Smoke ’em While You Got ’em
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Kevin Godbee - Dec 10, 2013
- 5 min read
Fred Brown
For the pipe smoking world, 2013 hasn’t been much of a "smoking" ("hot") year.
Oh sure, recently we’ve had plenty of innovation (and re-innovation) in tobacco blends (Three Nuns and Capstan redux come to mind). And there have been vast strides made in pipe-making from absolutely astounding artisans.
The crafts of tobacco-blending and pipe-making are in a kind of renaissance, maybe even an artistic revolution. Perchance it’s not too far off to say that pipes and tobaccos are going through an Age of Enlightenment.
Even though truly masterful pipes are being turned out and tobacco blends have never been better, the truth is that all is not well in tobaccoland.
Pipe smokers are perhaps the last family of independent thinkers on a global scale. And in 2013 they were firmly placed on the endangered species list.
With rising complaints from the antis, pipe smokers, Homo sapiens Erica arborea, have existed under a black cloud for many years now, but 2013 became an exceptionally bad time for the genus.
You could almost hear the thump, thump, thump of the big footfalls coming up behind us. The big boys, the really big boys, are after the lowly pipe smokers—men and women who simply enjoy a pipe bowl of tobacco leaf from time to time.
Congress, when it wasn’t shutting itself down or shooting itself in the foot, took dead aim at pipe tobacco this past year. The Food and Drug Administration changed heads, from a scientist to a lawyer, and began tightening its grip on tobacco policy enforcement.
Two bills made it to Congress in 2013 that, if passed and signed into law, will rearrange the furniture in retail and online tobacco shops and alter pipe smoking as we know it.
That bit of news set off a feeding frenzy of sorts within the pipe smoking community, which has seen the enemy and produced hoarders of pipe tobacco. We discuss how much poundage we have in our cellars on popular forums. Good grief, Charlie Brown.
We talk of pounds of tobacco being squirreled away in our homes, man caves, (man caves!), in closets, beneath beds and in Styrofoam coolers!
On some pipe forums (PipesMagazine.com in particular) the hoarding has even taken on drama. We are hoarding tobacco to stay the time of the "Tobaccolypse."
At the first whiff of rising taxes in late 2012 and the first of 2013, pipe smokers began buying up large quantities of tobacco tins and bags, hoping to create a buffer between themselves and the perceived coming tax increases and hikes in pipe tobacco prices.
Much of the recent scare derives from two congressional bills now inching their way through congress.
But, if either of these ill-begotten bills becomes law, then the "Tobaccolypse," will transfigure itself from mere bad dream to reality.
One of the worst bills was authored by U.S. Sen. Frank Lautenberg, D-N.J., near the end of April. Introduced as the Tobacco Tax and Enforcement Reform Act, what this bill does essentially, among its more draconian elements, is increase federal excise taxes on pipe tobacco.
You can read the bill’s summary here.
The Tobacco Tax Equity Act of 2013 was authored by Sen. Richard Durbin, D-Ill., the congressman pipe smokers love to hate.
This bit of skullduggery legislation would amend the Internal Revenue Code to provide what Durbin calls the "tax rate parity among all tobacco products."
Durbin’s tax rate parity would tax pipe tobacco and roll-your-own tobacco at $24.78 per pound instead of $2.8311 per pound as it is today.
And the bill finishes up with this flurry, in very clear, uncluttered terms, defining for all to understand just what a tobacco product is: "The term `tobacco products’ means "(1) cigars, cigarettes, smokeless tobacco, pipe tobacco, and roll-your-own tobacco, and "(2) any other product containing tobacco that is intended or expected to be consumed."
And, if you don’t quite grasp the above language, Durbin added that "Any product" described in his bill that the Food and Drug Administration has declared to be a tobacco product, will be "taxed at a level of tax equivalent to the tax rate for cigarettes on an estimated per use basis."
Both bills, by the way, were helped along by some crossbreeding. Lautenberg received co-sponsorship service from Sen. Durbin and Durbin’s doozy was co-sponsored by Lautenberg.
Both of these alarming bills are in committee, which means they could remain in the form in which they are currently constructed, or they could come out wobbling in some new zombie-like feature added on by some other congressmen.
Looking ahead to the New Year there are some really bright and fun spots, maybe even some "smoking" hot spots.
Some of the pipes being created today are, well, phenomenal. Of course, classic shapes abound. The Italians continue to just chisel out beautiful pipes with some sort of old world magic, and English and other Euro-craftsmen are solid.
But many of the Euro-innovators, like Alex Florov, fashion pipes that look as if they might just take off and fly away. They are just incredible to study and to wonder, "How did he do that with a briar burl?"
If you search Smokingpipes.com on the Internet and run across the Ukrainian artisan Konstantin Shekita, you might just scratch a hole in your head attempting to figure out how he found a way to weave pipes like rattan strips. Amazing work!
Some of the artisan offerings from Maigurs Knets of Latvia, who SMC says he "interprets the classics into very Art Nouveau sculptures," appear as if they might run off instead of walking away.
Werner Mummert, a German pipe-maker, has some creations that seem to have been speared right through the gullet in some sort of "Hunger Games" contest. Other pipes off his workshop table make you think of some industrial-strength thing with green and orange and yellow squares. Awesome!
And, of course, there is the steampunk pipe movement. Honestly, those are the Megalodons of pipe smoking. But, they are fun, fun, fun. Many of the pipes resemble steam pipes screwed together with elbow joints.
And then there are any number of fine craftsmen who take on the whales and blowfish shapes. These are not your grandfather’s pipes.
Yes, the art of pipe-making and tobacco-blending are still in good hands. We have a great year ahead, a "smoking hot" (not bowl hot, that is) year.
That is, if we can just keep politicians from trampling all over our precious tobacco leaf, our rights and trying to wipe us out, making us endangered no more, but extinct.
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Written by Kevin Godbee
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Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 636. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with Barry Kane. Barry started smoking a pipe in 1961 when he was 14-years old. Back then it seemed like everybody smoked, and you could buy pipes and tobacco just about anywhere. Barry is a true old-school pipe smoker, sticking to just one blend. See if you can guess which one before listening. At the top of the show Brian will give his take on Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s purchase of Mac Baren and Sutliff Tobacco and their announcement that they will be shut down.
There’s a pipe in my collection that I cannot bring myself to smoke, though I’ve had it for more years than I care to recall. It’s old, or shall I say, well experienced; that experience, that oldness came to it long before it was in my possession. The pipe is an old Comoy’s Grand Slam from the 1940s. The shape (#93), a slightly canted, stack billiard (sometimes referred to as a Belgian) is right up my alley, and it’s a beautiful example of it. It came to me with some wear and tear; nothing unusual for an old pipe, but more the signs of one that has been well loved, smoked a lot, treated as a favorite tool, cherished, in a sense, by frequent use. It’s the pipe equivalent of a vintage car that’s been driven a lot, enjoyed fully and maintained adequately, rather than one kept in a spotless garage, dusted and detailed weekly, brought out only for leisurely Sunday drives, or to be ogled behind the ropes at the next Concours d’Elegance. When it arrived, those uncounted years ago, it wanted a little restoration. Nothing dramatic needed to be done to it, but the stem was oxidized, the finish a little dingy. The cake was even and fairly thin, and the airway was relatively clean, both signs that its previous owner cared for it, but the bowl’s surface was a little drab and dull. It took little effort to reveal its beauty, to show the lovely contrasted stain and interesting grain beneath the old wax. I often think I should do before and after photos of pipes that I work on, but those thoughts always come after the work’s been done. This one would have been a great illustration of how years of handling that can sometimes make a pipe more beautiful, can other times make it just look grungy. Once I’d cleaned up the externals, it was time to address the inside bits. I approach this a little bassackwards, I realize. It would be more sensible to take care of the inside before addressing the outside, but it’s how I roll. If an old pipe isn’t pretty to look at, it’s unlikely that I’ll care much about it, and cleaning is usually the hardest part, or at least the most boring part of any restoration for me. Alcohol and pipe cleaners. Lots of pipe cleaners. That’s why I leave it for last. Sometimes, I’ll even give a pipe a test smoke before a deep cleaning, just for a point of reference. I gave it a sniff to get an idea of what I was up against, and it stopped me cold. There in that bowl was an aroma that I had not smelled in decades. My head was instantly filled with memories of being in the back room of a fabled Berkeley tobacconist’s shop where I stumbled upon a few jars of long discontinued blends. One of them, a blend called Forty and Eight, had the most engaging and unusual scent of any tobacco I’d stuck my schnoz into. It was sweet, but not in a candy store way. There were none of the usual vanilla, cherry, berry or anise notes of typical aromatics, nothing that could be compared to aftershave or deodorant soap, but something almost musky, a little earthy, something exotic. The shop’s owner couldn’t tell me what was in it, how, or where it had been produced. The old blend had been retired before he’d bought the place. The printed catalogue gave no clues, either, other than being overprinted with the word “DISCONTINUED” in bold, rubber-stamp type. (And, I don’t recall it as being “highly aromatic” as the description indicates.) There was still quite a bit in the jar. Being, at that point, an intrepid explorer of all kinds of tobaccos, whether I thought I’d like them or not, I had to give it a try. It was burly based, but also comprised a good measure of virginia leaf, and maybe some other varieties; I didn’t have enough experience at the time to really pick it apart. But, that aroma was unlike anything I’d experienced before or since. It was something now completely lost to time. Until it wasn’t. Memories are powerful things, and there is no sense more tightly bound to memory than our sense of smell. One whiff was all it took to carry me back in time, conjuring a vivid recollection of something long submerged in the inky depths of a subconscious mind. Look, I know as well as anyone that pipes are meant to be smoked, and that many feel it almost sacrilegious to have a pipe and not set it to its intended task. In this case, I simply can’t. I won’t. Ever. Rationally, I am fairly certain this pipe would probably be a great smoke. It was too well loved by its previous caretaker to be anything less than that. My choice not to smoke it is an emotional one, not something rational. Of the thousands of pipes that have passed through my hands over the years, this is the only one to create such a singular and vivid, almost Proustian recollection of temps perdu, of lost time. It revivified a long dormant memory that is mine, and mine alone, and that’s enough. I keep it in a drawer with other old English pipes. In some ways, it’s nothing special, just a nice old pipe. I don’t lavish it with any particular care that arguably befits the hidden treasure that it holds. It’s not in a special box, or displayed preciously in a glass cabinet. Every once in a while, I take it out, point my nose bowlwards, and every time, those memories return just as powerfully as they did the first time. I have no idea how long it’s been since its last owner smoked it, but in the years I’ve had it, there seems to have been very little degradation of the aroma, and that’s […]
Welcome to The Pipes Magazine Radio Show Episode 635. Our featured interview on tonight’s show is with James Ravenwood. James is the boutique tobacco blender of Ravenwood Blends. His blending started out as a fun hobby, and he now has professionally packaged commercially available products with some great tin art. Part of his interest in pipe smoking goes back to fond memories of a retired Navy Veteran that lived on his street while he was growing up that would sit in his driveway smoking a pipe all day. Later, in 2011 he began smoking pipes and soon after started experimenting with mixing different tobaccos. His other hobby, that he has been doing for 30 years, is photography. He takes wonderful photos of outdoor spaces, and still life pictures of pipes and tobacco. You can see them on his Instagram @thebriarfellowship. At the top of the show we’ll have an Ask the Pipemaker segment with renowned pipe artisan Jeff Gracik.
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! Maybe especially with the help of their pipes in the art of thinking and philosophy. Recall the words of Mr. E=MC2 when he said, “I believe that pipe smoking contributes to a somewhat calm and objective judgment in all human affairs.” Amen and amen! Dealing with world-rattling events takes a calm and objective view of things, to the Pundit’s way of summing it up. You just don’t go messing around with quantum physics without a calm and objective approach, methinks. Or as the extraordinary physicist Robert Oppenheimer said after he and a team in the Manhattan Project at Los Alamos Labs developed a way to split atoms into bombs during World War II. “I am become Death, the destroyer of worlds,” said Oppenheimer referring to the development of the first nuclear bombs dropped on Japan. It must be pointed out that Oppenheimer was more of a cigarette smoker than a pipe smoker. Nonetheless, pipes were part of his personality. 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.
This article paints a very scary, yet beautiful picture for the future of pipe smoking.
Great read!
” That bit of news set off a feeding frenzy of sorts within the pipe smoking community, which has seen the enemy and produced hoarders of pipe tobacco. We discuss how much poundage we have in our cellars on popular forums. Good grief, Charlie Brown.
We talk of pounds of tobacco being squirreled away in our homes, man caves, (man caves!), in closets, beneath beds and in Styrofoam coolers!
On some pipe forums (PipesMagazine.com in particular) the hoarding has even taken on drama. We are hoarding tobacco to stay the time of the “Tobaccolypse.”
You can definitely count me in as one of those who has been building a cellar because of this pending legislation. Besides the obvious price increases we could be looking at, there is the definite possibility that many of our favorite blends will be discontinued due to lost sales and possible closings of mfgs whose sales will be dramatically affected by said legislation. I have seen some of my favorite blends disappear over the years and I for one will not have that happen to me again.
I find it only prudent to plan for the future and refuse to be left to the mercy of those legislators bent on our destruction. If that makes me a hoarder then so be it, but since I have completed my 25 year supply of tobacco, I am feeling very secure that I will be able to continue smoking my favorites for the next 25 years. I don’t consider building a tobacco cellar as hoarding, hoarding to me means stocking up on food and gas and other essentials to live. Since tobacco is a luxury item, the use of the word hoarding is misleading and an improper use of the word.
Since tobacco will never be cheaper than it is today, I believe every pipe smoker should concentrate on building their cellars now to the exclusion of building their pipe collections. No legislation is pending that will affect pipe makers so why take the chance of having to pay 25 dollars a tin in the next few years when you can pay 10.00 today. We just have to look at Canada and Europe and Australia to see our tobacco future.
Your reference ” Good grief Charlie Brown” makes it sound like we are being impractical or we feel the sky is falling with our tobacco buying when the reality is we are just being smart about what the future holds for us. Your article makes it sound like we are being silly for worrying about the future of tobacco prices and that HOARDING( wrong terminology in my mind) is somehow a bad thing. Cellaring is the word I would use and how many people build wine cellars or cigar cellars and are not called hoarders?
Welcome back, Fred! A very thoughtful article, accurately summarizing the year in pipe smoking; inspiring and frightening at the same time.
Great article. Looking forward to more.
Glad to see your writing again! Thanks for the perspective, and a healthy reminder of the results of complacency. Everyone should write their congressmen now!
When the rocks are rolling it sucks to be at the bottom of the hill.
Great article. And welcome back. Like Harris, I think it only prudent to maintain and add to my cellar. I don’t think the term hoarding is really appropriate, because we, like wine enthusiasts, or cigar humidor specialists, realize that our stocks only improve with age. In other words, creating a cellar is a wise thing to do. Especially in this day and age, where tobacco will never be cheaper than it is today.
Welcome back, Fred! Just remember the NSA is probably reading this….
Thanks for the welcome back, fellows. It is great to be back in the PM.com stable.
Harris, didn’t mean to dis anyone building a cellar. I think it is wise, actually. It is better to be safe than sorry, and I do think it will get worse before it gets better, if it gets better.
But, I get your point.
In S.826 Lautenberg’s bill, tax increases of 194% for both small cigars and cigarettes and 199% on roll-your-own tobacco seem pretty absurd. I mean, if they were to double the taxes on anything, who wouldn’t flip their lid? But for pipe tobacco…a freaking 1,750% increase?! Yes, that’s a comma, not a decimal point…ONE THOUSAND SEVEN HUNDRED FIFTY PERCENT?! How about we try increases the taxes on fuel like this and see what happens when everyone has to pay $50/gallon to fill up their car. Better yet, let’s try it with alcohol!
I really think they haven’t even thought about the consequences these bills would have on such a small industry. Between ridiculously increased prices and drop in demand from those prices, it’s very possibly it could nearly wipe it out.
I don’t hoard with only about 4 lbs. cellared. I do homebrew. They’ll be coming after us homebrewers next. Greedy bastards go to hell where they belong. In this life and the next.
Thanks for getting all political, Fred- someone needed to do it. That’s not draconian, that’s scorched earth policy, especially since most Americans have never met a pipe smoker. I’m not a hoarder either, having only recently increased my supply to maybe 3 pounds or so. Obviously, what’s crawled up the butts of these pols is nothing more than ignorance, expediency, and the fires of fanaticism. Nothing that a length of rope wouldn’t cure. Why not just ban candles, incense and potpourri while they’re at it?. How about perfume and varnish? Now that diesel fuel has been found to be cancerous, that should be the first thing that should have its price increased a thousand fold. Pardon the hyperbole.
Nice post , great to be brought up to date on all the measures that the ruling elite have in store for us. I for one think we should not so much think of buying tobacco and storing it for what is to come but instead fight back against these measures buy an elite group of bullies that would like to micro manage every aspect of our lives. Remember this is the same group that has devalued our dollar, put us into wars with no end in site, spied on us and have allowed unconstitutional laws to be forced on us. Lets start figuring out exactly who they are and do all we can to get them voted out of office. I believe more people are effected by booze and legal and non legal drugs yet these bums don’t go after these industries if anything they look to aid them. Lets start with Turban Durban and making him understand that he will be joining the private sector soon.