I started smoking pipes a few weeks ago and it's become my newest obsession!
I grew up in Mexico and picked up smoking cigars from my father. It was great to have so many options available but they still remained occasional. After moving to Canada, they became even rarer - more 'celebratory' in nature.
A few months ago, a partner gave me a "Warm Tobacco Pipe" candle by DW Home. It smelled luxurious, but being small, I chose to save it for a special occasion. Then, a few weeks ago a project at work made me think of the candle again and so I decided to try it out and light it for a little bit. The scent matched my memories of the smell of the pipe my uncle used to smoke when I was a kid, and instantly set off an insatiable thirst to try smoking a pipe myself.
For the next few days I obsessed online over pipes, and chose two to order online and try out: a Muxiang churchwarden and Joyoldelf mini-churchwarden. For the tobacco I was a lot less thoughtful. I looked up local shops that sold pipe tobacco. One of them had several rows of Cornell & Diehl and I picked Haunted Bookshop based on the notes written beneath each tin (and because I liked the name).
I then proceeded to give myself some nasty tongue bite that lasted for almost a week. The aroma and room note of the tobacco was also far, far from what I was expecting. It was then that I began looking more into different tobaccos. It was a bit of a hard find, but I eventually happened upon a shop that sold tobacco by the bulk, and went there hoping to be able to sample different ones. While they could not sell sample-sizes of the tobacco, I was able to smell the jars with different blends and chose a seasonal blend with black cavendish to try. Now that was more like it! With that I was able to get a more pleasing aroma and taste, one that more closely matched the candle and my memories.
After going online to find out what black cavendish actually wash and in turn learn all about the different leaves and processes, I learned about the concept of "room note" which was exactly what I was pursuing. That led me to the discovery of this website, tobaccoreviews.com, and smokingpipes.com, including through a couple of searches for "top" or "best" room note tobaccos. A bowl of 1-Q and Autumn Evening later, and I was been completely smitten.
I know have 4 pipes (all churchwardens or semi), and a fifth one is on the way from danishpipeshop.com (which actually has an exhaustive list of different shapes - this site is where I probably learned best about all the different ones).
I grew up in Mexico and picked up smoking cigars from my father. It was great to have so many options available but they still remained occasional. After moving to Canada, they became even rarer - more 'celebratory' in nature.
A few months ago, a partner gave me a "Warm Tobacco Pipe" candle by DW Home. It smelled luxurious, but being small, I chose to save it for a special occasion. Then, a few weeks ago a project at work made me think of the candle again and so I decided to try it out and light it for a little bit. The scent matched my memories of the smell of the pipe my uncle used to smoke when I was a kid, and instantly set off an insatiable thirst to try smoking a pipe myself.
For the next few days I obsessed online over pipes, and chose two to order online and try out: a Muxiang churchwarden and Joyoldelf mini-churchwarden. For the tobacco I was a lot less thoughtful. I looked up local shops that sold pipe tobacco. One of them had several rows of Cornell & Diehl and I picked Haunted Bookshop based on the notes written beneath each tin (and because I liked the name).
I then proceeded to give myself some nasty tongue bite that lasted for almost a week. The aroma and room note of the tobacco was also far, far from what I was expecting. It was then that I began looking more into different tobaccos. It was a bit of a hard find, but I eventually happened upon a shop that sold tobacco by the bulk, and went there hoping to be able to sample different ones. While they could not sell sample-sizes of the tobacco, I was able to smell the jars with different blends and chose a seasonal blend with black cavendish to try. Now that was more like it! With that I was able to get a more pleasing aroma and taste, one that more closely matched the candle and my memories.
After going online to find out what black cavendish actually wash and in turn learn all about the different leaves and processes, I learned about the concept of "room note" which was exactly what I was pursuing. That led me to the discovery of this website, tobaccoreviews.com, and smokingpipes.com, including through a couple of searches for "top" or "best" room note tobaccos. A bowl of 1-Q and Autumn Evening later, and I was been completely smitten.
I know have 4 pipes (all churchwardens or semi), and a fifth one is on the way from danishpipeshop.com (which actually has an exhaustive list of different shapes - this site is where I probably learned best about all the different ones).
