beautiful blend was also the first 16-ounce offering in the C&D Small Batch lineup. If you missed it, sorry. Sold out now at Smokingpipes.com.
Next up is one of my absolute favorites, G.L. Pease and Drucquer & Sons First Amendment.
Pundit is naturally attracted to this blend, not only for its fond farewell on the palate, but also because it is easy on the tongue and retro hales like a floral bouquet.
Please excuse the long explanation snatched from Smokingpipes.com here, but it has the history as well as the blend’s makeup:
“Founded in 1841, Drucquer & Sons was a famed London tobacco shop that relocated to Berkeley, Calif., in 1928. The shop was more than just a tobacconist though; it was a community. It was where some of the greatest tobacco blenders in recent memory — like Carl Ehwa of McClelland and Gregory Pease of G.L. Pease — first plunged their hands into fragrant tobacco. The historic shop may be gone, but its rich history and brand of pipe tobaccos continues, reformulated from their original recipes by Gregory Pease (and made by Cornell & Diehl) for the modern smoker.
“The First Amendment to the Drucquer catalog in 40 years, this blend celebrates the collective right to free expression with an enduring formula of Red and Bright Virginia tobaccos and fine air-cured leaf, seasoned with Cypriot Latakia and Louisiana Perique, then pressed and aged in cakes and sliced.”
And a final note on another Pundit love, Cornell & Diehl: Sun Bear Mountain Flower.
“Sun Bear Mountain Flower combines top-tier Bright Virginias with two distinct varietals of matured Oriental leaf. Natural casings of silver tequila and elderflower complement these tobaccos, alongside a drizzle of raw, unpasteurized honey to elevate the leaf’s inherent sweetness and floral notes.”
Previous Sun Bear versions were sweetened with honey from a variety of farms or gardens, and even honey from Reeves’ honeybee hives. Some of the natural sweeteners were “ethically sourced wildflower and blackberry honey from a family-owned apiary in Morganton, N.C., the community in which C&D called home for over 20 years. The organic Mountain Flower honey complements Sun Bear’s tobaccos, elevating their fruity and floral notes for a bright, refreshing character and a creamy rounded finish,” according to the SP.com description.
As the portrayal says, Sun Bear Mountain Flower is not an aromatic but a composite of Virginias and oriental flakes.
My favorite tobacco reviewer, Jiminks, gave Sun Bear a four-star rating when this version of the small batch from Reeves arrived in 2022.
And before departing our spring fling, here is a final pipe smoking notable for May:
Harold Wilson, former United Kingdom prime minister. Born March 11, 1916, in Huddersfield, England, and died, on May 24, 1995, in London.
I’m an optimist, but an optimist who carries a raincoat. Harold Wilson.
And from the Pundit: Like fine tobacco and wine, age cures immaturity and the rough edges.
Written by Fred Brown
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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.
