Thursday, September 19, 2013

EXHAUSTED ROOSTER

Cornell & Diehl are known for their sometimes whimsical naming conventions, having sent several tobacco mixtures with oddball appellations into the depths of the pipe-smoking universe.

Not all fine leaves need to have English images or British-sounding nomens; the Danes, Germans, and Yanks, all manufacture some fine traditional products, and at this point in time there are more splendid Oriental mixtures and pressed Virginias than what Blighty still produces.

The use of traditional bog and sod and teatime and empire jingoism is a rather stale reminder of the glorious era of London between the 1890's and 1960, when all the legendary tobaccos were still put out by respected eccentrics operating shops for gentlemen and factories adhering to mediaeval production codes.

Rather than exposing you here to a selection of Cornell & Diehl's rebellion against stodge, I would rather direct you to their website: Cornell & Diehl, Inc., where you can explore their world at your leisure.
Alternatively, there is a list of all their tobaccos reviewed (*), on Tobaccoreviews.com, which should always be in your flip file.


I will, however, offer a brief description of a product of theirs which I recently revisited.


EXHAUSTED ROOSTER
Pressed Virginias, fire-cured leaf, and Perique.

Presented in a flake form.


Fruity, tangy, and altogether good. This is a lovely product; Cornell & Diehl hit it out of the ballpark on this one. No, I do not know what a ballpark is or why hitting something out might be a commendable thing, I got that from a book.

I had rubbed-out a handful of flakes to air, then jarred them once the correct moisture level (nearly dry) had been reached. Letting it sit for a day or two in its glass tomb allowed the remaining moisture to redistribute and equalize, as well as an aroma to develop.

Mighty fine stuff. If you like VaPers with a blondish touch and just a hint of naughtiness, get yourself some. Life will be sunnier, your mornings will be exciting, and the fact that the big-breasted amazon took off with your credit cards, cuff-links, and the Ferrari will escape your mind. And that is a good thing. You didn't really need the cards and the car anyway, did you?

I do not have a multiplicity of cards or a snazzy crimson convertible. But smoking Exhausted Rooster made me forget entirely that I never picked up a crazy sex-bombe in an East-German dancehall. Nor have I ever worn tailored shirts with diamond cuff-links, or rafted down the river Oder wearing nothing but leopard skins.
Why, it could have happened!

I am not a big muscle-man, and my chest is not excessively hairy. Nor do I shoot elephant seals for fun and profit. But this excellent straightforward flake tobacco pushes all that into the background.

I am NOT an 'exhausted rooster'.
But sometimes my tobacco is.
It is mild on the Perique.
Attracts fruit flies.


Good smoke.


Dinner this evening will be curried chicken.



TOBACCO INDEX


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1 comment:

Jack Kessler said...

There are the unsophisticated. Beyond them are the antedeluvian. Beyond that are the paleolithic. Among us so backward as to cherish only that which is purely animal are those who value the original package with which the man and more particularly the woman comes naturally equipped. This includes an appendix, wisdom teeth, facial features not surgically altered, breasts the size and shape they grew, ears, brows, cheeks, unpierced. Skin free of various evocations of already forgotten rock bands or the aesthetic predispositions of ex-convict tattoo "artists".

The optimum body decoration is that in Courbet's "Origine de Monde". That is what a lady ought to look like.

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