nicotiana

I have a J.R. “Bob” Dobbs style pipe, a straight billiard with the simplest style design. It is considered a classic design because over the years it has been reduced to the most basic shape that fulfills the need, and then tweaked for efficiency.

This one is a masterpiece; light it, stick it in your mouth, and you enjoy a thin strong stream of smoke until you taste ash and it is time to reload. It kilns the tobacco more than most pipes, which means it retains core heat to roast up more flavor, and it is light and has a large enough bowl that you are not constantly fiddling like a hipster.

I smoke very few aromatics and no goopy aromatics — just not my thing — so there is no real need to “dedicate” pipes to a blend. Generally in this pipe, as soon as you smoke a bowl of something else, any previous ghosts are gone, unless you get a full-on Lakeland at which point it will take your soul.

Today I broke with tradition, since you are supposed to smoke English blends in the winter, and loaded it up with Dunhill “My Mixture 965,” a sweet spicy English with enough Cavendish to make it smooth, which technically makes it a Scottish blend, just like adding Burley to an English makes an American blend.

The smoke tastes like a gingerbread cookie, and this batch has been aged for five or six years, so the Latakia has calmed down a bit and the Virginias have become honeyed. The famous Dunhill cut is slightly narrower than most ribbon cut blends and they seem to have pressed it twice in order to make it soft and likely to burn thoroughly.

If you like a good solid blend with medium strength, this one will keep you happy for some time. For now, it is time to puff on the pipe as paperwork falls under the knife, and maybe sort out whatever is making a weird noise on the roof.