New Resolutions, New Pipes
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Fred Brown - Jan 2, 2024
- 3 min read
A new year and the great titans of Pipelandia are firing up their imaginations, and perhaps cleaning out leftover dust and detritus from 2023’s production.
At this new juncture, deities in the workshops and at tobacco blending tables are calling upon the gods and goddesses of Pipelandia to calm the surging tides and bring new wisdom to the design benches and tobacco vats.
The quantum minds are at work, fashioning a new year that will find a place on New Year’s resolutions: Promises of new pipes and new tobaccos.
Okay, so Pipelandia is maybe a Pundit bridge too far. But you surely get the idea here: New Year, new pipes, new tobacco blends.
All is right in Pipelandia world!
Pundit is right there with you. I can hardly wait to see new offerings, to appreciate what artisan carvers bring forth from aged ebauchons or blocks of ancient meerschaum stocks.
I know pipe puffers don’t take the creation of pipes in stride. We much appreciate the talent and time it takes to produce the pipes we love.
The same is true on the other side of our passion for pipes—those prodigious and precious tobacco blends that arrive from the brilliant blending minds who toil to create just the right formulae for a particular taste.
Pipes and tobaccos just don’t burst forth like a new year at the drop of a sparkling ball and exploding fireworks. This art we treasure takes time, training, experimentation, and hard work.
I believe that’s why in this new year we should support, as often as budgets allow our tireless artisans who much of the time, work away unnoticed until a new pipe arrives at a bricks and mortar retail outlet, or a favorite internet retailer.
Pundit remembers a time when a pipe was simply a pipe, a smoking instrument. Nothing too special, except for the occasional Dunhill that made you drool.
Tobacco blends were old-timey, mostly, something our grandfathers smoked. Looking back through misty time, say six decades ago, Pundit could walk into a local tobacco shop, or drug store, and purchase a pipe for under $20 along with a pouch of tobacco.
Most of the pipes then were machined, and tobaccos relied on burly and Virginias in various forms and flavorings. Yes, it was quite easy to blister a tongue.
Pundit apologizes for this brief history review, but we are fortunate today to have dedicated artisans turning out masterfully handcrafted pipe shapes and tobacco blends, which are made to seem not only beautiful but also in some ways simply personal to yours and my tastes. Just as if we ordered it specially concocted and turned on the workbench or blended to our specific notions.
That’s why Pundit gets revved up at a New Year: visions of pipes and tobaccos dancing in his head.
It is always exciting to see and read about the latest offerings from the many talented artisans in Pipelandia.
Perhaps an often dreamed of historic pipe purchase is in the New Year for you. Pipe dreams are made of such.
And now a Pipe Smoker of the Past to kick off the new year is J.R.R. Tolkien, born Jan. 3, 1892, and died, Sept. 2, 1973.
Tolkien, good friends with author C. S. Lewis, both dons of literature at Oxford University, Oxford, England, is of course the Hobbit of Hobbits. His Lord of the Rings series continues along its mythical and magical popularity.
Tolkien and Lewis (of Chronicles of Narnia fame) were pipe-puffing pub pals who enjoyed bowls of Three Nuns and Capstan tobacco over pints in the Eagle and Child tavern in the 1920s.
And one other Pipe Smoker of the past is Joseph Rudyard Kipling, born Dec. 30, 1865, and died Jan. 18, 1936.
Kipling was a puffer from an early age and was especially fond of meerschaum. So fond in fact that he authored a poem, The Maid of the Meerschaum.
If history were taught in the form of stories, it would never be forgotten—Rudyard Kipling, The Collected Works
And, just so you know, Pundit still has some of the old-school about him. I continue to mix and mingle some of the grandaddy blends, i.e., Prince Albert, with an aromatic, or a bit of perique. Just so that I don’t lose touch with my past, doncha know.
Here is to a great New Year to all my pals in Pipelandia.
New Resolutions, new pipes, and tobacco!
Written by Fred Brown
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His grandfather came to the US with a $50 gold coin in his shoe, opened up a cigar shop, and his most famous customer was Babe Ruth. He holds the record for the longest slow smoke in the world at over 24 hours, and he is the only man who stopped Chuck Norris from round-house kicking the Nording Pipe Statue. The most interesting man in the world, Jonathan Goldsmith, stopped by the Chicago Pipe Show this year to get kissed on the cheek by Neal Osborn. Wait, what? OK, I kid. Jonathan came to honor his friend and fishing buddy Steve Norse of Vermont Freehand at the annual Doctors and Masters of Pipes award dinner. Steve was one of the two recipients of the Masters of Pipes award and asked Johnathan to show up and add some color to his acceptance speech. Slightly overshadowed but no less important! Jay Furman was also honored as this year’s hobbyist Master of Pipes, joining me and a pipe-star-studded list of great contributors to the hobby and profession of pipes. 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You may be wondering what the most interesting pipe smoker in the world smokes…. I didn’t miss the opportunity to chat with this incredibly nice man, whom Brian Levine and I also remembered from one of our favorite TV shows, the A-Team. He was also in many other shows from the 80s, such as Magnum PI, Murder She Wrote, Dallas, and MacGyver, just to name a few. Jonathan: I actually enjoy simple and readily available tobacco like Captain Black or some black cavendish from my local cigar and pipe shop in Vermont. What about your first pipe? Jonathan: I picked up my first pipe; I think it was a billiard when I was in London many years ago at a place called James Fox. How often do you smoke? Jonathan: Almost every day. I enjoy a pipe in the morning and a cigar in the afternoon. 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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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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 604. Our featured interview tonight is with Jon David Cole. JD is the Owner/Tobacconist at The Country Squire in Jackson, MS, and he is the former co-host of the podcast, Country Squire Radio, which ended their 10-year run last year. We’ll have JD with the “From the Country Squire” segment talking about all the new things happening at the store and in the business in general. At the top of the show, we’ll continue our audio tour of Brian’s pipe collection.
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.
