nicotiana

Remember cleaning your room as a kid. You organized it by grouping like things together, forming categories ad hoc for similar uses. In the same way, the grocery store is organized such that things which are bought together are nearby, like tomato sauce near the pasta aisle and bread near the cold cuts. Categories are powerful but not absolute: what causes you to link pasta and tomato today may backfire if cream sauces become the rave.

In the same way, we group tobacco blends: naturals versus aromatics, with a fuzzy area in the middle for favorites like Prince Albert, Royal Yacht, and Golden Extra which are basically naturals with a mild topping to spin or twist the flavor and enhance it without overwhelming it. Like adding cream or cocoa to your coffee, they preserve the original taste with a complementary flavor. Many who are accustomed to naturals or more exotic blends view these as “guilty pleasures.”

Of all the guilty pleasures, Golden Extra may be a favorite around here, and each time a jar of it pops up like a groundhog from out of the chaos closet where pipe tobacco is “cellared” (hoarded) it provokes delight. It operates on a simple principle: the agava-sweet bright Virginia, paired with a range of warm and bready Burleys, naturally complements a vanilla/chocolate cocoa flavor and the two exponentiate each other.

Bright Virginia may be one of my favorite blending ingredients because it introduces a clean, pure sweetness without the fruitiness of red Virginia or Perique. On the downside, it is highly acidic, which is why people recommend you age blends containing a lot of it, and too much of it can make a blend bland because its flavor is a bit thin. Mixing it with a stack of Burley broadens, widens, and deepens the flavor, with the cocoa topping making it friendly, like a thin layer of Nutella on toast or chocolate in a croissant.

This makes an ideal blend. Mac Baren incorporates the most of the least expensive ingredient, Burley, with a little bit of a more expensive but still economical Virginia, then adds a slight topping. Not surprisingly, Mac Baren sells this blend at entry level prices, which is fortunate because it is easy to smoke. Pressed, cut, and partially rubbed out, these little sticks of tobacco form a nice pile in the pipe, light immediately, and require almost no other care until the blend burns down.

Its only possible downside is that this is a moderate nicotine at best rating, probably closer to mild. The occasional smoker might not mind this, but for those of us who are working smokers who tend to puff all day the way others guzzle Cokes and coffees, low nicotine means sleepy drooping eyes. I tend to shore it up with a few other ingredients:

• Cotton Boll Twist. This heavy naturally-cured Burley provides all the power one could want, but has a kind of roast walnut flavor, which in combination with the Golden Extra makes it taste like dark chocolate on wheat bread.
• Black Twist Sliced. Comprised of smoke-cured Virginias pressed and heated with a coating of olive oil, this blend is often compared to barbecue with sauce, but with the Golden Extra, tastes a lot like licorice.
• Brown Twist Sliced. Similar to the black twist, but without as much roasting, this blend has an exotic blend of natural flavors on top of a sweet but bracing Virginia base. In the Golden Extra it tastes like molasses.
• HH Bold Kentucky. A mixture of bright Virginia and Dark Fired Kentucky Burley, this flake kicks like a mule but smokes sweetly if you breath-smoke it slowly, and with Golden Extra, creates a coffee-like flavor.

Generally I reach for the Golden Extra after a long day, when a pipe to relax staring into the gathering dusk is appropriate. One does not always get such peace of mind, but when it comes, a comfort tobacco makes the most sense. Unlike many who post videos across the internet, some of us are everyday smokers and we do not go out to our porches with the right combination of whiskies, tampers, cigars, books, pipes, and foods to make the perfect setting for smoking a couple bowls a week. We just grab a pipe and tin or jar on the way out the door, fish the lighter from our pocket, load it and light it. Then we enjoy for the duration of the bowl or until someone throws up in the washing machine or sets the dog on fire, whichever comes first.

Everyday tobaccos have their joys. These have sustained generations of smokers — the recipes do not vary greatly between the years, although the blending houses seem to — because they are simple, easily available, and easily enjoyed. Your average smoker does not have time to set up an Instagram-worthy porch smoking coccoon, but instead is more likely tending to fields, fixing gear, working on the line, poring over reams of text, or hammering away in an editor in a cloud of (usually digital, not always) bugs.

Categories can deceive us. Some may be innate to life itself, like “chairs.” These things have structural similarities. But it is foolish to say every boutique blend is good and every everyday blend is bad, or vice-versa. Many of us mostly smoke naturals but make exceptions for a few old favorites. It makes sense to say that every lawyer has to think in legalistic terms, but not to say that all of them always do. Lawyers can also make furniture, for example, or snap out of the mindset. In the same way, there are some great basic blends out there worthy of your time such as Golden Extra.