Ghosts of Christmas Present
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Fred Brown - Dec 2, 2022
- 4 min read
Two of the larger-than-life names at this time of year, other than the pipe-puffing big white bearded guy in the North Pole, who runs a shop full of elves and reindeer, are the two named Charles—Darwin and Dickens.
You probably already know this, if you have been paying close attention to the Pundit, I love the month of December.
And, yes, the Pundit makes a gift list, a Christmas card list, a recipe list, you name it, and the Pundit puts it on a list this time of year. And checks all multiple times.
It’s the season of rejoicing after a long, hard year. It is the time when we can all come together over a nicely written poem, a Christmas story, a pint, and a pipe, and two of the Pundit’s favorites: a humongous Christmas meal with family, and a new Christmas pipe and tobacco.
So, let’s get back to the Charleses before this missive runs amok with Christmas lights flashing all over the place with reindeer a-leaping and elves dashing for cover.
Let’s start with the great biologist first. Charles Darwin roamed the South Seas for five years aboard Her Majesty’s Ship Beagle on a fact-finding voyage. The stop at the Galapagos Islands with its infinite variety of critters provided a foundation for the foundational On the Origin of Species (ahem, one of the Pundit’s favorite reads).
Now that your appetite has been whetted here is the punch line: The Pundit is not sure whether or not the great biologist smoked a pipe. I’ve found that he did and didn’t because of notoriously bad health.
So, we can’t claim Mr. “Origin” as a pipe smoker, but the wonderful folks at Peterson have produced their version of tribute for one of its Christmas 2022 shapes: The Darwin, beautifully outfitted with Peterson’s first-time presentation of a pipe with copper spigot mounts and finished with a lovely rustication and fishtail stem.
Naturally, Pundit leaped right in and purchased the Darwin Christmas 2022 Pipe. It is the classic B42 shape, the Darwin.
Here is what Truett Smith at SmokingPipes.com says about the Darwin: “In 2009, Peterson released the Darwin “B42” shape in commemoration of the sesquicentennial of Charles Darwin’s On the Origin of Species. The English naturalist’s seminal work was published in 1859, just 17 years before another Charles would join Fredrick Kapp in founding the longest-standing pipe manufacturer in the world: Kapp & Peterson. The “B42” is a robust bent Apple, displaying an Author-like substance through the shank and transition that exemplifies Peterson’s signature aesthetic — a perfect homage, to both Charles Darwin and Charles Peterson himself.”
Very well said and a perfect picture of a Peterson pipe.
Oh, and Pundit also picked up a special Cornell & Diehl “Ghosts of Christmas Present,” blend with which to break in the Darwin. More on this blend in just a moment.
And now we turn our attention to one of the greatest novelists of the 19th—and just maybe any century—Charles Dickens. Another recommended author from the Pundit’s library of noted novelists and writers.
Each December Pundit and his daughters read “A Christmas Carol” together and talk about its many lessons.
Dickens’ novella of Christmas was published in 1843 and has never been out of print!
The story tells the tale of Ebenezer Scrooge, a penny-pinching aging old coot, who is visited by the spirit of the late Jacob Marley, his former business partner. Other ghosties arrive, too, from Scrooge’s past, present, and future Christmases.
Well, if you have never read A Christmas Carol, which Pundit finds hard to believe, there won’t be a review here. Only to say, Scrooge is changed after the ghosts arrive and have their say with him, thus giving him a renewed view of life. You will just have to read the novella to get a better understanding of a great piece of literature.
Now, here again, it is not certain that Dickens smoked a pipe. Some accounts say he never smoked because of ill health during his lifespan. Again some stories relate that he enjoyed “latakia” from time to time.
But we do know that he wrote some of the best novels of the Victorian era, during Britain’s Industrial Revolution, which was an especially hard time for “street children” who had no home but the hard, filthy life of city slums.
Ok, so about “Ghosts of Christmas Present,” blend from Cornell & Diehl from SmokingPipes.com.
I picked this blend to go with my Darwin Christmas 2022 pipe because it combines two of the Pundit’s favorite contents, straight Virginia, and a dash of rum flavoring.
This sort of hints at the swashbuckling days oer the “wine dark” seas (with poetic apologies to poets everywhere and the nonpareil Homer).
And, for a much better review of this special Wintertime Reserve blend by C&D, head over to the nonpareil tobacco reviewer Jiminks.
And now a noteworthy mention of an occasional pipe smoker, John Steinbeck. He was born Feb. 27, 1902, in Salinas, Calif., and died Dec. 20, 1968, in New York City.
Steinbeck, the winner of the Nobel Prize for literature in 1962, was one of America’s greatest writers and another Pundit favorite. You just can’t beat The Grapes of Wrath, Of Mice and Men, East of Eden, Travels With Charley, The Log from the Sea of Cortez, and any other piece of writing by this master wordsmith.
And now a couple of parting quotes from Steinbeck:
“What good is the warmth of summer, without the cold of winter to give it sweetness.”― John Steinbeck, Travels with Charley: In Search of America
And this last, one of the Pundit’s favorites from Steinbeck:
“I guess there are never enough books.”― John Steinbeck, A John Steinbeck Encyclopedia
Merry Christmas and happy puffing on your favorite blends in the New Year.
Written by Fred Brown
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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.
