Final Thoughts on the Dan 50th Jubilee Tobacco:
As I was reminded quite strongly of the similarity in profile and taste of the
Dan Jubilee to my pet favourite tobacco,
C&Ds Mad Fiddler, I thought I'd close with bases loaded and the big hitter coming up. Yeah, with my limited experience as a tobacco critic and my first review, I figured I'd better end strong and with the straight goods and heavy artillery.
As most of you know, I lost my tastebuds when put on prescriptions for a bladder infection about 4 weeks before my hernia operation about 5 months ago. I've been off the drugs for about a month now, and everything is gradually returning to normal. Even now, I'm picking up subtleties that I couldn't a couple of weeks ago, and I can live with what I've got.
As you may or may not know, I had two pipes dedicated to MF. I've not smoked them for a long time, because I ran out of my last two jars of MF about 6 months ago, (I still have two unopened tins) but now, after finding the Dan tobacco and two others that are similar enough to "share the load," so to speak, I thought I'd give the final two test smokes to the dedicated pipes before I crack one of the unopened tins of MF. So I took the pipes out of mothballs, and had a smoke of the Dan in each one. Here they are:
On top is the pipsqueak
McQueen Miniature Barrel Rider, and below is the medium bowl
Ropp Etudiante J16.
Why did I do this? As Mr. Spock said in the original Star Trek Movie, "I am understandably curious." How did they fare?
Absolutely at the top of the class. As a matter of fact, in future I'll not hesitate to smoke either tobacco in either pipe. They matched the other two best test pipes with the Dan, which were the original testpipe, my Peterson Tavern Rhodesian, and the following pipe, which is now fully broken in, the Mr. Brog Old Army Olive.
If you remember, when I was doing the break-in with this wonderful smoking pipe, that I said it was trying to tell me something, and it did. It loved a more complex tobacco. Dan 50 will get a lot of exposure to this beautiful pipe. And I'll give the 5th spot, runner up, to the Mr. Brog Miliitary in pearwood. Every Curling Rink needs a spare, a 5th guy that can do it all.
In all honesty, not one of the pipes, not even the workhorse duo, gave anything but an excellent smoke with the Dan, and yes, they're all amongst the best smoking pipes I have.
But the four best pipes have one thing in common - a wider, more shallow bowl that seems to be at its best, in my experience at least, with a flake cut tobacco. Bingo. Most of the other pipes had deeper and narrower bowls.
So for me, as I gave all the different woods I have in pipes a try at the Dan (except my meers, which are all dedicated), and I'm guessing that bowl shape and design has more to do with how a pipe smokes, than what it's made of. Could be wrong but at my level of experience, it's something to be strongly aware of.
To wrap all of this up, i'd like to quote F. Murray Abraham, who got the Oscar for Best Actor in 1985 for his masterful performance of Antonio Salieri in the great movie "Amadeus",
"There it is."
Thank y'all for tuning in, eh?
️ on the side
