Golden Age of Pipe Tobacco

[The Amish Tyrant]

Threads often arise discussing discontinued blends and recreations or match blends. A group of members here even enlisted the help of a living legend and supertaster to bring back War Horse. Also, codger blends from yesteryear are still going strong.

Yet, the current tobacco selection seems vastly more than years before, especially with aromatics in any flavor you can conjure.

What would you consider the Golden Age of pipe tobacco? With the selection of blends and availability of online purchases (in most places), I would say the time is now.

Thoughts?

 

[canucklehead]

2018, IMO

 

[sablebrush52]

There's no correct answer to your question. If you're happy with the available blends then your golden age is now.

For many of us, the Golden Age was before the announcement of the FDA Deeming regulations in 2016. For a lot of long time smokers, the golden age came to an end in the early 1980's when Dunhill stopped manufacturing their blends, when Sobranie Litd closed shop. and mergers began to consolidate the various brands under fewer manufacturers, or later, when most of the British manufacturers sold their IPs and closed their doors.

 

[VDL_Piper]

I think it would have to be when there was a lot of large warehouses filled with aged tobacco and all the great varietals where in play, we’ve lost some truly great varieties of tobacco from very unique growing regions that simply cannot be replicated or replaced.

 

[Briar Lee]

The golden age of tobacco, as well as the golden age of everything else under the sun, is yet to come.

Generation upon generation of tobacconists have been laboring year by year since 1492 to make better tobacco.

What has really helped out tobacco is higher taxes have made it more of a luxury article.

We expect and receive more, than our fathers before us.

Somewhere today, somebody is working to improve Plum Pudding and Cult Blood Red Moon.

And not just tobacco itself is better today than it ever has been, the same is true for pipes and even pipe lighters.

When I was a boy, I was expert on how to replace a pin in the hinge of my Zippos. I’d take a few at a time and send them to Zippo to have hinges replaced.

I’ve not had to replace a hinge pin on a Zippo in thirty years.

And smoking pipes are just incredibly better too.

 

[Brewfan]

I would say we are currently in my golden age. I don't care for Latakia so not having any Syrian means nothing to me, the little bit of McClelland I've had I didn't think lived up to the hype (or price), and I don't think the Dunhill blends are anything special. What I DO like is Virginia, perique, and Virginia perique and right now those varietals coming out of C&D, Watch City, etc (and especially 2021 Cringle Flake) I find to be amazing.

I can imagine if something changes in the future, I'll be looking back on today as "the good old days".

 

[didimauw]

The fact that I have never left my home to get pipe tobacco or pipes say alot about these days!

 

[Chaukisch]

You could live three human lives and not taste all the different blends, strains and tastes that the tobacco in this modern world has to offer. This, right now, must be the golden age with all this availability and abundance we enjoy. With a simple click you can buy anything, from a humble raw tobacco leaf to prestigious and masterfully done blends.

 

[grimpuffer]

I agree that right now seems to be a pretty dang good time to be a pipe smoker with the vast selection of pipes and tobacco online.

That being said, my golden age (year technically) would be around 2017 or a little earlier.

I do miss a great deal of the McClelland blends and haven’t had anything that really fills the gap of their blends I truly enjoyed.

I also am picky about aromatics but their FM Cellar was always an easy smoking treat on some evenings.

 

[boston]

I worked at a pipe shop in the 70's and many would say that was a golden time. I was too young to smoke, but I packed tobacco every Saturday and it smelled marvelous.

For me the best years to buy tobacco we're 2005 to 2015 or thereabouts. Then as I estimate, hoarding started to happen, prices changed, buying became a race. And then McClelland closed. And more recently, I can no longer purchase an aromatic like ennerdale in Massachusetts, but it's legal to buy dope. Go figure.

But I will say I'm impressed by some new VA based blends on the market now. Top shelf, the closing of McClelland is not quite the catastrophe it once was...

 

[Uruss]

Sometime before McClelland closed down and before Kentucky club and Walnut stopped being produced...

 

[hugodrax]

Sometime before McClelland closed down and before Kentucky club and Walnut stopped being produced...

And sugar barrel.

 

[sobranie759]

Interesting read on when "The Golden age of Pipe Tobacco" ended . I don't think there was such a time IMHO. When I started in the 60's the pipe shops I visited had many a tin of Sobranie, Dunhill and Three Nuns sitting on the shelf collecting dust . Ehrlich's in Boston, Iwan Reis in Chicago , Wally Franks in NY, Wilke in NYC , Smoker's Haven in Ohio , Peretti in Boston all sold tons of private label tobacco and I mean tons. What has happened is the tobacco manufactures Like Block Brothers, Philip Morris, House of Windsor, McConnell, US Tobacco all went away or were purchased and resold. If there was such a "Golden Age " it would be when you could walk into a pipe shop and open up all those glass jars so you could take in the aroma while thinking of the pipeful to perhaps come from one of these blends. When you could talk to the "tobacconist" who may have blended the tobacco or laid out in front of you five or six pipes to consider that he recommended which may have been a "house brand" not a Dunhill. Reviews came from the tobacconist or the guy standing next to you. Not someone offering an opinion of a blend online that they never smoked.
So I guess the "Golden Age" would be when you perceive it to be . For some it would be now, for others it was a trip to NYC when you could visit five or six pipe shops walking around . Was it then? Was it now? Who cares, just enjoy our hobby, stroll the streets of the internet stop into the shops virtually. Just don't let the marketing push you too hard. With fewer pipe smokers today, the retailers are wondering where "The Golden Age of the Pipe Smoker'" went .

 

[OSOBUCO]

There is no golden age. But there are golden days. Those rare days in my life when my loved ones are healthy and happy and I have a full bowl of something lovely and a nice drink to pair it with as I relax on my porch with my dogs. I savor these days when they come and hope for repeats often.

 

[kschatey]

Sometime before McClelland closed down and before Kentucky club and Walnut stopped being produced...

Mmm... Kentucky Club. I started on 2010 and was so lucky to have gotten a chance to try the old KY Club Mixture from the 70s. So damn good.

 

[americaman]

Yeah, I think it was Shane Ireland @shaneireland and/or someone else at Smoking Pipes on a podcast saying that we are living in the golden age of pipe tobacco. And it’s funny, because less people smoke a pipe these days but it’s absolutely true. We are in the golden age of pipe smoking. There are so many pipe carvers and so many pipe tobaccos right now, and so many keep getting added.

 

[pauls456]

Very difficult to compare what is now versus then. I remember my first stereo system, which I inherited in my early teens from my Dad, back in the mid-seventies. With my young ears, music was intoxicating. Now, I have a much fancier stereo system, but I doubt that the music sounds any better than it did then.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

The year I joined this forum, there was hardly ever a blend that would run out.

 

[cosmicfolklore]

1950's into 60's, I bet it was hard to find a tobacconist if you didn't live in one of the largest cities. Rural USA just had whatever could be found at Stuckies or Texacos or the local grocers. And, I bet it wasn't a wall of tins.

 

[Elric]

Back when Edgeworth Sliced and Bohemian Scandal were still being made would be it for me.