JOCK'S -- A SOUTH AFRICAN SMOKE

Yesterday afternoon at the meeting of the pipe smokers, Bernhard extended a container with some tobacco from South Afrika. So I filled a bowl for later, intending to enjoy it as the last pipe of the day. But I napped instead. And lit it up as the first pipe this morning at work. Jock's Mixture, by Van Erkom.

The few reviews of it I can find state that it is a medium-bodied Virginia with the addition of caramel and vanilla. Now, being around tobacco and cigar smoke all day, my sense of smell is buggered-up by noon, almost out the door by teatime. So although it smelled pleasant enough, I did not notice such a topping. Instead it came across as grassy and slightly herbal.

Nor did I notice it when lighting up while working.
It is also described as "unpleasant room note".
Yeah, um, no. Hardly unpleasant at all.


Perhaps not enjoyable to a dried-up stick insect like Kate Sears, one of the five Marin County Supervisors, who spearheaded the recent anti-tobacco crusade here which resulted in a complete ban on all flavoured tobacco products locally, ably assisted by the usual villains and puritanical anti-everything folks. She'd probably scream that I was killing babies by lighting it up. And have several other incoherent and irrelevant things to say.

As we say in Dutch: Zy kan de kolere krygen -- she can (and should) get cholera. Venynige klotewyf, een echt stuk werk. Verrek maar es, kreng.


It's good stuff. Hardly likely to tempt children. Especially not the pot smoking Ritalin-addled vaping kiddiliewinkies of Marin County.

Here's a video review of it by someone else.


VAN ERKOM'S JOCKS MIXTURE

[SOURCE: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=jfFN2-nB1G0.]


His thoughts on this tobacco are a bit wordier than mine. It's a nice smoke. Seems to be a Virginia (meaning 'flue-cured tobacco') product, with some complexity, unsuited to halfwits. It smoked easily and enjoyably all the way down, and gilded the first part of the day. I would definitely puff it again.

Note: our stoep at work is often occupied by crotchetty old geezers. This morning a self-important person of the other gender parked herself there, and had to be "persuaded" that she should go somewhere else.
Which the bossfella did, eventually and reluctantly.
More gently than I could do.
Commendable.


My approach would've been "oh piss off, ye crazy old bat, nobody cares that ye've bin to Baghdad! G'wan, scoot!"


Apparently she's on a no fly list. I am not surprised.

TOBACCO INDEX


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AND NOT A SINGLE HOBBIT

The quarterly social event for the club was cancelled this month due to scheduling issues, but the monthly meeting went off without a hitch. From my perspective, at least. I got to nibble tasty things, like cheese.
If I ran a company, there would be a cheese plate at every staff meeting.
Company events? We have some fabulous cheese!
A new product roll-out? With cheese!

Plus dried tofu for the Vegans.
In barbecue flavour!

THREE BEARDS, TWO MOUSTACHES
AND SPECTACLES

Ten men, and probably several times as many fine briars. Plus an open tin of McClelland Christmas Cheer, of which I smoked a bowl. It was very good. Nearly the same number of men elsewhere in the building huffing cheroots and yowling at a football game. But distant enough that their unwashed habits and drooling did not impact us.
Because the local team won, Jeff pretty much had his first orgasm in months, judging by the sounds of it. All of that plus a Honduran stogie too.
Football doesn't do that for me, but I'm normal.

McClelland's Christmas Cheer is actually very nice -- there are several tins of several vintages on top of the main bookshelf in my quarters, as well as a few behind me in the tall bins in the teevee room -- but initially I demurred a bowl, because I am weaning myself off of that company's products. Seeing as they no longer exist. McClelland closed it's doors at the beginning of this year, and while I have enough to last me for nearly three and half more years if I smoked nothing but, I intend to live longer than that.
What I have will have to last me a few decades.
I think William brought the tin. Which was very nice of him.
Bernhard brought some Jock's Mixture from South Africa. It's the tobacco he grew up smoking. I'll have a bowl of that later this evening, as my last puff of the day out on the street.

[Van Erkoms Jock's Mixture: ribbon cut flue-cured leaf, allegedly spritzed with vanilla and caramel, which my nose did not pick up. Described as earthy, stinky, and pleasantly sweet. As well as profoundly enjoyable. If the reviews I have seen are correct, I may need to order a shipment of this, as like many other fine tobacco products it just isn't available locally.]

[Re: McClelland: Melon!?!.]

As I mentioned, ten men at the meeting of the pipe club. But other pipe-smokers were also in -- Wade, whose wife secretly bought him eight ounces of Stonehaven several months ago, plus Jacob and his confrère whose name escapes my memory -- so I had the buffing wheel going for a bit, as pipe stems do oxidize over time. And I got to talk smack about my favourite enemy amongst the aromatics: Molto Dolce. Here, smell this. Good tobacco does NOT reek like a Turkish bagnio. Or feel sticky, like the Mummy in the Brendan Frazer movie, it's still moist. This tin has been open for over two years, it should be bone dry. Nope. Propylene Glycol. It will remain soggy forever. Ten thousand years from now the space aliens will find a stash, and say "we don't know what this is, but it is incredibly nasty, and this species deserved to die".
The last time I smoked it was to torment Hector, who looked at me horrified and demanded to know why I was doing this to him. But it left my mouth so buggered up that I couldn't smoke the rest of the day. Something had died a painful death in there. Aromatic shite fit for perverts, no one else.


No members of the pipe club will touch it.


Contrary to what anti-smoking harridans of Marin County assume, no children came in looking for aromatic tobaccos. None of the little bastards want to emulate me. Or any of the other distinguished members of the club.
There were no hordes of tykes outside trying to breach the barricades.
No little ten year olds with dad's ancient black briar.
Sherlock Holmes wannabees.
Gandalfs.


Kate Spears lied.


Come here, little girl, would you like some Capstan?
Tolkien, Bertand Russell, and Simenon smoked it.
It's damned fine stuff. Shows good judgement.

I'll see if I can arrange a regular supply for you.
And some Jock's Mixture. You'd like that.

TOBACCO INDEX


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SOMETHING PUNGENT THIS WAY COMES

Several years ago I mentioned a gentleman whom I did not know at all. Specifically, a Boer, who was looking for Boxer, Assegai, or Jock.
Which are tobaccos sold in South Africa.

Today I met that man.

He also likes the nice pungent perfume of Latakia.


And it turns out that his tastes are guided by memory. The aroma of tobacco is, you understand, a powerful mental sparker. Many people will appreciatively sniff the fragrance of a pipe or cigar, and in blissed-out reverie remark that it reminds them of an uncle, or a school teacher, an elderly relative, perhaps an antique older gentleman of their family's acquaintance, some impossibly old fart, an ancient arthritic and drooling wreck, or a dessicated corpse from the last century kept in a basement nook of the family manse.

Best case scenario: a charming classmate from highschool or college, or that handsome dude pensively drinking double espressos while reading all the way through James Joyce's Ulysses in the back corner of the Caffe Mediterraneum on Telegraph Avenue in Berkeley, three blocks from Sather Gate, amid the fog from Gauloises and Gitanes.

That was me, by the way.
You should have spoken.
And yes, I finished it.

Urgh.

I was less successful with À La Recherche Du Temps Perdu, by Proust.
A friend read it several years ago, and asserted that it was a work of great literature. Another friend averred that this was an accurate statement, and waxed lyrical and fulsome in praise.

I'm still working on the last volume. The entire set is in the pit under the teevee, behind stacked plates and bowls by artisan potters.
One of these days I'll steel myself.

I am no longer quite sure how I feel about Madeleines.

There are times when I remember Berkeley fondly.




In case you were wondering, the South African gentleman was originally mentioned in this post: Afrikaner Smoke Clouds, back in July of 2009. This evening he is no doubt enjoying some Dunhill Nightcap, which is an Oriental mixture with an extraordinary complement of Latakia.
It bears no resemblance to Boxer, Assegai, and Jock.
From what I can gather, mostly flue-cured leaf.
Strong, earthy, and a bit wild.

Different memories.




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AFRIKANER SMOKE CLOUDS

Thomas at the tobacconist mentioned that a gentleman from South Africa had come in with an old pipe, looking for something similar to what he used to smoke several years ago. The gentleman left with a pouch of a Balkan blend, but the search continues. Did I know anything at all about pipe tobacco in South Africa?

Naturally I immediately remembered a pipe tobacco that was probably never even sold there: VOORTREKKER, manufactured by Theodorus Niemeijer in Groningen. It was a medium ribbon-cut Maryland, with a fairly mild taste. The label had a picture of a Boer wagon train on the veld. Hence the flash of memory.
It was what the Dutch call Baai Tabak: plain ribbon-cut air-cured tobacco, primarily Maryland, with some other leaves added to balance the taste.


BOXER

South African tobaccos tend to be mostly flue-cured with air-cured leaf added to temper, with some pressure to meld the components before slicing or shredding. So it is doubtful that the elderly gentleman had smoked anything like a Dutch Baai Tabak.
What he probably smoked was BOXER, a bright ribbon-cut product made by Leonard Dingler LTD.
Leonard Dingler (pipe tobacco and snuff) goes back to the early part of the twentieth century or before, and was family-owned till purchased a few years ago by Swedish Match - which today announced intent to sell the company to Phillip Morris.

The Boxer line includes Piet Retief, Best Blend, and Mild Gold.
Swedish Match also makes Black & White, Giraffe, and Nineteen O'Four.

Other South African pipe-tobaccos are Assegai, Fox, Horseshoe, and Jock.


Unfortunately, I can only guess what Boxer tasted like - though, as it is the most popular of South African pipe tobaccos by far, the other pipe tobaccos probably offer alternatives that relate to it - circling around the standard, as it were.
Based on descriptions I have heard it could be a mostly flue-cured ribbon-cut cake with a mild top-dressing. A substitute here in the US would probably be a mixture of forty to eighty percent shredded medium Virginia flake, with the rest fire-cured, Burley or Maryland, Cavendish, and Black Virginia. Again, just guessing.

The South African gentleman might also like an English flake from Samuel Gawith, or even a plain Dutch Cavendish - one without the whorehouse reek so typical of many popular pressed 'Ollanders.

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