nicotiana

Lately it has become clear that what makes a good smoke transcendent often involves less what pipes and blends you have, and more what the act of smoking itself means. For example, having a spare couple of hours to camp out in my lair and enjoy a pipe of anything can be a great joy when the days are full.

Just a few weeks ago, a colleague flagged me for an ad hoc meeting. Sure, no problem; I figured this meant we were going to be discussing the usual scintillating topics such as what brand of coffee we would serve in the break room. Life, however, has its bends and surprises. It turns out that an issue that I had been pointing to and mewling about for some time had zoomed to the forefront when it was finally noticed by others, and I found myself with more day-job responsibilities than I would like, but also a chance to fix some things that have gone unfixed for too long.

On the down side, this has cut into my ability to wander around with a pipe in my mouth, since there is more telephone, travel, and in-person time. Apparently ordinary people have a fear of fire, a disdain for smoke, and consider it odd to be plugged into a wooden device containing flame. Don't they realize that control of fire is still our proudest achievement as a species?

I managed to snag a few hours of free time this last weekend to do something exciting like... oh right, run errands. The Dispos-All is still busted, which forces me to toss uneaten food directly out the window where it is making the raccoons fat, and the A/C needed a filter, thus my car pointed to that most Murkan of Murkan destinations, Walmart.

Many people seem to disdain Walmart and make fun of the people that go there, but to my mind, it is an essential place to visit. You finally see your fellow citizens as they are, since everyone from the poorest to the richest goes to Walmart. There are more of the latter than you think, since they seem to know the value of a nickel saved (you can use it to buy stocks or adrenochrome, whichever has the best market potential). Getting out of our bubbles shows us more of the world as it is, not as we have filtered it.

Speaking of filters, Kant said that there is more to the world than we see because our brains take what they need to make a sensible portrayal and toss out the rest (wonder what the raccoons think of that). There may be a whole invisible world, supernatural and otherwise, going on around us while we try to figure out which Filtrete will fit our verdammt climate control system, but this took a back seat to finding the thing and getting ready to flee, since the 52” flat-screen TVs on double secret super sale were starting to look like something I should be exploring.

Like many, you may drift toward the self-checkout aisle for reasons not of misanthropy — no, anything but that! — but preferring to remain in your own thoughts and visions as you stumble through the aisles. At the last minute, something afflicted me; I think some call it “hope.” For whatever reason, I turned on my heel and ambled down to the single remaining lane where they sell tobacco.

And there — apparently a burn-through in the Kantian filter — I saw it, glowing in the light, as if it were waiting for me only. My droogs, if the synthesizer chord in the fake angelic voices could have sounded, or maybe the bell from Hellraiser, it rang out in my head at least. There, on the far edge of the tobacco rack, was a single red box.

We all know what that means. Either it is a packet of tasty raisins or, if you are really lucky, the last remaining pouch of Prince Albert in the store, and possibly the region, since apparently they have discontinued these in favor of selling the plastic buckets to die-hards like myself who consider fourteen ounces of Prince Albert a good travel-pak. I walked up to Jyotsana, my cashier of the day, and after waiting for a rather blown-out person to find a working credit card, asked in a very small voice if she would get it for me.

A quick transaction later and there it sat, cradled in my sweaty little hand, a box of Prince Albert spattered with a brown substance that I hope is chocolate milk (but intend to wipe down with a paper towel that will be flung unceremoniously at the raccoons). It was as if the universe set it aside for me and guided me there, so that I could enjoy this treasured smoke, which like so many of the others — Paddington, Irish Flake, Kendal Gold, and Golden Extra — have been enjoyed for generations.

Perhaps I will never make it to religion, since I have failed at that in every incarnation that I have tried, but I think the veil of Maya drew aside for a moment, and this manifested through the graces of a loving universe that just wants me to chill the heck out for a couple hours and enjoy chocolatey, raisiny, rum-laden goodness and a stout Burley smoke while I attempt to recover my joie de vivre after a week of neurotic delirium.

***

In addition, a new review: HH Burley Flake may well be the mildest smoke I have ever tried:

Summary: the mildest blend ever tried by this reviewer, tasting like white Burley with a touch of Virginia.

Many people search for blends by negatives: they want something which will not make them sick if they smoke it all day, will not make the room stink too much, and will not sting their tongues. As the mildest blend ever smoked by this reviewer, “HH Burley Flake” qualifies in avoiding all of these negatives. It smells like a dry prairie in autumn, and lights immediately with a faint fruitiness that quickly goes away, replaced by the flavor of white Burley. This leaf tastes like a Connecticut wrapper in a cigar, a light roasted almond flavor with a touch of barley, and periodically reveals natural vanilla and light chocolatey flavors. The added Virginias here give some sweetness, and the dark and dark fired Burleys add a slight fermented and dark roasted flavor respectively, but are here to direct the mass of white Burley flavor. During the second half of the bowl, the leaf caramelizes and the whole thing tastes a little bit like sugarcane with a touch of white pepper on it. Since there is no nicotine to speak of, you can smoke this all day, and the vegetal and sometimes “bitey” bitter green flavor that Burley sometimes has is minimized. Unlike most flakes, this one lights easily and stays lit, making this a convenient and flavorful smoke.

This immediately brings to mind Sir Walter Raleigh, which has the same white Burley with a light topping appeal.

The one downside to TobaccoReviews.com is that they refuse to add entries for a blend until head moderator JimInks has written his own review. That way, Sutliff can keep ghost-writing his reviews, one might guess.

However, I think we should talk about this tobacco, and often, short reviews work better than long lists of adjectives and food metaphors that correspond to nothing but marketing.

Although a limited edition, and most of us now distrust limited editions, Mac Baren – Royal Twist is quite the tasty little blend:

Summary: a strong and flavorful twist which brings the dark fired Kentucky Burley to the fore and uses Perique as a condiment.

I have met very few vaperky — Virginia, Perique, and dark fired Kentucky Burley — combinations that I dislike, but every now and then, you meet one that really makes friends in a lasting way. In this blend, the dark fired Kentucky Burley flavor hits first, a nice rich roast like a steaming mug of coffee, and then the Virginia sweetness rises around it. These Virginias are well-aged and seem to have spent some time in rope form, causing them to ferment, so they have a gentle glow of honey-like flavor on roasted nuts, something that the Perique then complements in the third part of the flavor: a berry-like, fruity and tangy, zesty flavor that seems to emerge from the interaction between the three ingredients in this smoke. Mac Baren has changed something about their maple sugar “glue” that holds together the ropes because the fireball is mostly gone, replaced by a first puff that melts the Virginias and makes for a smoothly integrated flavor. I hope this one becomes a regular. It is a strong medium for strength, but in flavor is gentle yet powerful, so that you instinctively smoke this one slowly because even a thin stream of smoke brings a rewarding taste. I could smoke this all day, every day, and be happy.

Apparently this is very similar to the Roll Cake, which seems to have Cavendish in it. It also has a similar appeal to another Mac Baren creation, the Savinelli Doblone d'Oro, but the Virginias here are more aged and the Perique more forward; the flavor integrates better, where to my taste buds, a tin of Doblone d'Oro needs to rest for six months before it is ready, and has more nicotine to boot.

In addition, I was lucky to taste Boswell's – Northwoods, a light aromatic English:

Summary: a crossover English aromatic which keeps its toppings mild enough to let the Latakia emerge at just the right amount.

As many of you know, I am skeptical of goopy aromatics but also like a certain number of aromatics if there is tobacco flavor present. Crossover Englishes — English blends with aromatic toppings — fascinate me because they tame the English and give it a new dimension, sort of like Lakeland Essence does for those great UK plugs. This blend might qualify as a Scottish blend, since Cavendish is mixed in, and has on top a vanilla-ish flavor with undertones of maple, rum, and cherry, or some concoction like that. This gives the blend a very gentle top note that dominates the first stage of any stream of smoke, then allowing the Latakia to gently samba its way to center stage without clobbering the Virginias, which are the real core of this blend, sweetening it and interacting with the topping in place of Orientals, giving the same slight tangy sourness that marks a good English blend. The magic really occurs after this, at which point the Latakia aftertaste dominates, giving an herbal spicy and smoky flavor to the Virginia core. In this case, a topping really enhances the English blend, and makes for a nice gentle smoke without too much of the goop that makes aromatics burn like embassy documents during a coup d'etat.

These are great blends, and I hope to smoke more of them. In particular, the Mac Baren is like their other roll cakes a great triumph, since rope tobacco is the specialty of that blending house. My feeling is that they used older Virginias, and then kept them in tight ropes for a long enough time that they mellowed, giving this blend the maturity and depth of something from, say, Gawith Hoggarth.

Unified by a base of our standard cheap bulk that we found at the back of the warehouse next to an old copy of “Penthouse” and a roach clip, the blends of Sutliff's Crumble Flake series showcase how easy it is to cram just about anything into a crumble cake, benefiting from the complete confusion caused to novice smokers. Expanding on these low-cost ersatz versions of traditional processes, the American mega-corporation last year released a special, limited-edition mixture to the line: Crumble Flake Bullshit No. 1 combined choice low-cost blending tobaccos, crushed them in a trash compactor, then threw them in a surplus apple brandy barrel from the MD 20/20 factor.

Sutliff's second installment of the Bullshit series, Crumble Flake Bullshit No. 2, elevates the con further with a blend of select cheap forklift-ready mixes that are heat-pressed, tumbled, then matured for one month in an aged, oak “Olde English 800” barrel. Once matured, the mixture is pressed again and cut into cheaply made crumble cakes for easy preparation and maximum aging potential (which means it tastes like garbage until you let entropy beat it into a muddle of flavors). This uniquely inexpensive process marries the naturally sweet cheap stuff with the smoky cheap stuff, enhancing the blend's natural flavors of dirt, dandruff, adipocere, and paraquat.

Available today, Sutliff's Bullshit No. 2 is an exciting addition to the Crumble Flake series and an exceptional sequel to last year's complete fiscal success. Crafted to showcase the true characteristics of natural tobacco and elevated by traditionally low-cost processes, Bullshit No. 2 is not one to miss. Only 4,000 tins were made based on the “active members” list at PipeMagazine forums, so don't wait to pay top dollar for this lipstick on a pig today.

For the accompanying image, see this post.

I see this one's floating around out there, so let's take a look at the tin description from C&D:

A blend of the finest Bright and Red Virginias balanced by 2014 Basma and 2013 Izmir Orientals, Cornell & Diehl's Sun Bear: Black Locust commends itself with subtle notes of raw, ethically sourced, single-farm honey from the 2020 Black Locust pollination in Maryland — a variety prized for its small yields, extremely light color, and delicate sweetness.

Combined with a whisper of silver tequila and elderflower, the natural Black Locust honey complements these specially selected varietal tobaccos, elevating their fruity and floral notes for a bright, refreshing character and a creamy, rounded finish.

Anyone else thinking what I am thinking? Reminds me of Dunhill's Ready-Rubbed. These are tough blends to sell since they tend to be so ephemeral in flavor. You taste bright Virginia, some sourness, and a little lift from whatever they're topped with.

The silver tequila, free trade bees, and hipster honey do not sway me either way. I am not against liberating the bees or “ethical sourcing” but these are marketing terms, not reality, and often this just means “we got a good deal from the farm down the road.”

I am interested of course in anything made with C&D's Virginia Flake, which is a ready-rubbed blend of bright and orange Virginias that I use a lot in home mixes. I think the stuff is delicious, personally, but off the shelf it burns too hot and therefore it needs a few years in the whipping room.

Funny they don't mention the age on that, only on the Orientals, which I am sure are delicious by themselves, but if this one is like the last few C&D boutique blends, might get swallowed up by the leaf around them.

Not surprisingly, Cornell & Diehll Sun Bear: Black Locust sells itself mostly on novelty, not substance:

Summary: an acidic bright Virginia blend that never unites its parts

To make a bright Virginia blend, you either age and press the leaf to create a comfortably tamed version of the bright tobacco without its characteristic acid bite and tendency to flame up like an over-insured restaurant. “Sun Bear: Black Locust” blazes up with first the weirdly sweet topping that tastes faintly of indigestion, and then the sweet-sour punch of Orientals, but then all fades out and you find yourself smoking the under-aged bright Virginias that have made many wary of C&D blends, with a faint molasses and wildflower honey flavor from the red Virginias, which are few in number. To me, it seemed like there might be some white Burley in here as well, which makes sense since it calms down the bright Virginia and gives it a broader, almond-like flavor and the scent of something like cigar leaf. At this point, the Orientals and toppings burn off, and you find yourself smoking this raw Virginia leaf thinking, I should have gone for something more refined, like Capstan, since this tin is going to require three years in the closet before it is smokeable, and even then, it will not be exceptional. They tell you an awful lot about the five percent of ingredients — tequila, Orientals — and very little reminding you that the other ninety-five percent are their standard mixing tobaccos, marked up extensively. I love C&D blends, but there's a reason they named this one after a parasite. Hold on to your wallet and acquire something else.

I always tell people to be skeptical of any product that sells you a whole lot of something cheap with a tiny bit of something expensive added. You are paying the rate you would for a more expensive product, but most of what you receive is the cheap stuff.

I was skeptical of the last Sun Bear for the same reason, since it's basically a good way to market a bunch of bright Virginia that is relatively new and therefore not that expensive, since bright Virginia requires little labor to produce relative to more complex varieties. The tin note gave us some hints:

A blend of fine red and bright Virginias balanced by Basma leaf from 2014 and Izmir Orientals from 2013, Sun Bear commends itself with subtle notes of South Carolina garden-grown honey from the personal beehives of Jeremy Reeves, head blender of Cornell & Diehl.

The natural honey complements the subtle drizzling of silver tequila and Elderflower for a natural, refined tasting tobacco with an underlying, swashbuckling boldness. Sun Bear is a unique experience for the connoisseur who appreciates a dance of flavor components dominated by quality Virginias.

To me, this reeks of the Fyre Festival and cell phone culture. People love precious things with rare and wild stories behind them that make good Instagram posts. But is it borne out in flavor? For me, like so many G.L. Pease blends and post-Runowski/Tarler C&D, the answer is no, that I'm just buying cheap leaf in a fancy package for luxury import prices in the hope that in seven years it'll be amazing enough to put a review on my OnlyFans or something.

Some of you — is there anybody out there? — will lose respect for me in this post because I praise an aromatic. However, this is not your typical aromatic, in that it is not a mixture of Cavendish with pile Burley and a touch of Virginias. It uses real leaf (Burley, Kentucky, Oriental/Turkish, Virginia) and adds to it a fruity, floral, herbal, and wine-like topping. It is like an Italian (despite being blended by the clever Danes at Mac Baren) version of a lakeland, sort of like a fruit platter with charcuterie. Many complain about it being wet, but I think that is merely so that over the course of the week it does not dry out.

It gained the name “Fruit McBullshit” because this was how I introduced it to my friends. It's hard to describe and if you say “Armonia,” people say, “Oh yes, I use that to clean my kitchen. Gets those windows extra sparkling clean!” at which point you have the sad choice of either trying to confirm what you said, or have them thinking that you are smoking straight ammonia. As it turns out, when people think you are smoking ammonia crystals, they take extra care not to ask difficult questions. I think I can handle this new form of “socializing with pillows” very easily.

Anyway, on to the composition of Fruit McBullshit. Most of it is Burley of good quality, the same white Burley with a smidgen of fermented dark Burley that Mac Baren uses in other tastiest-of-the-tasties like Symphony and HH Burley Flake. There is a smidgen of dark fired Kentucky Burley to give it an earthy flavor, a decent amount of red and orange Virginias, and a skosh of Orientals, probably a mixture mostly featuring Basmir. Let me spell it out for you: if they did not add flavoring, you would still smoke this. Then the topping is, as I said, a fruit salad with geraniums and carnations heaped on top, maybe with a little oregano or dill in the mix. If you could order tea with this in it, you would do that, too. How do I know? If you are reading this, you are probably a smoker of taste, and that means that you have some taste in the other parts of life too, so you enjoy a good coffee, tea, pint, or mead-filled skull chalice on a battlefield heaped with enemies.

When I smoke Savinelli Armonia, I tend to mix it with a 3:1 white/dark Burley mix to spread out the toppings, and it is still full of both top flavor and the rich taste of the underlying blend:

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.

To my taste buds, this compares favorably to blends like Peter Stokkebye Danish Export (No. 81) or Peter Stokkebye Norwegian Blend (No. 80) because it mixes a light Virginia flavor with the warmth of Burley and then gives it a twist with a topping. The top flavoring is heavier here, but it maintains the same level of unobtrusive, and makes the room smell great without obliterating the tobacco flavor underneath. Most of the time, you simply taste a great Burley blend with its Virginia sweetness at the forefront, but you feel like you are sitting in the sun-soaked front room of a country club, surrounded by flowers and dancing women wearing light perfumes, while munching on one of those ornate little fruit salads they cut into fancy shapes. Whenever I have to think too much about life, I imagine myself in one of these places, smoking a bowl of what I have come to consider the best aromatic of my acquaintance.

I stopped by our local pipe shack yesterday on my way home from an errand in the medical center that is too tedious to mention. Sometimes I think humans are ruled by two gods, Illusion and Tedium, and we shuttle between the two looking for an answer which is written on our own hearts: be self-interested like an animal, decent and noble like an angel, and coldly logical like mathematics. As creatures of both mind and body, living in a competitive world, we must be this necessary paradox, and so whenever I have to sacrifice to Tedium, I also pursue Illusion, namely the search for something fun to smoke (mainly because I love fire). In this case, Illusion led me to a wild and untamed blend with great promise.

It was clear that trouble had come my way when I walked into the lounge and spotted a jar of tobacco — The Briar Shoppe keeps its bulk blends in glass jars which both preserve it and slightly dry it — marked with the devil's number “666” in bold Sharpie. As someone who has failed at every religion possible, I cannot claim particular fear of the devil's number, which I am told was a jab at Nero in the Bible, and knowing that half of the guys who work in this store are active in their churches made me have little worry that I was actually going to be inducted into some dark society where we wear masks and sacrifice virgins, children, rabbis, and priests on an altar in the woods. Even more, I knew Satanists back in my weed-smoking days, and my read on it was that they were simply people sick of guilt. “Save the poor? Screw the poor. I want to get high, and I want to keep all my money, because I don't think much of the rest of humanity and definitely don't want to subsidize them to keep being dumb, lazy, and greedy,” was a standard rap. Maybe that's legitimate, or maybe it makes more sense to try to save everyone, although I have to admit that for me, morality is always balanced with self-interest, which is why I was shopping for tobacco instead of handing out food to the homeless or trying to use my nail extractor to take Christ down from the Cross.

Turning the jar around, one sees the name of this blend: The Punisher. I asked Mrs. Diane Grace, the proprietor, what this blend was, and she said that it was something that Austin Schwarz, one of her staff, had cooked up: a mixture of Latakia, Perique, and Black Cavendish. I got an ounce without delay, and settled down in the lounge to have a smoke in my walking-around pipe for that day, a Peterson from their lowest line, which turns out to be the one that is usually screwed up the least because at that price point, pipes have to be functional more than beautiful to compete. It had been filled with my new everyday Virginia blend, Peter Stokkebye Danish Export (No. 91), since you can get an ounce and a half off the shelf for twelve bucks at H.E.B., and it's a great blend with none of the acid bite and sugar blast of your average “prosumer” Virginia blend. Cleaning the Peter carefully, I filled it with The Punisher, which had a faint herbal and consisted entirely of black leaves. After a few bowls of this blend, I can offer some perceptions.

First, the Perique makes a very mild appearance; the Latakia basically eats it up, but in turn, the Perique sweetens the Latakia so that it comes across as a sweet incense smell and taste, instead of a herbal campfire. The Black Cavendish furthers the sweetening process, and intelligently is the major component here since people basically love Cavendish blends, and the majority of the best-sellers are Cavendish-based, but loses its innocence. The slightly canola oil flavor that lingers in the back of Cavendish blends fades to a minor component, and the sweetness gets swept up into the Latakia, delivering ultimately a blend that smokes a lot like an English, but instead of a spicy herb and exotic flavor, it has a dark seductive one. I laughed at this: in the classic vein of literature about evil, this blend claims to be a punisher, but is in fact a seducer. As the bowl goes down, it becomes sweeter and the Latakia fades farther, bringing out a nice darkened Perique flavor that tends more toward the jelly, jam, and stewed fruit side and less of the pepper.

Did I like it? This is not an everyday smoke, although it is not the brutal powerhouse of Perique Satanic sacrifice and sodomy that it seemed to be. Instead, it comes across a lot like Dunhill Nightcap, an English with a little bit of wine-like fruit from the Perique. It is more like your everyday aromatic English, but made mean. This fits more with a religious view of humanity, which is that we mean well but if we stumble upon that Tree of Knowledge, we are going to eat the fruit and worry about the consequences later. The Punisher is like that fruit: it draws you in with an exotic flavor, then takes you to a sweet incense and sun-dried dates land of plenty, but in the end, the sweetness has been subverted and melded into something else, and you find yourself in a place of ambiguity. I'd sign up for this experience again.

Looking for local smokes, and this bright Virginia blend popped up in the form of Peter Stokkebye No. 91 Danish Export:

Summary: a nice bright/red Virginia blend with a malted honey flavor and a mild champagne top note

Filling the void (somewhat) left by the departure of “Three Castles,” Peter Stokkebye “Danish Export” presents a blend of Virginias, mostly bright but some red, with a degree of fermentation and a light top note that most of us will barely even notice. Mostly here one tastes the malted honey and citrus flavor of a good Virginia blend, without overwhelming fermentation, and with minimum acid bite. While the top in this category in my view, Gawith Hoggarth “Kendal Gold,” is in fact a bit sweeter and less acidic, this blend comes very close, and to my mind appeals to the same people who smoke “Capstan” or “Navy Flake.” You will need to breath-smoke this blend to taste anything, but then you get a depth of flavor rather than boldness, such that you can smoke this one all day and never get bored. On the downside, it is slightly more acidic than the “Kendal Gold” and has very little nicotine, so you may really have to smoke this one all day to hit that sweet spot where the eyes brighten and the temper drops. Still, since I can run by H.E.B. and pick this up for nine bucks and change on my way out of town, I plan to make this a regular in my rotation, since it is perfect for long drives among the rolling hills of Texas.

From the email that Smoking Pipes sent out:

From North Carolina, he selected a grade of top-tier 2017 Red Virginias; from Canada, the finest lemon Bright flue-cured leaf. Slowly a pattern emerged, the rest of the puzzle unfolding before him: 2018 Turkish Izmir, 2019 Greek Basma, incense-like Cypriot Latakia, rich, Dark Burley, and genuine St. James Perique.

Why are there no dates on the bright Virginias, dark Burley, Cypriot Latakia, and St. James Perique? Those will make up the bulk of this blend.

I like Jeremy Reeves and think he does good work, and I like much of what C&D puts out, but this blend sounds like it is mostly off-the-shelf blending ingredients with small amounts of a couple rarities — the 2018 Turkish Izmir, 2019 Greek Basma, and 2017 Red Virginias — thrown in.

This means that you are paying luxury prices for a blend that is probably 10-15% of these tobaccos and the rest the same stuff you get in the blending category.

Those of you unfortunate enough to read these pages regularly know that around here, Dark Fired Kentucky Burley blends — specifically those old-school UK ones mating it to bright Virginias — get a lot of airtime. The powerful and bold flavor of fire cured leaf, mixed in with the summertime sweetness of the lighter Virginias, makes for an excellent smoke.

Among these blends, the curly cuts manufactured by Mac Baren take a place alongside blends from Gawith Hoggarth and Peterson because they have their own charm, a light and sweet flavor with the elegant burning of rope-twisted leaf: not as dense as flake, but still nicely compacted, it burns like incense for a nice slow smolder which provides a thin steady stream of smoke, perfect for rich and spicy blends.

Doblone d'Oro, a Mac Baren blended release put out under the Savinelli name, aspires to what made the old Three Nuns so adored. That blend rope-twisted together Perique, Virginias, and possibly Burley, later substituting Dark Fired Kentucky Burley for the expensive Perique. Doblone d'Oro does one better by bringing together bright Virginias, Perique, Burley, and Dark Fired Kentucky Burley in one rope which is then sliced thinly to produce lots of little curlicues which light easily and burn long.

First encounters with this blend showed that it was a new odds-on favorite for Three Nuns fans, since Savinelli Doblone d'Oro has the rough-hewn but distinctive flavor balance of that storied blend:

At first light, the characteristic “VaPer” taste emerges, with the peppered fig flavor of the Perique clashing with the Virginia to produce a lemony aftertaste, but then the Burleys rise and the dark fired leaf wings in to support them, broadening flavor but keeping its balance. The sweetness recedes, and the Perique marches to the front, waving its sword of mixed indole alkaloids, while the dark fired simmers and tones down the flavor from its lighter notes of lemony and grassy Virginia.

When this blend first came out, it flew under the radar for a number of years. As I stumbled through the halls of the local tobacco shack last weekend, I found one last tin of it hiding under a stack of Savinelli Essenza Cipriota (also a great blend from Savinelli mixed by Mac Baren). Turning it over, I noticed that it was date-marked as being blended in 2016. I quickly took this up to the register where one of the owners, Diane Grace, checked me out with some pleasant banter about the joys of owning a tobacco shop. Her grandmother founded the shop, and it has passed along through family members since that time, continuing to serve what looks like a growing population of pipe and cigar smokers in the flat, humid, windless, bug-infested, and bullet-pocked concrete slab of this city.

Most of you know where this is going, since the question of aging tobacco blends — deliberately storing them in a cellar and letting time mature the tobacco leaf — crops up regularly. Many wonder why to bother; obviously, with some blends like the tasty Newminster No. 400 Superior Navy Flake or the ultimate comfort smoke, Sutliff Virginia Slices #507-C, those brand-new bright Virginias benefit from age, losing acidity, ammonia, and raw sugars and gaining the honeyed flavor of sugars caramelized with age. Burleys lose some of their vegetal flavor, the infamous “Burley bite,” and whatever it is that makes Burley blends hit harder in the gut than their nicotine level, probably that same slightly broccoli-like vegetal flavor. Many have expressed worry about aging Latakia, but I have found that it loses some of its excessive herbal and smoke flavors, and becomes a muted and almost spicy taste.

My fingers trembled as I opened this tin, out of fear of spilling even any of what had become, in my mind, a little treat to get me through this month. There was no need to worry; Mac Baren packed this one tightly with the dry curlies and I would have had to slam it against a wall to spill it. The aroma of fermented tobacco, almost like piquant jelly on toast, rose up, and it became clear that the once mostly tan curlies now had a uniform dark brown color. If you, dear reader, are the red-blooded pipe smoker that I believe you to be, you would have done exactly what I did: quickly and lightly fill a pipe with these little roundels, using the method Per Georg Jensen teaches on his channel, intending to follow it up with breath smoking technique since that produces the best flavor.

The first light almost scared me off for a moment because the dark fired taste hit hard, being the strongest of the flavors here. Then, magic happened. With a crackle, the first layer went up in smoke, and the rich caramelized Virginia taste took stage center, the Perique appearing only slightly later to give it the gentle flavor of roast blackberry or apricot with a little white pepper and salt on it. In the background, the other Burley functioned as it usually does when a minor player, which is to infuse the other leaf with its flavor of almonds taken fresh from the fire, giving a warmth and breadth to the alchemy of sensations so far produced. At that point, the blend reached its apex; this continued down to the end of the bowl, when a slight ashy and wet flavor intruded to let me know that the flame had hit the base of the bowl. I looked up at the clock; almost two hours had passed, in which time I had done all manner of things while enjoying the gentle tastes wafting over my tongue. The best blends are often like this, since they assert their flavor with power, but then let its inner tapestry of different varieties of leaf alternate in showing you their beauties.

How does it compare to a new tin of Doblone d'Oro? You might ask this, and would do well to do so, since at least in this house, it has proven very hard to age this tasty blend since someone keeps smoking up all of the tins. I suspect an agent provocateur, trying to keep me on the edge of my game, or perhaps a sleeper agent who lives in the attic. The newer tins of this blend have a little more acidity, but the biggest change is that the dark fired flavor, never too dominant in this blend, stands out more clearly with them, and the Virginias have more of that citrus flavor than the honey on fire-baked bread taste which I get from the aged tin. This makes for what we might have once called a “well-rounded” blend, meaning that nothing clobbers you, but the interweave of flavors makes something more than the sum of its parts. It is quite delicious, and I have put away more than a few bowls of this tantalizing leaf, but one of its secrets is that it burns slowly and so I have barely made a dent in this well-aged tin. If you will forgive me, I am perfectly content with that slow pace of life, and shall depart to enjoy the rest.

Thirrunk.

This, my friends, is the sound of the three fingers of my left hand landing in an empty tin. This sound started my day with some grumbling, but only because what had been in the tin was much enjoyed.

A week ago I tore into a tin of Mac Baren Symphony:

Summary: a medium-strength Burley blend with a mild chocolate flavoring

With “Symphony,” Mac Baren makes a blend that smokes like an OTC but tastes more like a European smoking mixture. Upon opening the tin, the scent of milk chocolate wafts upward. The first light squirts out a bit of this flavor, but it quickly melds with the naturally somewhat chocolatey Burley flavor, aided by the Mac Baren natural Cavendish in becoming a thick but soft smoke that is gentle on the mouth. Virginias hide in back, and are the weakest part of this blend, being sizzly with acid like PopRocks or Lemonheads, but they are a minor player and caramelize rather quickly, letting the Burley mixture take the lead. The malted flavor of white Burley and the richer, earthy dark Burley play together in this mix, producing a taste like roasted almond paste with a light chocolate-vanilla flavoring. Like the blends that may have inspired it — “Prince Albert,” “Sir Walter Raleigh,” and “Edgeworth Ready-Rubbed” — this blend lights easily and stays lit, delivers a medium level of nicotine, has a mild but distinctive flavor, and burns down almost completely to ash. You could smoke this all day and not only enjoy it, but probably never get bored, because within this simple chocolate flavor a tapestry of interlocking influences from Virginias and Burleys plays out like a rainstorm, with never quite the same pattern of drops but similar intensity from top to bottom of the bowl.

If you combined Sir Walter Raleigh, Edgeworth Ready-Rubbed, and Prince Albert into one OTC and then did it the European way, you would have Mac Baren Symphony. It tastes like the old Hershey milk chocolate bars, back when they used real chocolate, but smokes with lots of Burley goodness and has the coveted “true” medium strength nicotine level, which means that you can smoke this all day and neither poison yourself with nicotine nor wondering if you are actually smoking after all.

If anything, this blend serves to remind me that it does not matter what you think about pipe tobacco so much as what you actually enjoy. The same applies to pipes, too; you may have think you really like your fancy shiny pipes, but if you look at what you reach for when you are not thinking too much about it, you find that you really like those unfinished authors or basket pipes. They just work better.

For me, this lesson was served up long ago by Royal Yacht. When I first opened the tin, I gagged, since it smelled like an acidic amaretto had been dumped haphazardly across the leaf. Smoking it, I got some cigarette notes, suggesting a little Burley tucked in there, and almost went cross-eyed from the nicotine level. In fact, it became my least favorite tin, what I smoked when I had no idea what else to do... except that, over time, I found myself reaching for it more and more. When the thirrunk came, I saw my face reflected in the empty tin, and it was not a happy expression, more like that of a dog whose bone has been yanked away or a child deprived of a lollipop.

In each case, the solution is the same: acquire more. This may have been my first tin of Mac Baren Symphony but it will not be my last.