nicotiana

People are always going to have a better cellar than you do. That's just life, and you and I should be thankful for it, because their purchases drive an industry that we benefit from.

It's the same thing with fancy cars. I don't want a Bentley or Lamborghini because I can get enough tickets in a Hyundai and still not max out its top speed because there's nowhere to go. Sure, you can blast along country roads, and then hit a deer and spend six months in a coma before they unplug you to listen for the gurgle, but there's really no point owning one unless you have your own racetrack. I'm glad however that there are rich people to buy these cars because that way, there are all these cool cars out there, and the tech that they invent gradually trickles down.

When I see an impressive cellar, I think, man, that really would be nice. Then I click on the next link and forget about it. No point feeling bad about yourself because you didn't buy enough things. Enjoy the things that you have.

To most, my cellar would appear unimpressive. It looks like a pile of random stuff that has lots of tobacco in it, and the shelves are falling over not because they're weight down with Esoterica, but relatively unsung blends like Kendal #7, Engine #99, My Mixture 965, Newminster #400, Irish Flake, Amsterdam, and so on. No one is going to walk in and think, wow this dude's a rockstar.

They're going to think: wow what a slob. But that's besides the point.

We had a thread that went away because people were freaking out a little bit. I understand the freakout, and I'm writing to them. But the fact is there are two different groups here:

• Samplers: sampler smokers want to smoke rare tobaccos in rare pipes, probably a bowl a week.
• Lifestyle: lifestyle smokers like a few favorites and stockpile them in bulk to age so we have them in the future

There's a clash here. Samplers see Lifestylers as hoarders — and trust me, if you looked at my “cellar,” you'd think it was images from Hoarders the lugubrious television show — and Regulars, well, we don't think about samplers much at all. We lift a pipe to you. You do you. Smoke what you like, and like what you smoke (and if you don't like it, try Irish Flake or Sutliff 507-C).

I don't want to ever have envy. What I have is appreciation. If you have a bad-ass cellar, I wish I had it, but I'm also glad you have it. It's your tobacco. Enjoy it. If you have 1367 rare tobaccos and pipes like JimInks or a YouTube piper, enjoy it just the same. It's not my path but that has no bearing on you, and vice-versa.

With the rise of social media, the internet really changed. The decentralized early internet offered lots of sites, most labors of love by people who were focused on niche interests like pipe smoking.

After Amazon, Facebook, Twitter, Reddit, and the streaming services transformed the net, decentralization died. There were a few big sites, and whatever people discussed there at high volume won the discussion.

At the same time, internet advertising sort of died a death. It turns out that only about a third of the population really participates in those, and of that third, only about a twelfth make almost all of the noise. Reviews and social media mentions, which were more effective than ads, took up a lot of focus.

Behold the rise of the “influencer”: someone who cultivates an audience, therefore has lots of people repeating what they say or do in an attempt to be popular, meaning that if these people like stuff, it has an instant audience. Influencers get free stuff in exchange for their endorsements, and so — big surprise — they often really like the free stuff they get in the mail.

People in promotions will tell you this is nothing new. Radio DJs took money to hype hits from big industry and are still doing it, much like record reviewers respond favorably to the free tickets, music, and merch that they receive. Give free stuff, get “likes,” and sell more stuff, or at least, convince “corporate” — the people in suits — that you are doing a good job promoting the material.

In my experience, influencers create a kind of backround noise. They talk up whatever is new and get people to buy enough of it to make some profit, then move on to the next thing. Ordinary people tune in for a sense of being “in the loop,” but have no idea that they are consuming information as manufactured as anything in corporate television ad.

As many know, I really like Old Joe Krantz:

With OJK, I think it is time to demystify this one: it is a quality Burley blend and one of my favorites, but a simple blend, which means (paradoxically) that it holds the interest longer because its appeal is a few fundamental ingredients in contrast. In contrast, highly-detailed tobacco constructions have too many contradictory impulses and end up in that chaos losing depth and complexity. OJK reveals its many possibilities with repeated smokes where you have the time to appreciate it, much like a summer day with a fast breeze and high cloud cover will always be a calming experience. It may not be as mature as the Dunhill blends, and it has a slight bitterness reminiscent of fresh-cut plants, but its depth of essential flavors makes this one a perennial favorite.

A few years back, C&D introduced some new blends using the Old Joe Krantz name, such as Old Joe Krantz Blue Label:

“Old Joe Krantz Blue” changes the formula by adding more white Burley and replacing most of the red Virginia with bright Virginia; this makes sense when you realize that bright Virginia and white Burley are processed quickly, therefore are more cost-effective in terms of labor than dark Burley or red Virginia. The result tastes like “Haunted Bookshop” or “Sir Walter Raleigh” in that most of what you taste is a nutty Burley like a roast walnut, with a little acidic and lemony sugar floating around the edges. While this is not bad, it is not particularly compelling, either, compared to the range of flavors that “Old Joe Krantz” original and “Haunted Bookshop” offer. Mine came as a ribbon cut, and if they pressed the Virginias and worked in a little more Maryland or red Virginia, would be a heck of a smoke.

Not a bad blend, but boring, and nowhere up to the Old Joe Krantz name, in my view. In other words, I would not buy it if spending my own money, nor spend time smoking it. The influencers gave it three stars:

Burns slightly slow, cool and clean with a very consistent sweet and mildly rugged, savory, toasty flavor that translates to the lightly lingering, pleasant after taste, and room note. Leaves little dampness in the bowl, and requires a few relights. Can be an all day smoke, and can be used as a mixer if you desire it.

Funny, but 29 people liked that! Surely none of them were an entourage, or people working in industry. We'll never know, because these likes are anonymous. Another influencer gave it three stars as well:

I get nowhere near as much Virginia as I do Burley. The smoke has a nuttiness, a mild sort of treacle sweetness, and a spicy ruggedness. The Virginia gives the mix a touch of sprightliness, but is easily outweighed by the Burleys; easily.

On to Old Joe Krantz Red Label:

The committee decided to expand best-seller “Old Joe Krantz” by making multiple versions of it, including an English, in the hopes of using the name to sell other stuff that was not selling as well under those names. This is a fairly uninspired English tobacco. A light dose of Latakia forms the dominant flavor, but the Burleys fail to meld well with the Virginias and Cavendish, leading to a somewhat flat and wet flavor with the Latakia filling in the gaps. I have no idea why someone would not simply purchase “Mountain Camp,” which is similar but less busy, instead.

The influencers gave it three stars again:

The mildly applied molasses topping tones down the tobaccos to a small extent. The nic-hit is just past the center of mild to medium, and gets slightly stronger in the last third of the bowl. The strength and taste levels start out as mild to medium, and reach the medium threshold by the half way point. Won’t bite or get harsh, but it does sport some rough edges. Burns cool and clean at a moderate pace with a very consistent sweet and slightly savory taste, which translates to the pleasant, lightly lingering after taste. The room note is a slot stronger. Leaves little dampness in the bowl, and requires a tad more than an average number of relights. Can be an all day smoke.

23 people found that one helpful. Is there a pattern here? On to my least favorite, Old Joe Krantz White Label:

“Old Joe Krantz White” tastes like white Burley with a touch of Cavendish and some of the classic “Old Joe Krantz” mixed in. The Virginias are barely present, just enough to give a slight rotation toward honey flavor in the white Burley, and the Cavendish gives it all an undertone of caramel. The Perique is barely present, just a whisp of a light tangy fig in the background, and the dark Burley while present is in a small enough amount to be swallowed by the white Burley.

All three blends are forgettable. Clearly the manufacturer wanted Old Joe Krantz White Label to be a big hit with the OTC crowd, yet it bored even those. The influencers loved it however; 27 people liked this comment:

The strength is a couple of steps past the center of mild to medium. The taste is a slot past that, but doesn't reach the medium mark. The nic-hit is a rung below the strength level. No chance of bite, and has no harshness. Burns cool and clean at a moderate pace with fairly consistent, sweet, slightly savory flavor. Leaves little moisture in the bowl, and requires an average number of relights. Has a pleasant, short lived after taste and room note. Is an all day smoke if you choose. Three and a half stars out of four.

I saw the other week that Old Joe Krantz White Label had gone on non-promotional sale on a couple of the mail order addiction sites I visit, which means that it was placed on sale without a corresponding banner and campaign. In other words, it's heading to the dumpster and they want to unload what they have left.

Maybe something can be learned from this about influencers and how they tell you want the tin description and manufacturer's promotional sheet say, but little else, and how easily we can be swayed by what appears like a lot of people (23-29, even) who are excited about something mediocre that they did not buy with their own money.

At the end of the day, the test remains for me, “Would I buy this?” I try to reflect this in my reviews, and I tend to like anything that I would purchase again and enjoy, but be honest about other blends that I would pass unless nothing else was available. Maybe someday the influencers will take note.

For a little smoking adventure, consider the ingenious Mac Baren Latakia Rolls:

Summary: dark fired Kentucky Burley tames Latakia into a floral and herbal undertone.

Similar to “Dark Twist,” this Mac Baren blend uses maple sugar as a binder, so you want to let the first couple puffs after lighting or relighting during the first half of the bowl burn off because they are bitey like piranhas on meth. After that, a bright Virginia and dark fired Kentucky Burley blend emerges, with the Latakia taking a minor role that colors the smoke and gives a floral and herbal undertone to the rich smoky Burley. The Virginias infuse this as the bowl burns down, changing it from spicy to sweet as caramelized sugars enter the flavor profile. Of all the blends I have smoked, this one tastes the most like luxury, a massively indulgent burst of flavor where sweetness is balanced with spice and warm nutty flavor as in a good American English.

Mac Baren has done something interesting here, which is to create a new use for Latakia which instead of almost all blends, eschews having it be the dominant leaf and makes it instead into a complement to the dark fired Kentucky Burley, adding depth to its flavor just as the Burley broadens and warms up the Latakia flavor, letting the bright Virginias sweeten it.

Latakia Rolls reminds me of how Presbyterian and Sansepolcro use a “less is more” approach to bring out the intensity of Latakia in context, instead of clobbering us with it and then hoping that the Virginias, Orientals, and Burleys season it and bring its flavor to heel.

Other than caramelization, this blend changes little through the course of a bowl, and yet it provides a depth of nuance and a texture of flavor that never gets old. I hope this becomes a regular item, and now am sorry that I missed out on Stockton.

This week started out with what we might call excitement that we could all do without. One of our sports teams threatened to win big — they always blow it at the last moment, so old hands make sure they sleep through the anticipation — and people were driving around all night in cars with pre-1970s emission control systems. A big storm made landfall in a nearby state and we were flooded with people riding out the storm. As if in sympathy with the rains, a pipe broke, and we spent the next few days cleaning up the mess. It got to the point where I reached for a pipe to avoid putting a fist through the wall.

During this time, my kindling of choice was “Fruit McBullshit”, which is actually my 3:1 white/dark Burley mixture blended in with one of the best aromatics currently made, Savinelli Armonia:

Summary: sweet-sour blend with a floral topping, above average for an aromatic.

Virginia-Oriental-Kentucky blends provide a unique sweet-sour flavor which has made them popular in the Netherlands and Norway, as well as to any pipe-smoker blessed with a functional mail system. Most of those use a light floral topping; “Armonia” expands upon that by adding Burley and Cavendish in the middle, making the blend both sweeter and slightly warmer and broader in flavor. I hate aromatics generally, but also hate injustice and failure to notice positive qualities, and it would be a shame to fail to notice the positive aspects of this blend. First, it is not too heavily aromatic; second, the underlying leaf provides a good deal of the flavor in the lower two-thirds of the bowl; finally, it achieves a mellow smoke which is nonetheless piquant and slightly spicy. Like most aromatics, it suffers from the “sugar effect” which makes it burn hotter, so you pretty much have to breath-smoke this one at a CSPAN pace. The topping comes from the “Prince Albert” school of throwing in multiple things, but I taste the floral essence and some kind of fruit topping that could dope out as strawberry or cherry depending on the time of day. I prefer this infinitely to the mainstream cherry aromatics which have left me questioning my life decisions that led up to selecting them off the shelf.

Kohlhase, Kopp & Co. did something sneaky with this blend: they made a mixture that you could smoke without any topping and enjoy, and then put a spin on it with the floral, berry, fruit, and wine topping which adds an extra “lift” to the smoking experience and lightens up the flavor. It complements the internal flavor from the recipe of varietals, but then opens it up by bringing out its internal counterparts to the floral and fruit flavors. The room always smells good when you are done. People complained about the early tins of this blend being too wet, but Savinelli lessened the amount of stuff on top, or these are older tins which have lost some of the moisture, so now the blend is just about perfect to scoop and smoke. I use less of my Burley mixture on the newer blends, where I use it at almost equal proportions to your average aromatic, since most of them are “sauced” too much for me to enjoy, even John Middleton Prince Albert. It also has enough strength to keep your interest, unlike the average aromatic which weighs in on the “please don't hurt me” side of the nicotine scale.

Much as everyone around me wishes that the floral tobacco would continue, it was time to try another tobacco, a light English with some quasi-aromatic qualities owing to a rum topping. Like Presbyterian Mixture, this blend consists mostly of Virginia with a little bit of Latakia for flavor, but this new mixture also includes some Burley and natural Cavendish (steam only, no sugars) to soften and broaden the flavor. No Orientals are present, but with the slight tang of the Cavendish, they are not necessarily missed either. The blend is Mac Baren Plumcake and the mixture of Latakia and rum brings out a plummy, ripe flavor to this Virginia blend:

Summary: a light English, this low-Latakia blend shows off its Virginia base with a rich earthy flavor.

Aleister Crowley used to soak his Latakia and Perique in rum because this takes away some of the extremes of powerful leaf. Mac Baren describes “Plumcake” as a “Navy Blend,” and this holds true in its composition: comprised essentially of Virginias, cooled down by Burley and softened by Mac Baren's famous “natural Cavendish” which is steamed tobacco without added sugars, with some flavor from the rum-soaked Latakia providing more of an earthy, smoky undertone than the burning herbal incense effect of heavy doses. This produces an easy-burning, mild blend in which the Virginias can show off their natural flavor without burning too hot or biting, tamed by the Latakia and broadened by the Burley. You stick this stuff in the pipe, where it is damp enough to cling together and need no compression, then light it and you will have a very pleasant flavor not unlike toasted sourdought bread: a slight smokiness to the outside, then a sweet core, with a slightly sour and nutty grain flavor around it. It burns down completely and, at the heavier end of medium strength, can keep your interest as an experienced smoker without wearing you down over the course of the day. I am glad this comes in 100g tins but I don't think they'll last much longer than the usual 50g ones do.

Some Mac Baren blends burn a bit hot, usually when there are bright Virginias and their maple sugar bonding agent both involved, but in this case, the Latakia exerts its famous taming of the Virginias — this is why English blends arose and became so huge among pipe smokers — while the Burley cools the smoke and the Cavendish softens it. That makes this blend like sinking into a deep velour couch, since it has an abundant but gentle flavor. It tastes only slightly like an English blend, since the Latakia is too low in amount to bring out the ginger spice flavor that English blends famously possess, and the rum tends to make the Latakia meld with the Virginias to have a fruity, wine-like taste that we analogize to plum, hence the name. Plum Pudding has nothing on this blend, which instead of providing the sweetened garbage plate effect, generates a very specific flavor which has internal depth and texture. You could smoke this one all day, although it comes down on the far side of the medium strength rating, so if nicotine sensitivity is an issue, tread carefully at first. Then again, it is fairly hard to smoke too much of this, since a light stream of smoke provides the perfect flavor for hours.

Another pleasant smoke came my way this week, but unfortunately it will not appear on Tobacco Reviews at least for the near future. I went on down to the local pipe shack and found a new jar on the staggered end-table they use to keep their bulk blends. The staff at this shop make their own mixes from different commercial blends, and their most recent is a vaper named Boudreaux's Reserve. This mixes a couple of Virginia blends with sliced Perique, and provides an experience of a strong but sedate smoke, since one of the Virginia mixtures is ready-rubbed and the other appears to have a little Cavendish or Burley in there to slow it down. It has just enough, but not too much, Perique, and so the candied fruit flavor starts up with the first light, but calms to a flavor almost like a berry syrup by the end of the bowl. While there is some spice and zing to this blend, most of what comes out is the Virginia flavor with the twist applied by Perique and whatever other condimentals worked their way in here. There is some pepper at first, but as the Virginias caramelize, the syrup comes out, and the sometimes one-dimensional Virginia flavor becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

When I go back next week, I will acquire more of Boudreaux's Reserve. It seems selfish of me, but I hoard tobacco, not so much because I fear it will go, but because I enjoy it and want to revel in the appreciation of it. A full jar of Boudreaux's Reserve, like any of the other blends that make me grin, provides a symbol for the promise of life itself. I look at the jar and think, “You know, I really enjoy smoking that, so it's time to grab a pipe and head to the creek” or I just stuff some in a pipe, light up, and find some way to make myself useful. It is part of bonding with life. Pipe smoking for me is not a hobby, but part of my lifestyle, since it enhances the aesthetic and mental experience of existence, and that helps me appreciate why I am glad to be alive in the first place. Life: it's not a life sentence, but a lifetime opportunity. I hope Boudreaux's Reserve makes it big time so that the rest of you can try it. Til next time, smoke what you like, and like what you smoke.

Our modern era mystifies pipe smoking because it is associated with a far-off time, but as recently as the 1980s, many men and some women smoked pipes. When offices no longer allowed smoking, those who enjoyed Nicotiana Tabacum were forced to huddle in small groups around disgusting ashtrays for fifteen-minute breaks, during which time most of the big decisions in the office got made.

Forty years is a blink to history. Those of us who maintain, rather foolishly in a world of skyscrapers and modern monetary theory, that life exists so that we can explore, learn, choose, and most of all, enjoy being incarnate, argue that the pleasures of life like tobacco, wine, intimate relations, and music serve the role of letting us discover the purpose of life through its heights, not its materialistic, repetitive lows. Unlike the clever people nowadays who say that these things are “bad,” we say that in the right form, they are good, just like a medicine is safe at one dose, effective at another, and fatal at a third.

That being said, pipe-smoking takes a different form than the cigarettes and vape that most people have experienced. Unlike those fast jolts of nicotine, you get a slow steady pulse of nature's best alkaloid with a pipe (or a cigar, although less so because people tend to “puff,” or violently suck upon, those). You have to take your time. Ritual and contemplation is part of it, since pipe smoking is a meditative practice based on timing your breathing and unfocusing your mind.

Early Smoking

The best way to do anything is to dive right in. Acquire:

1. A cob pipe
2. A pipe nail
3. Matches or a Bic lighter
4. Pipe cleaners
5. Prince Albert or Carter Hall

This set of gear forms your basic equipment. Now, let us get started. Open open your package of tobacco, insert the bowl of the pipe, and scoop tobacco into the pipe until it is heaping full. Then, extract pipe from package of tobacco, press down on the heap with the same form you use to press buttons on those membrane keyboards on microwave ovens, stick the stem of the pipe in your mouth, and light the tobacco in a circular motion while drawing in slowly.

It will take a few tries. While you are doing that, let me let you in on a secret: absolutely no one knows how to smoke a pipe. They assume it means that you suck on the thing like a cigarette, or “puff” (quick sucks) like on a cigar, or that you slurp like you would on a straw. All of these are wrong. What you are going to do involves capillary action:

• Seal lips around stem of pipe
• Breathe normally through nose, keeping smoke in mouth (do not inhale)
• Every seven seconds or so, open lips briefly to let stale smoke out

Clear as mud? I'm going to let Ian Kerslake explain the traditional breath smoking method of pipe-smoking to you. This is how since the dawn of time people have learned to smoke pipes while keeping them lit without burning the tobacco at too high a temperature, which kills taste and worst of all, reduces the constant flow of nicotine.

You probably remember for-next, while, and until loops from your basic programming class. You are now in a loop for awhile, probably about a year. While you are still perfecting your technique, keep perfecting it using your tools. Acquire more of your gear when you need it. Worry not if you roast a cob or end up dumping some tobacco. Worry even less about how many times you must re-light. The point is to learn the meditative breathing of pipe tobacco.

Here was my learning curve:

1. Starting out. Get a corn cob pipe and some light OTCs like Prince Albert, Carter Hall, or Sir Walter Raleigh. Do not get aromatics; they are actually difficult to smoke well. Spend a year focusing on how to breath smoke, pack the bowl, emberchase/tamp (using the tamper to direct oxygen to the sides of the bowl), clean the pipe, and avoid setting yourself on fire. Then order a bunch of 1oz samples of major tobacco blend types like Burley, Va/Per, English, and so on. Whatever you find yourself reaching for time and again should be explored further.
2. Tamping. Most of the time, you want a gravity tamp, which means lightly dropping the tamper from a centimeter off of the ember. You also want to chase that ember, which means holding the tamper over the coal so that the air going into the pipe distributes to the sides, causing a nice even burn.
3. Pacing. People call it “puffing” and “smoking,” but really what you are doing is breathing normally through a pipe but keeping the smoke in your mouth. Once you learn the rhythm of inhaling/exhaling every seven seconds or so, you can keep even a moderate bowl going for over an hour.
4. Packing. With ribbon cut, you want to take a nice thick wad that is wider than the mouth of the bowl and cram it in so that the last third or quarter of the bowl is empty, then loosely stuff tobacco on top of that. You do not need to press down much; you are aiming to evenly distribute the leaf in the top two-thirds or three-quarters of the bowl — it varies between pipes — instead of compressing it fully. With flake, you want to fold it lengthwise, then twist so that a few openings appear in the flake, then stick into the pipe so that there is horizontal room for it to expand when it burns. Most “bad bowls” originate in packing too tightly. You can also screw up by packing too lightly, but the only consequence there is a fast bowl that requires dozens of relights, and that is a better experience than a congested bowl. You should not have to suck, draw, etc. with any kind of force; air should flow naturally through the pipe as you breathe.
5. Lighting. I am less of a technicalist here; I torch the bowl with a lighter or match, gravity tamp it to compress the top layer of ash, and then torch it again. The point is to make a thin top layer of tobacco burn evenly so that the fire descends slowly as the bowl diminishes, since what you are doing is using the insulating property of the pipe and the top layer of ash to create a constantly smoldering but not blazing heap of tobacco. Much of the flavor comes from cooking the tobacco right below the layer of fire.
6. Cleaning. After every smoke, run a pipe cleaner both ways up the tenon. Then fold it in half and vigorously sweep out the bowl. If it makes you feel better, use a paper towel to clean out the remaining ash dust. I let pipes sit a day or so between smokes, but on the road, I use the same pipe for a few bowls at a time. After about four it needs some time to dry out unless you want to puff a swamp bowl. Every few months, pour some cheap whisky through the pipe. I never use any alcohol inside the pipe that I could not consume.
7. Jarring. If you have a packet or tin and are going to consume it within the week, just use that, resealing each time. If you plan on taking longer, get yourself a Mason jar and seal the contents in there. When I buy bulk, I use lots of half-pint jars to store the tobacco, labeled carefully. That way, you can take one off the shelf in the coming years and smoke it as you would a tin. For rare tobaccos, it makes sense to keep some in jars so you can have a bowl or two on a special occasion. You can use bail-top jars if they are designed for food; make sure you flip the insulating liner away from the clamp mechanism so that the jar has an even seal. If you have a question about a jar, fill it with water, seal it, and turn it upside down for an hour. If any water leaks, throw it out.
8. Cellaring. In my view, G.L. Pease is correct and most tobacco blends benefit from a year or two of storage in a cool, dark place. Some peak after only six months. While people talk up aged tobacco, much of this has to do with the original quality of the blend, and the tendency to lose toppings and some of the smokiness of dark-fired and Latakia leaf. Most blends do quite well after a year, and beyond that point, the utility of cellaring declines.
9. Mold. Mold is fuzzy stuff; plume is crystalline. If it molds, throw out everything in the container. If it plumes, expect a slightly sweeter smoke. In my view, much of what makes plume valued is that other chemicals have left the leaf, making it gentler and warmer in flavor.
10. Cake. You want to keep cake about the thickness of a dime in your bowl. This will happen naturally, and you will have to use a reamer, sandpaper, or (for the lazy) your Czech pipe tool or pipe nail to scrape out the extra, something best done when the pipe is just smoked so it is warm and damp and the cake is soft and malleable. Too much cake will cause your pipe to crack; too little cake reduces the insulating properties of the pipe. I use Virginia blends to build cake, but anything with sugar will do.

One final note: “smoke what you like, and like what you smoke” is not merely lore. People vary in pH and susceptibility to certain leaf; for example, some people get hit hard in the gut by smoking Burley. Find out what works for you, order a lot of it on sale (usually the end of summer), and have a good time. Pipe smoking is a combination of hobby, habit, lifestyle, and mental stimulus. Only you know what works for you, but you have to pay attention to what you do, not what you think you should do. I found a few of my favorite blends simply by noticing that the tins got empty fast, but would not have said those were favorites until I observed myself liking them. Good luck and have fun.

Also relevant:

• Introduction to Pipe Smoking and Pipe Tobacco
• How To Smoke A Pipe
• J.R.R. Tolkien on Pipe Smoking
• Joseph Stalin, Pipe Aficionado
• Pipe Smokers Are the Rebels of the 2010s
• Breath-Smoking: The Original Method of Pipe Smoking

Summary:

Get a cob and some Prince Albert or Carter Hall. Take your time to learn how to smoke. Then when you do encounter one of those delicious-smelling tobaccos, you will know how to actually enjoy it instead of screaming at the pipe in frustration. It will take you about a year to learn to smoke, and after that, your technique will refine to the point where you can be like one of those weird old guys who smokes for two hours on a bowl and reduces it to fine white ash.

Do not worry about relights. Just get the rhythm down.

Most problems come from smoking too fast or packing too tight, and these are related.

My advice for packing is to fill the pipe, not cram it, and do it in layers, taking time with each to spread the tobacco bits out toward the edges of the bowl. You want little bits of tobacco touching each other, but not compressed into a tight wad. This way, flame travels naturally in thin layers from the top to the bottom, releasing delicious smoke each time. Once you have the pipe full, you press down just a little bit to compress the mass by about a quarter inch.

If you want an easy way to pack, dump a bunch of tobacco into the bowl, then put your finger over the top and shake the bowl vigorously from side to side. Tobacco tends to sort itself into the right Tetris-style order this way, with all of the space taken up but enough gaps for air to pass easily through the bowl. If you wondered why some of your best smokes occurred after you took a short walk with the unlighted pipe in your mouth, this is probably why. Your walking rhythm hammered that tobacco into place.

If you get the spins from nicotine, stop and take a drink of water, maybe have something with a little sugar in it. Wait awhile before resuming. Nicotine is cumulative within a certain time window, so if you get the spins or feel sick, you do not want to pile any more nicotine on top of the load you already have.

I use a Bic lighter or kitchen matches to light. There are probably better ways. Someday I will find them. I am not too worried.

And for the love of all ancient gods or at least graven idols, enjoy yourself. This is meant to be a relaxing break from the neurotic world. Cram some tobacco in a pipe, light it, and go for a lunt (a walk while smoking) out in the hills or hinterlands. Focus on something else for awhile. Let your mind drift. It's amazing how of the work of alive you get done, while not trying to.

Intermediate Pipe-Smoking

Once you have mastered basic technique — the time required can vary, and hopefully my description sped it up for you — it is time to explore tobaccos and briars. You will want to find a local pipe shop, formally called a “tobacconist” or in the vernacular a “brick and mortar” or “B&M,” or use online ordering.

• List of local shops
• TurboTin
• Smoking Pipes
• Tobacco Pipes
• Pipes and Cigars

When looking for a pipe, you want to (if possible) do a draw test. The simplest way is to whip out a pipe cleaner and run it through the stem. If you find any obstacles or have to use more force than you would for a key in a lock, pass on that pipe. When you find one that fits in your hand, meaning that it is consistent with your proportions, and with good draw, pick that one up. I will buy pipes online from manufacturers with high quality control like Savinelli through some sites, but I prefer the ones that “vet” their pipes, like SmokingPipes and TobaccoPipes.

You will have to go through a little work to buy tobacco. First of all, there are many types; second, most places selling “pipe tobacco” are in fact selling cigarette rolling tobacco labeled as pipe tobacco in order to dodge exhorbitant and insane taxes. You kind of want to give that stuff a miss, although Ohm Natural works in a pinch. It helps to read up a bit on the varieties of tobacco that are out there, but the following brief guide may help:

• Cigar: generally Burley (a varietal, or cultivar of Nicotiana Tabacum) grown in shade and fermented
• Cavendish: Burley or Virginia which has been steam toasted to bring out its natural sugars and reduce nicotine to lawn-clippings levels
• Perique: generally Burley, fermented by pressing, spicy and fruity
• Virginia: a different cultivar that is sweeter and has less nicotine
• Orientals: generally Virginias grown in sandy soil with low nutrition, has a sourdough taste
• Latakia: generally Virginias cured in smoke from spices and pines
• Dark Fired: Burleys or Virginias which have been cured with smoke
• Rustica: actually a different species, Nicotiana Rustica, prized for its high nicotine but has a vegetal flavor like a rough Burley

These come in different grades, usually colors like “bright,” “white,” “brown,” or “red” which determine how long they have been cured, prepared, fermented, or aged. Generally, the lighter it is the less time it took to prepare, therefore it is cheaper; the smoked tobacco cures the fastest and has the heftiest amount of nicotine. Blends are made of mixtures of these tobaccos which are then pressed, steamed, fermented, flavored, or otherwise manipulated by talented chefs known as “blenders.”

Blends also come in different types:

• English blend: Virginia, Latakia, and Orientals; some add Burley and/or Perique
• English mixture: general term, now refers to the “UK plugs” style of bright Virginias mixed with dark fired Kentucky Burley
• American English: an English blend with Burley
• Va/Per: Virginia and Perique blends, often with Burley or Cavendish
• Aromatic: tobacco to which flavoring has been added, usually a base of white Burley and Cavendish
• Virginia: mostly Virginia as the name implies, sometimes with Burley or Cavendish tucked in
• Half 'n half or Burley 'n Bright: mixed white Burley and bright Virginia
• Dutch: Virginia and dark fired Burley with a floral topping
• French/Belgian: air-roasted Burley
• Danish: lightly flavored aromatics, less sticky than the soda-pop aromatics sold by the huge companies

An important note: all blends are “cased,” or soaked in some kind of mixture, usually honey, vinegar, and possibly anise, in order to keep the leaf pliable. Some have “top flavorings,” or food-grade extracts, sugars, and alcohols poured over them to give them additional flavoring. Aromatics are difficult for a beginner because sugar burns hot, and so you frequently get a very warm pipe and hotter burning, which ironically reduces flavor. You want to smoke at the lowest temperature and speed possible.

Blends come in different cuts:

• Shag: cut across the leaf, very thin, burns easily
• Ribbon: a little thicker, cut longitudinally
• Rope/curly cut: leaves wrapped around each other, optionally sliced into little rounds
• Flake: layers of tobacco pressed with heat to make a solid block, then sliced
• Plug: flake that is not sliced
• Cube Cut: flake that is then sliced laterally, making little pressed tobacco squares
• Cake: ribbon cut pressed into a quasi-plug

Each one burns differently. Flake for example is for me the easiest to smoke and the hardest to light; cube cut (like one of my favorite blends) is easier to smoke, but shag is easiest of all. You may want to try this sampler:

• English blend: Dunhill/Peterson Standard Mixture
• English mixture: Amphora Kentucky
• American English: C&D Mountain Camp
• Va/Per: C&D Three Friars
• Aromatic: Comoy's Portwood
• Virginia: Amphora Virginia
• Half/Half: C&D Pegasus
• Dutch: Peter Stokkebye Amsterdam
• Danish: Mac Baren Golden Extra

Each of these comes in bulk form, so you can order a one-ounce sample and play around with it. You might do the same with the types of leaf (Latakia, Virginia, etc.) in order to condition your taste buds. This process takes time, since you are building brain receptors for these different flavors, but will enable you to pick out the different nuances and essences of any blend. Please ignore all “internet reviews” which use excessive comparisons to foods and smells, e.g. “this blend lit up with an aura of lemon, creosote, broccoli, and 1973 Pinto left front tire at a police impound lot.” These are just an exercise in throwing adjectives at a problem and are exclusively the domain of bad, non-informative writers. They help those writers get famous, but do not help you, and are generally followed by people who experience none of those tastes but keep trying for six months, then throw their pipes and tins in the trash. This harms the industry and the smoker, but helps those who make a living through minor celebrity.

Advanced Pipe Technique

Now we should talk about what it takes to be an expert, at least according to my experience. This is going to take you from the world of buying stuff and learning the basics, to the more complex task of perfecting your breathing rhythm and techniques like packing, tamping, ember chasing, and lighting.

Imagine it is a sunny spring Saturday. Everyone else is busy elsewhere, and you have some free time, so you walk on down to the creek. Before going, you load up a pipe with Prince Albert or Carter Hall, then grab your lighter and tamper and head out the door. About two hundred yards on your journey, when you are halfway to the creek, you stop to light the pipe, then keep walking, smoking as you traverse the forest path. Once you get to the creek, you sit on a large rock for over an hour, smoking without thinking about it and watching the water pass. When you get back to the house, you find that you have a pipe of fine grey ash and nothing else, and that this was one of the most memorable, magical, and transcendent smokes you have experienced.

Let us do the postmortem: what went right? First, you let gravity pack your bowl for you, because you walked those two hundred yards over grass and let the impact of your feet sort the little tobacco bits into place without compressing them. Now all of the pieces of tobacco are touching each other, with no empty spaces, but also no obstructed airflow (let us assume that you had your thumb over the top of the bowl, and this kept you from creating a small tobacco blizzard). Then, you lit and smoked without thinking, which let your body rhythms take over and enabled you to breath smoke like a pro. Finally, you had something else to occupy your mind, so you were not focused on tasting, but appreciated it nonetheless.

Pipes and water both relate to the subconscious. Our conscious mind is a tiny little middle manager who sits on top of this vast teeming horde of thoughts, impulses, emotions, notions, reactions, and desires. With his book of rules, mission statement, and calendar he chooses from these a few at a time, and writes them into a memo, which then presents itself before your mind in a screen labeled CURRENT REALITY. When you smoke a pipe, the subconscious horde is able to stop worrying about what it officially things, and simply express itself and its many notions as fleeting thoughts. You are no longer trying to force yourself to think; you are thinking better by not thinking at all of what you are thinking about. It is like putting the ego into a lengthy staff meeting so that everyone else can get the work done without the little fat man at the top barking out orders and pointing an angry corpulent finger at the book of rules. The conscious mind is happy because it feels like it is In Control, and the subconscious mind is happy because pipe-smoking has become the agenda, freeing up the horde to work on its own projects, or even play a little. Naturally, this drops barriers in your mind and the little parts communicate with each other more freely, not having to filter themselves through the conscious mind. This meditative state also causes you to stop thinking “I must force this pipe to smoke” and allows you to simply breathe through the briar object temporarily attached to your face.

You can have a smoke this good every time, but you need to master packing and breathing.

Let a master writer, William Faulkner, describe his smoking technique:

Mr. Billy said, “Once I knew an old man who smoked a pipe. He took great care in stuffing his pipe. The old man would start loading his pipe by putting just a pinch of tobacco in the bottom of the bowl. Then he would carefully smooth the tobacco around the bottom. Then he would put a little more tobacco in and do the same thing, almost as if he were laying shingle on a roof. He would keep this up just a little bit of tobacco each time, carefully spreading and leveling it around the bowl. After doing this as many times as necessary to fill the bowl up to about a quarter of an inch below the top of the bowl he would put his little finger in the bowl and gently tamp it down about another quarter of an inch.   “Finally, he would light a match and wait until it had burned away the smells and color of sulfur and the flame was exactly right and smelling only of burning wood, then he would move the match, now half-burned, around the bowl clockwise two or three times to be sure that the flame had lighted the tobacco evenly at every point in the bowl; and, as he circled the bowl with the match, he began to inhale just a little bit. He seemed to be merely breathing the smoke in and out instead of puffing and blowing. Puffing and blowing like a blacksmith's bellows would have made a ball of fire and overheated the pipe. The way he did it, the entire surface of the bowl let an even flow of smoke drift upward, and the fire could scarcely be seen. He kept on just sort of breathing the smoke in and out slowly and gently. After he got the pipe loaded and fired up, he could smoke that pipe on that load for four hours.”

Most difficulties experienced by pipe smokers involve packing too tight, and consequently smoking too fast, leading the fire to get too hot, therefore both incinerating most of the flavor in the smoke and producing too much water, which in turn causes an uneven burn and an unsatisfying smoke. This is controversial because it requires you to learn a skill, instead of the following one of the two extremes that appear in any group, the “smoke what you like, like what you smoke” people who insist that “there is no right way to do this, just follow your own path” and the “there is one right way to smoke a pipe, graven in stone on the wall by the pipe gods of ancient time.” In reality, life is closer to the latter, but only because some things work better. Smoke what you like, and like what you smoke, but your results may vary. Smoke something of quality, and do it mostly right, and you will always have a better experience. The former group generally focus too much on what they own, and not enough on how they use it, while the latter group spends too much time searching for tobacconists on remote islands who might have that last tin of aged Penzance, a type of rarity that the internerds call “Unobtanium” but the rest of us recognize as a conspicuous consumption vanity project.

As with most learning, we should start with vocabulary. The term “packing” describes almost nothing of what you will do; you are going to fill a pipe, sorting the contents in the process, and then press down on the top with as much force is required to depress one of those membrane keyboards on a microwave oven. We say “packing” and that signals the newer pipes into a mindset of cramming stuff in the pipe and squeezing it into a brick. For ribbon cuts, you will want to fill with three pinches. Take a big one and drop it on the bottom, then use your finger to push the tobacco bits toward the edge, and groom them a little bit, making sure you neither have open spaces or tightly compressed ones. Then add another big pinch and do the same. Your third pinch you want to heap on the top, then push to the edges and holding your thumb over the top of the pipe, shake it around a bit to let saltation (a fancy term for the movement of particles over an uneven surface, falling into place like Tetris) settle the leaf. Then press down once to lightly compress the top layer, light the pipe and take a very shallow draw, then gravity tamp — let the weight of the tamper do the work, and do not push — to get a nice flat surface, then light again.

Next, we want to master breath-smoking, which is how the old school pipe smokers used to enjoy tobacco. Without a pipe in your mouth, practice slow breathing, as if you were just about to fall asleep or were sitting on a rock watching the creek pass by on a pleasant spring day. In my experience, this generally means that you breathe in for about three seconds, then blow and rest for about four seconds. When you are nervous or busy, you will breathe more rapidly, puffing away like an animal in distress. When you have mastered inner calm and organized your thinking, you can be regular in your disciplined motions even in the midst of chaos, and your breathing and heart rate will be consistent, allowing for maximal brain and muscle function. This orderly breathing allows you to keep a constant draw on the pipe by sealing your lips around the stem like when you use a straw in a drink, then breathing through your nose while keeping your throat shut to air from the mouth. This assembles smoke in the mouth, where flavor can be appreciated and nicotine absorbed, while using capillary pressure to create an even, steady draw. You might puff a little when lighting, but the shallower, the better. You want slow smoldering tobacco, not burning tobacco. Every seven seconds, open the lips and let the old smoke out. Once you fall into this rhythm for a little while, your body will take over and autopilot smoke a pipe unless you become agitated or nervous.

When you are done with smoking a pipe in this way, there will be very little dottle — some will exist because as the flame gets to the bottom of the bowl, it is closer to the draw-hole, and therefore tends to form a little vortext of current there, which misses the tobacco on either side of the invagination of flame — and you can scoop that and ash out with your pipe nail or tool. Dump that somewhere good, like on the flower garden, and blow through the stem. Then feed a pipe cleaner into the stem, first one side and then the other, rotating it and moving it back and forth to catch all the nooks and crannies. When done with that, fold the pipe cleaner in half so it forms a loop, and use that to scrape out the pipe, clearing more ash. For a final pass, use a shirt-tail or paper towel to wipe down the sides of the pipe.

Every few months or sooner if your pipe tastes sour or boggy, dip a pipe cleaner in whisky or another alcohol; I only use alcohols intended for human consumption, since my general rule is that I never put anything in a pipe which could hurt me if consumed. Run this through the inside of the stem, then make the loop, dip in alcohol again, and swab down the interior of the pipe. Let this dry in the pipe. It will draw out any “ghosts,” or stubborn flavors that arise from smoking a lot of a strong-smelling blend, with the worst offenders being Latakia, aromatics, and the natural scent infused tobaccos from the Lakeland region in England. Generally, one should not fear ghosts, since it takes a long time to make them, and they consist of deposits in the stem and within the cake on the sides of the bowl. Since you will be trimming cake anyway, this reduces fear of ghosts to keeping the pipe clean. In some cases, if you smoke the same tobacco for forty years, the oils will make it into the briar. At that point, your best option is to smoke dry Burley blends like Five Brothers, which will absorb the oil as they burn. I use Prince Albert as a ghostbuster since it seems to layer its flavor onto any others, rendering them ambiguous.

Internet pipe-smokers talk a lot about pipe rotation, but in my view this is simple: you want to give each briar at least a half-hour between smokes to dry out, depending on the humidity in your area. If you smoke five bowls a day, you can do that with a couple pipes, but it tastes better if you have five, and some pipe smokers would want ten so that you could give each pipe a full twenty-four hour rest. Obviously, a longer rest will mean a drier pipe, so it is hard to argue against this. Personally, I have a dozen or so favorite pipes at any time — whims change with the seasons — and I smoke the heck out of them, giving them a half-hour rest or so, and smoking most of those in a day. Then, I rotate those out and have another dozen come out of the long-term storage (a banker's file box marked CHRISTMAS ORNAMENTS) so that I can let the last batch rest for a few weeks.

Cake also needs some debunking. You do not need to worry about building up cake; it happens naturally, especially if you smoke high-sugar blends like Virginias or aromatics. I tend to break in new pipes with Prince Albert, since it burns cool and leaves behind a nice layer of tar and ash which becomes the cake. Your cake should be the thickness of a dime. Too much more than that it and it endangers the pipe, possibly causing the briar to break. If you get too much cake, trim it with an old knife that has a dull tip, or a rounded knife if you can find one, scraping over the surface more like if you were sanding than trying to “cut” the cake. When it gets to a uniform depth of the required width, shake out the black ash dust and blow through the stem. Cake helps insulate the pipe, but this can backfire because too much insulation makes a little firebox.

If your pipe gets too hot when you are smoking it, stick your metal pipe nail or tool into the edge of the tobacco near the stem, and set the pipe aside. The metal will radiate heat and cool down the pipe, killing the fire, and allowing the briar to reduce temperature.

That is what I have for you, as a guy who smokes all the time because he likes it. I do not have ten thousand blends in my cellar; I have about five that I really like, but a lot of them. Anytime I find a new one I like, I wait for it to go on sale and buy a lot of it. I like what I smoke, and smoke what I like, because life is short and I want to spend all of my time in this mortal stage of existence in that state of meditative calm, smoke curling around my head. But don't take it from me. I'm just a guy with some experience and analytical ability. Here are some of my favorite resources:

Smoking * Introduction to Pipe Smoking and Pipe Tobacco * Pipe Packing and Smoking Techniques * A Pipe Smoking Primer * How To Get Into Pipe Smoking * A Pipeman's Handbook! * How to Smoke a Pipe

Blends * G.L. Pease FAQ: mostly on tobacco types and blending * Tobacco Reviews: reviews of blends, some of which are not blather

General * PipePedia * Pipe Q&A * PipeTobacco Wiki

I pretend to be a guy who likes fancy tobaccos on the internet. I mean, I like those and buy too many of them, but mostly I tend to cellar really basic stuff because I like whole, simple flavors with internal nuance more than blends with too much personality to have that internal inconsistency.

My “cellar,” if it can be called such, is a weird L-shaped closet in our guest bedroom slash office slash exercise room slash pile of junk that belongs on Hoarders but probably doesn't meet their minimum requirements for class. The closet is stuffed with books, old gear, and piles of tobacco jars and tins. There is no organization system and very little labeling. If you walked in you would do an Edvard Munch and scream.

But, there are a few things I am looking forward to:

• I stuck a bunch of tins of Escudo in there with an order a few years back. I have no idea where they are, but I think they might be in a box full of USB and SATA cables.
• Long ago, I got a wild hair and ordered an absolute horseload of bright, brown, and red blending Virginias. This is going on five years at this point, and it's going to be tasty.
• I created a few English blends that are American Englishes because they use a lot of white and dark Burley in addition to a Presbyterian/Early Morning Pipe style low-Latakia, heavy Virginia blend. One uses Perique and a little dark fired Kentucky Burley (huge surprise) and the other is a straight-ahead English. These are now at least six years old.
• I bought twenty tins of Erinmore Flake to stash away, figuring that they would be brown sugar with raspberry syrup in a few years. Unfortunately, this plan has failed because I keep smoking them, and there are only a half-dozen left, which a fellow family member may have hidden so that they actually age.
• I keep buying up pounds of HH Bold Kentucky, Newminster #400, and Sutliff 507-C. I have no idea where these jars are, whether they're labeled, or how much is in them, but the little bastards are in there somewhere.

Someone showed me this cool database the other day which keeps track of what you have by weight and when you bought it. I have no plans to find out, either. It would take Marie Kondo a decade to untangle this chaos, and she'd probably throw it out anyway to simplify my life. Aristotle could not identify the essence of this cellar, and even Sherlock Holmes could not find a principle behind it. But I'm looking forward to some of this stuff, and I intend to make a note on my calendar to force me to get off this comfy, fire-scarred chair and go dig around in the abyss of abysses.

What are you looking forward to in your cellar? I sincerely hope that yours is more organized than this pile of chaos.

If Mac Baren fanboyism exists on a scale from one to ten, I am probably a solid seven and rising. I skipped out on this blend at first because “Mac Baren” sounds like someone who hung around the Playboy Mansion nursing a 32-oz piña colada while fiddling with something the low front pocket of his dressing gown. Then when the MBAs decided to turn Irish Flake into an amaretto blend for vaper and Orlik smokers, I needed a new solidly UK-style flake, and discovered HH Bold Kentucky, which I have been obsessively hoarding since.

Looking through the Mac Baren blend catalog, developed by their talented blenders including Per Jensen who seems like an absolute wizard, I found a lot to like. The big surprise was Golden Extra, which is a light half-and-half style blend that is easy to smoke and enjoy without thinking about it too much. From there, I started reaching out into other areas, trying their various curly cuts and rolls, and also finding that Mac Baren makes blends like Savinelli Doblone d'Oro — the best original Three Nuns alternative on the market — and Savinelli Juno, both of which strike me as some of the finer blends out there.

This brand basically invented or refined most of the concepts we toss around today. Frog Morton owes its genesis to The Solent Mixture, a blend only unsuccessful in 'murka because it sounds like “Soylent Green.” This blend is an aromatic English that can take you places in idle enjoyment. Plumcake was all the rage a few years back, and inspired the SPC blends as an attempt to create that figs-and-dates flavor without a topping. Original Choice is like every aromatic, done subtly and with better tobacco flavor. Then you get to classics like the Navy Flake and find how many solid, long-burning blends this house produces.

However, many shy away from Mac Baren blends because of the “Mac Baren Fireball.” These blenders dislike the modern formula of sugars, humectants, accelerants, and dessicants that are used in a perfect balance to suck the sugars out of the leaf, replace them with flavoring and refined sugars, and that way, make a perfect aromatic-style blend. This method works really well, but you are also experiencing the same problem that cigarette smokers do, which is that much of what you are smoking is not tobacco but industrial chemistry. The Mac Baren response was to use only maple sugar and water in the binding of their blends, and only natural flavorings. This makes not just a more natural flavor, but a simpler chemical reaction as the leaf burns.

It produces only one problem: if you light straight sugars, like maple sugar and water on tobacco leaf, you get a very hot rapid burn. At first this put me off since it basically roasted a hole in the roof of my mouth, which caused me to have to stop smoking and drink a lot of tea with milk, lemon, and honey instead (I got this formula from Napalm Death's Barney Greenway, who uses it to keep his vocal cords from disintegrating after each show). Every time I lit up a Mac Baren blend, this fireball would rise through the pipe, causing unpleasant sensations of pain and loss of tissue in my mouth.

Upon observing Mr. Jensen in some of his videos, as well as watching European pipe smokers on Zoom, the solution became clear: European smokers tend to light the pipe, then hold it in their hand for awhile, then tamp and re-light, hold it some more, and only then begin breath smoking it. They do not simply stick it in the mouth, set the leaf on fire, and go about their business. They do this to let the fireball burn off, since the maple sugar quickly combusts and melts the rest in short order. Once the maple sugar caramelizes, you have less to fear from these incendiary blends. When lighting them or re-lighting, you may experience the fireball, but after the bowl heats up, it tends to go away.

This gives us a simple solution: do as the Europeans do (at least regarding pipe smoking; I am still afraid of lutefisk, Haggis, and those tight pants). When you pack a Mac Baren blend, especially the little curlies which take longer to get fully lit, you want to light it and draw smoke into the stem only, then set it aside. Gravity tamp — let the tamper fall on the leaf-ash pile — and then light again, doing the same thing. Once you feel the pipe warm up, only then do you draw the smoke into your mouth, or at least keep it there for any length of time.

This technique has enabled me to enjoy Mac Baren blends without injury, which is important to me because they make so many tasty and interesting blends. Their HH line of naturals has so far not required this because as far as I know, they use no sugar in those. But for their regular blends like Dark Twist and Golden Extra, knowing this little trick can make all of the difference.

In my theory of the world, the pipe tobaccos that win big are the ones that taste like foods. Escudo for example tastes like a peanut-butter-and-jelly sandwich; My Mixture 965 tastes like gingerbread, and those Virginia flakes taste like sourdough bread toast with honey (if you want it really tasty, take a spare honey jar and fill it with strips of fresh ginger).

Sutliff Dark Decadence comes from this school of thought because it tastes like pancakes and maple syrup:

Summary: a cool-burning aromatic with maple, whisky, and vanilla notes.

I started out, before I knew just about anything, smoking a blend called Blender's Gold “Golden Burley.” It was a Cavendish blend with maple, vanilla, and whisky toppings, at nearly medium strength, and it may not be highly ranked by the Instagram and forum pipe-smokers, but it was pretty good for the price and a very comfortable smoke. “Dark Decadence” follows the same path at full medium strength, being what looks like Burley Cavendish which has been treated with a topping that includes vanilla and whisky flavors. Maybe there is “fruit” in there as well, but mostly, I taste maple syrup. This blend takes a bit of work to light, since it is moist and treated with humectants, but once it gets going, it burns smoothly and delivers a fair amount of flavor, mostly whisky, to the bottom of the bowl. It leaves a bit of moisture, but smolders well, so if you breath-smoke this one can last you for hours. Since it is dense, I would pack it very lightly. I remain open-minded to aromatics, but if I had to pick one from the big shops, I would consider this option for being strong enough and not cloying in its flavor or sweetness. If you want the old school tobacco store smell, open a jar of this next to a jar of an English and drink in that rich scent. I tend to mix this one 1:2 with a basic Burley like Ohm “Natural” to make a better-burning and slightly stronger blend that still has the maple syrup with pancakes flavor and scent.

I enjoyed the Blender's Gold Golden Burley because it had a rich, familiar scent. If you have some of it in a room with an open tin of My Mixture 965 present, the scent of a tobacconist or old school barbershop comes to mind. It was, however, only about mild-to-medium strength. This blend fixes that but, like most aromatics, is almost unsmokeable in its diluted condition.

However, if you cut it with a decent Burley — I recommend Ohm Natural, CD Dark Burley to CD White Burley in a 3:1 ratio, or even Sutliff TS4 White Cube Burley — this blend comes alive. You still get the great room note, which means that people will actually stand near you instead of fleeing like they do when you break out the Engine #99 or Nightcap, and all of the flavor, but you can actually light it, where this tobacco in its unadulterated form is a bit too full of flavoring agents, humectants, and sugars to get started and keep lit.

For contrast, here is my review of Ohm Natural:

Summary: mostly Burley flavor in natural form comes from this Virginia-accented blend.

Ohm “Natural” may be the classic American blend: mostly Burley with some Virginia to sweeten it, offered at a low cost because it is bulk leaf run through a shredder. Its tin note smells much like that of the Semois tobaccos from Europe, a sweetness with a faint overtone of almonds or hazelnuts. The mixture is slightly moist, and seems to be a combination of some white Burley with mostly dark Burley with smaller amounts of bright Virginia in a supporting role. It lights easily, and produces at first a nut-and-oats Burley flavor, but then the lighter wheat and honey flavor of the Virginia rises. The two form a chord that then smokes down to the bottom of the bowl easily, leaving the fine grey ash that implies complete and even burning. For those who like classic American Burley blends, this is an all-day smoke at a very reasonable price.

When I am out in the field, my modus operandi consists of going to the local tobacco shack and picking up a big bag of Ohm Natural and whatever my best option from the aromatic rack is. It used to be Prince Albert, which I mixed 1:1 with the Ohm, but sometimes nowadays it is various Sutliff or Lane aromatics which I mix with the 1:3 to the Ohm formula. That way, you get all of the flavor and scent, but a mite more nicotine and natural flavor, which makes these a lot tastier, satisfying, and less bitey.

Now, I know that most of you are thinking: this guy is a poseur; he's recommending an aromatic! I share your concerns about aromatics just like I avoid soda pop and boxed food in real life. If you look at my tobacco reviews and pipe smoking articles, not to mention my information for new pipe smokers and learning to smoke a pipe, you will see that I favor naturals quite a bit. Sometimes, however, one would like something a little aromatic for social events or just a light, easy smoke with natural-ish food flavors. It's better than snacking at least.

I do not trust the industrial habit of taking something natural, adding emulsifiers and conditioners and preservatives and humectants with flavoring and coloring and extra sugar, fat, and salt, and then declaring it a new improved product, when really they downgraded the quality — mostly through labor costs — of the original and are using the goop to mask that.

Most aromatics still strike me as like most sodas, an inferior replacement for old-fashioned home-brewed root beer, cream soda, or ginger soda. They are too sweet for me as well. However, this may be the best of the breed, and it fills the role taken by Lane 1-Q and Captain Black Regular for a sugary culinary tobacco that you can smoke around normals and get away with it.

I found perhaps my favorite Virginia blend ever in Gawith Hoggarth Kendal Gold:

Summary: bright Virginia tamed of its acidity and hot burning, this blend delivers light and sweet Virginia flavor in an easy smoke.

Bright Virginia requires less curing than other varieties and retains more of its sugar, which makes it both a highly-sought form of leaf and one that demands careful attention, since without pressing, aging, or dousing in vinegar, it tends to burn hot and deliver acidic tongue-biting smoke. However the ancient wizards at Gawith Hoggarth addressed this issue, they made perhaps my favorite Virginia of all time: the open, gentle, and deeply flavorful — more than other bright Virginia blends — “Kendal Gold” which burns cool and delivers a great deal of the lemon honey on lightly toasted French bread of this versatile variety of leaf. A thin ribbon cut more than a true shag, it packs with filling and a poke of the thumb, then lights up instantly and smolders well, requiring a slow smoke but not a walking-on-eggshells approach. The blend smells and tastes of honey with an underlying full but unobtrusive tobacco flavor, perfect for seasoned smokers or aromatic transitionals alike, and for this reason, this blend occupies the top spot in my Virginia rotation.

You can smoke this one at any level of expertise and enjoy it, and with relatively light nicotine, just about anyone can smoke it all day. It is a delicious, fragrant, and long-lasting honey-flavored bright Virginia blend that could make just about anyone enjoy a slow-rolling pipe as they wander through the outdoors or potter around the house or shop.

Let us hope that the Gawith blends continue to be available in America, since they are really some of the best leaf available.

Quite a tasty Virginia flake, John Aylesbury Sir John's Flake Virginia will appeal to the smoker of sweet but subtle flakes:

Summary: a bright and brown Virginia flake with lots of natural sweetness.

When you open the tin, the plum- or fig-like smell of fermented sweet tobacco wafts upward with a hint of something honeylike and citrus in the background. Amazingly, you get exactly what that olfactory landscape promises, namely a mix between the tingly acidic bright Virginia and the richer, almost malted and vinegary flavor of the darker Virginias. Pressing has caused fermentation and brought many of the sugars to the point of caramelization, and a warm topping, perhaps even maple or honey, lightly tweaks this allow the different Virginia flavors to meld seamlessly. While this one smokes great out of the box, it is still rather acidic, so would benefit from the usual six months in the cellar.

I know aging is overhyped, but this blend — like Former's “Straight Grain Virginia,” another winner — benefits from six months to a year in the basement.