WHEN YOU ARE OLD ENOUGH TO MAKE YOUR OWN MISTAKES

Among pipe smokers there are purists who enjoy a limited number of un-fruity-meddled tobaccos, and pudgy basement-dwelling degenerates, who will happily smoke any aromatic no matter how repellent or bizarre.
There is very little middle-ground. It is a no-man's land.
Incoming volleys from both sides.
The great war.

It's a battle that the sweet-perversion crew have morally lost, though their numbers are immense. They are still downstairs in the den pretending to be Gandalf, playing World of Warcraft or Dungeons and Dragons, and dreaming of brainless hot manga babes.


As a flexible multi-faceted and extremely curious man, and very tolerant besides, I occasionally visit their world.


LIST OF AROS 

Follows a sampling of aromatic pipe tobaccos you could smoke on a desert island for a few weeks without going incurably mad. They'll remind you of your grandfather, and that skeevy Eastern European who ran the candy store near your school.


1-Q [Lane Ltd.]

Golden Cavendish, Virginia, and the faintest touch of Kentucky. Despite the vanilla and caramel, this product does deliver solid tobacco satisfaction, and it has that old-timey smell that many people associate with pipes and the people that smoke them. Needs to be dried out; too wet, and there is a humectant.
Similar to Captain Black Royal.
But far less bitey.

4TH. GENERATION 1957 [Scandinavian Tobbaco]

An extremely well-constructed product for many people who will never get it, and Europeans. There's vanilla. But it has some quality Virginia.
Despite the Burley content, it is mild.

ALSBO GOLD [Assens Tobaksfabrik]

Vanilla and nougat on a base of shredded packing cardboard.
Tasteless and chemical, except for the bite.

ASTLEY'S NO. 2 [Kohlhase & Kopp]
☆☆
A very pleasant old-fashioned Virginia, allegedly with Perique, but also a hint of clove. Strange, but quite enjoyable. Autumn for eccentrics. Think of warm fire, cup of tea, and family members who stay away because they know you are best left alone. Very much a rainy weather smoke.

AUTUMN EVENING [Cornell & Diehl]
☆
A very subdued aromatic, based on Red Virginia Cavendish with maple syrup and maple essence added. Decent on its own, and also a good blender. Even purists can probably find something to like.
Your surroundings will actually appreciate it.
I've got a few tins stashed.

BACCHANALIA [Sutliff]

Virginia and Burley with sweet sacramental wine.
You have many choices in life.
Remember that.

BCA [Lane Ltd.]

Green River Burley cooked till black, and souped-up with vanilla. This is fundamental to very many house aromatics, but also smoked straight by a lot of people. Two things I must mention: most burn-outs that I have seen were pipes whose owners huffed this stuff, and it is EXACTLY the same as Grant's Olde Drum. If you mail-order this from a brick-and-mortar, under whatever name, thank you, but you are an idiot.

BLOOD RED MOON [Cult]

Cherry, chocolate, and vanilla. No. Please don't. This is what happens when tobacco experts realize that some of their clientele are tasteless vulgarians, and decide to push the envelope. It is an extremely well-made aromatic. Probably the best damned cherry blend available.
Deservedly popular, an all-round winner.
Top notch tobacco.

BLUE NOTE [Dan Tobacco]

G effing damn.

BORKUM RIFF BOURBON [Lane Ltd.]

You can hate this. But it won't kill you.

BORKUM RIFF CHERRY LIQUEUR [Lane Ltd.]

Incredibly nasty.

BORKUM RIFF WHISKEY [Lane Ltd.]

Sheesh!

BORKUM RIFF SPECIAL NO. 8 [Swedish Match]
☆
A sample was passed out by a travelling salesman four years ago. I've gone through three pouches since then. Very pleasant. It has every tobacco in the book, but blended with considerable intelligence.
Vanilla and nougat.

CAPTAIN BLACK GRAPE [Lane Ltd.]

Smoked several bowls while it was in the development stages. No bite. Scant tobacco flavour. Hugely grape. And grape soda. And grape ice cream. And grape chews. If you like candy, this is it.
Ghosted one pipe, did not ghost the other.
Grape, grape, grapeti-grape.

CONDOR READY RUBBED [Gallaher Ltd.]

An old classic. No, not a good tobacco. But good in the same way that schoolboy perversion is good. Has a floral soap aroma in the pouch, and is allegedly based on some decent flue-cured leaf. Outdoorsy, and improves that typical stale beer smell that most pubs have. Not too cloying in small living quarters, except in winter.
Very British.

CONNOISSEURS CHOICE [Peterson / Orlik]

Black Cavendish and a variety of Virginias, fruits, rum, vanilla. Mostly dark. This is extremely nasty. And exceptionally well made. The vanilla seems dominant if you dry it out a little. It is a very gentle tobacco when packed carefully, and enjoyable all around. Yes, after a while the smell will seem cloying, if you have any shred of decency, but if you are into role playing games or porn surfing, it may very well be the best thing you do.
Smoke it slow, because of the preponderance of flue-cured.

DEEP HOLLOW [McClelland]
☆
A variety of Virginias treated with only minor disrespect. Apple, vanilla, caramel. A pleasant smoke that won't offend the people around you, and if they are Lord of the Rings fans, they may like it immensely. Exceptionally smokeable. Like many McClelland products it induces contemplation.
This is a solid product.

ENNERDALE FLAKE [Gawith Hoggarth]

Very decent, if you ignore the smell of pissoir disinfectant.

ERINMORE FLAKE [Orlik]
☆☆
There is a fourteen month supply sitting on the top shelf of the bookcase near my computer desk. Dressed with essence of pineapple and perhaps the faintest touch of licorice. Underneath the fruit it is a very fine tobacco, and beloved by many old men who smoke shitty pipes. Because it is very likeable. That smell. Old-timey. Brings back memories. I will not easily admit in public that I like this, and I will not often smoke it, but it is soundly constructed and despite the perfume, which is scarcely evident after the first few puffs, it is a decent flake that renders down to a fine ash.
But do not smoke this fast, or you will regret it.
Very slow, on the cusp of going out.

FIELD & STREAM [House of Windsor]

Bad Burley made worse. Much worse.
A typical American product.

HIGHLAND PIPER [McConnell / Kohlhase & Kopp]
☆
Virginia, Perique, fruit perfume. And maybe chocolate. It is not heavy, and can be very agreeable. Especially to delicate females. Who should buy some of their own. Nothing stands out, and you could smoke this several times. Not a severe tobacco by any means.
It is fruity. Fruity. Fruity.

IWAN RIES THREE STAR BLUE [Sutliff]

Incredibly nasty.

JOHN SINCLAIR HIGHLAND SLICED [Orlik]
☆
Dark gratifying Virginia flakes, sprinkled with booze, honey, and something citrussy. On the whole a remarkably good product. Very satisfying.

MOLTO DOLCE [Sutliff]

Precisely what tobacco should not be. Very popular. Vanilla, chocolate, honey, caramel, and possibly coconut. With the merest suggestion of something minty or mentholated. Do you remember that scene from the movie The Mummy where Brendan Fraser feels the two-thousand year old corpse? "It's still ... moist!" Precisely so. Tin opened three years ago.
It should be bone-dry by now.

PALLADIN BLACK CHERRY [Lane Ltd.]

Underrated. Deservedly so.

PETER HEINRICH'S DARK STRONG FLAKE

Probably made by the Danes. Strong, robust, and too much anethole. This will get you kicked out of civilized cigar bars in downtown San Francisco, with the recommendation to seek help, and never come again.

PLUM CAKE [Germain & Son]
☆☆☆
Strange but enjoyable. Mostly Virginia, and very ribbony. In fact, I liked it so much I bought the last four enameled tins, but I dare not open them, because they are the last four enameled tins.

RLP-6 [Lane Ltd.]

Virginia and Burley, Cavendish. And all of it somewhat cavendishized. Vanilla, chocolate, honey. Coarser and somewhat more assertive than 1-Q. Very fat Gandalf smokes this, in the pear-wood churchwarden pipe from an Ukranian outfit that he bought off the internet. Like 1-Q it is available at every tobacconist in the country, and one of the most popular blends.
A solid every day aromatic.
Not overly sweet.

UNIVERSITY FLAKE [Peterson / Orlik]

Absurd. Raspberries.

WESTMORLAND MIXTURE [Samuel Gawith]
☆☆
A medium Balkan with a shpritz of tonquin.
Suitable for late summer.
Very nice indeed.



AFTER WORD

If reading about these products leaves you feeling slightly nauseous, you might enjoy some other lists:

FLAKES: A BRIEF PERSONAL INTRODUCTION
Mostly about Virginia leaf under pressure.

APPRECIATING MORLEYSSON -- BLENDS BY BOB RUNOWSKI
Burley mixtures by the last master of that genre.

GREG PEASE REVIEWED - A REPRESENTATIVE SAMPLING OF HIS OEUVRE
From a few years ago, and does not include his most recent products. Descriptions of many things Greg has done.

DRUCQUER & SONS LTD - PIPE TOBACCO BLENDS REMEMBERED, AND A DISCUSSION OF TOBACCOS AND TIPS
One of the first things about tobacco on this blog.

BORING TOBACCO POST
Baai tabak, which is a tobacco category dear to me.


Actually, I was planning to do my laundry and get out of the house early today. Instead, I wrote about dried leaves. This evening I may research "My Little Pony" on the internet. Surely a subject for intelligent men?

TOBACCO INDEX


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HOBBIT'S WEED

For the benefit of the curious, here is the recipe for the popular mixture invented by Tewksbury in Denver: Hobbit's Weed. It consists of two parts BCA, one part Lane's Very Cherry, and one part Sutliff 1M. Both the first and the last of those components are Vanilla tobaccos.

50% - 25% - 25%

I have not confirmed with them that this is accurate, but this recipe has been circulated on the net by reputable sources.


BCA is standard black Cavendish heavily aromaticised with vanilla. The tobacco used is a Green River Burley cooked to a fare-thee-well to darken it, flavouring and sweeteners are added during that process.

Very Cherry is a standard blending tobacco in many stores.
Virginia, Burley and Black Cavendish.

Sutliff 1M is plain Burley, Virginia, and Black Cavendish souped up with vanilla (BCA), and not too unlike 1Q, which is also something that most tobacconists carry, although like the other concoctions it frequently is called by a fanciful name of their own invention.


A duplicate of HW is available from Four Noggins.



SOME PERSONAL THOUGHTS

Why you would want to smoke this is any one's guess, seeing as Burley whored-up with cake essence is nauseating -- although I've smoked all the components, strictly out of perverse professional curiosity, and they're not really "bad" bad -- and there is no evidence that Hobbits even knew of vanilla (or tobacco - where on earth did they get it from?), Gandalf the Grey quite probably enjoyed a dark flake or Virginia & Perique mixtures, and Tolkien himself was a Capstan man, with occasional jaunts into Gold Block and Erinmore (which is a decent product underneath the bizarre topping).

Do you own a churchwarden, you frightful pervert?

Fancy yourself a "Middle Earthian"?

Have tattoos?



Probably well-over eighty percent of all pipe tobacco sold in the United States is aromatic, BCA shows up in many house blends, and most people have no taste whatsoever. But they are an important demographic that no tobacconist can afford to ignore (I do not blame Tewksbury, he kept them happy). It's been that way ever since the seventies, when pipe-smoking was cool, and many syphilitics and sadistic closet republicans discovered that despite their body odour and personal flaws, brainless blonde trollops with just enough pudge would flock to them and drool over their manliness.
If they smoked a pipe stuffed with shitty tobacco.
Heffner, Sinatra, Josef Stalin.
Pol Pot.


You guys are all monsters.

Good luck, hobbits.

Avoid orcs.


PS.: At this very moment I am enjoying a bowl of Robert McConnell Matured Virginia Folded Flake. In a normal briar. It's very nice.
It is not for you.

TOBACCO INDEX


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ON THE INTELLECTUAL EQUIVALENCE OF HAGGIS AND MOLTO DOLCE

A misguided soul reminded me of Haggis, which is a version of liverwurst that I desire to forget. Haggis was invented by non-self-realized Texans, and is eaten when Dallas wants an alternative to Frito Pie, which is also altogether nasty. Soul food for unmentionables.

Really, those two examples conclusively prove that neither Scots nor Texans should cook. Ever. Unfortunately, with the election of Pumkin McPumpkinface, and the hardening of attitudes and mental arteries in the red states, it is extremely likely that Chinese and Thai restaurants will eventually disappear from large parts of this country, as cooks discover that, on second thought, dead possum and raccoon are vastly over-rated, what on earth were they thinking, they miss parts of the world where McDonalds is the worst you can eat, and dammit all, they need a bath.
As the cooks leave, there will be only varmint, frito pie, and haggis.
And lots of battered and deepfried oddments. Breaded bacon.

Eventually people will bloat up there, and explode.
Then their sons in the basement will starve.
Or the video game will malfunction.
Fat cadavers in trailer parks.


Flag-wrapped slugs.


Sorry, after listening to cigar-huffing Trump-supporting middle-aged white men in Marin for three days, the milk of human kindness has turned to yoghurt. Not everyone in the red states is a troglodyte.

Just like not every Israel-supporter is sane.

[Some of them are so nouveau alt-right it's a friggin' miracle they can still remember how to spell 'bris milah'. Participation on the local pro-Israel page has become a waste of time, and a pointless exercise in frustration. I occasionally cruise in to see what the local Likudnik Thought Police are up to, get disgusted, and cruise right back out again feeling queasy and diseased. Several of my friends no longer even bother.]

I realize that. Again, sorry.

Anyhow, the misguided soul who reminded me of haggis did so by using a photo of haggis in a can (with a sombrero) as her profile picture. Entirely disregarding what that says about the contents of her brain, canned haggis belongs only in a backyard bombshelter. There will be no temptation to eat it before the apocalypse, and, like Molto Dolce (a rancidly overperfumed pipe tobacco which is very popular among basement dwelling vikings in the hinterlands), it will probably stay good forever. Centuries from now the aliens will dig it up, and say "I don't know what it is, but it's still ... moist".

Both are rather like the mummy in that Brendan Fraser movie. You know, the one with Rachel Weisz playing a nerdalicious steaming-hot shiksa.

I have a history with haggis. It is regrettable. See Bless This Haggis and Bugger Bobby Burns.

As a side-note, I should mention that I first became aware of a cutey-pie pipe-smoking woman and her adorable fuzzy-faced husband on the other side of the country when I saw a photo of her enjoying Molto Dolce on one of the pipe smoking pages. She has since slowly, hesitantly, timorously even, stepped foot into VaPer and Latakia territory, but she still puffs abortions like Cult Blood Red Moon and Apple-Pumpkin Strudel.
It's a shame, is what it is.



IN THE KITCHEN WITH EVELYN CARNAHAN, ENGLISH EGYPTOLOGIST

Thanks to my suddenly remembering both that movie AND several horrible aromatic pipe tobaccos, I am now visualizing a cooking show featuring antique recipes. Probably inedible -- those things were popular world-wide once, ask me about the recommendation in many cookbooks to boil shrimp for an hour -- and, like Haggis, something that resembles Eric Cartman on a plate, but every cuisine still has examples.

You will never find Frito Pie here.

I once did post a recipe for bloodsausage, but I think I lost several readers that day. What might happen if I told you how to make Haggis is not to be imagined. That said, if you ever do make it, let it cool until it congeals, cut it into thick slices, batter them, and dump them in the deepfryer.
What comes out will greatly resemble eggplant.


Haggis-flavoured pipe tobacco.
For Bobby Burns Night.
A concept.

Burns Night is customarily celebrated on January 25.
You will want to be out-of-town then.
I recommend it.





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NASTY SMELLY WEIRDOES

There are no tattooed or pierced men in the local pipe club. Yes, a few of the members have a degenerate fondness for some mighty peculiar blends, but not a single one smokes Molto Dolce. This nicely substantiates my theory that there are two types of pipe-smokers: those who are calm and thoughtful types, versus elves and hobbits, OR, depending on your point of view, batshit Gandalf with spikes as opposed to Bertrand Russell.

The pierced and tattooed individuals, clearly, do not play well with others.
Their pipe is a style-statement, and proof that they are rebellious and artistic. Oh, such lone wolves, and bohemians.
Basement dwellers.

Hence, of course, their fondness for aromatics.
Nothing says "unique" like a fruit-loop stench.

But, as I said, none such in the club. No tattoos. No tribal body art.
No Viking-themed personal aesthetic preferences.
Not a goth in the bunch.


I also seriously doubt that any one of our little coterie could ever be caught dead yowling at televised wrestling, or snarfing pizza and beer with other men while the game is on.


There are a few who have some doubtful tastes, even borderline odd, but there are no punks, perverts, religious nuts, dungeon masters, wiccans and satanists, or raging over-the-top artistic types. We are a refreshingly normal bunch, more-than-average thoughtful and rational, with well-considered opinions and clearly expressed ideas.

Well, excepting myself, of course. You've seen evidence to the contrary in my case on this blog. But I am calmer when around live humans.

Yet I too avoid aromatics. Most of the time. Occasionally I indulge in very private perfumed perversion -- Erinmore Flake, 1792 Flake, or Peterson's University Flake -- but I do not normally do so, and I always feel slightly unclean afterwards.

Most flakes are very well behaved tobaccos.
As are old-fashioned Balkan mixtures.
Restrained, thoughtful, subtle.



And that, my dears, is how you should always choose your pipesmoker.
Is he an intelligent and rational man? Or is he a raving "individualist" who is embarrassing to be around? Does he make you feel interesting and appreciated, or unclean by association?

Is it all about him?

Does his tobacco smell like a candy factory?

Is his pipe rancid?




AFTER WORD

There are, of course, exceptions. A large Lesbian I met a while ago has good feelings about an aromatic that smells like fresh juicy green apples.
Perhaps her father was a pervert who smoked that, I don't know and I'm not asking questions. The point is that many people including several (!) pipe-smokers have absurdly fond smell-memories -- for instance Scottish Blend, by Royal Theodorus Niemeyer B.V., which was my first pipe tobacco, or Niemeyer's Irish Blend, which I also tried -- and conversely some really severe Protestant bastards like rich mixtures redolent of the Levant.
A slobbery old git I once knew smoked Virginia and Perique.

Troost and Amphora have their place.

And a very reliable, irritatingly rational at times, person whom I see often, loads his pipe with a succession of thoroughly nasty aros, and it isn't just to irritate people of good taste. He actually likes that stuff.
He's also fond of Operas and Latin music.
There may be a connection.




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THAT'S VERY GANDALF OF YOU

The worst are the Lord Of The Rings types. They always want a long churchwarden pipe to complete their 'image', and then they'll stuff an aromaticized tobacco that no one with a shred of taste or decency would smoke into it. Many of them also have eccentric hair.

Look, Buster, a pipe is NOT a style accessory.
Even while playing dungeons and dragons.
Or any other role playing game.

But for them it doesn't have to be a nice churchwarden, well-made, of good quality briar. It's just a prop, and consequently many of them will simply buy a crappy twelve dollar Eastern European pearwood pipe.
And the tobacco MUST smell Elvish, or Middle-Earthian.

[There's a product called 'Hobbit Weed' that capitalizes on that; two parts Black Cavendish Aromatic (vanilla), one part Lane's Very Cherry, and one part Sutliff 1M (more vanilla). If that does not please them, they will probably try 'Coffee-Toffee'. What matters is the visual of them being Tolkienesque.]


If there was such a place as The Shire, with hairy legged short people and visiting magicians, it would have a general store.

That also carried tobacco.

No, not any aromatics. No 'Peaches 'n Cream', 'Vanilla-toffee Cavendish', 'Mango Melba Blend', or 'Chocolate Whiskey Torte'.


Instead:

Capstan (a good reliable flake), Rattrays (a dozen very decent blends, from full Oriental to old-fashioned Virginias), a few Wessex tins, a few Dunhills, some McClellands and Greg Pease mixtures, Samuel Gawith products, and about a dozen others. Latakia blends, matured flue-cured tobacco with Perique, sliced coins. If you cannot find something worth smoking in that selection of thirty or so very nice tobaccos, maybe you are just not trying.
Too damned picky and fruity-looped perhaps?
A queer fish, with lousy tastes?

Mixture 79? Cherry?

Pervert!


Your tea is probably fruit-flavoured too. And there is a Halloween syrup in your Starbucks frappy.

You know, years ago people looked askance at tattoos and piercings.
You'll probably regret those when you finally grow up. Care to guess what old-age, saggy wrinkles, and liver spots, do to a highly individualistic multi-coloured Japonesque dragon?

Gandalf The Grey would assuredly rip your sophomoric icky-poo pretentiousness all to shreds.


He drank his coffee black and bitter, hated rooibos pumpkin spice tea or cinnamon-apple nectar, and smoked Samuel Gawith Black XX twist or Brown Rope No. 4. Because that was all he could get when travelling among the savage Orcs and Maoris. And that cheap-ass common clay churchwarden was only because he couldn't pack his lovely Upshalls, Sasienis, Charatans, or Castellos. Certainly not the prized silver banded GBD Rhodesian, nor the Patent Number Dunhills, or the Comoy London Prides and Blue Ribands.

When all this is over, he is going to retire to someplace where there are no buggery hobbits, chuck the churchwarden on the compost heap, pull out a Republic-Era Peterson, and smoke Gawith's Best Brown Flake, Golden Glow, or Full Virginia. Maybe even Orlik's Golden Sliced.

He's also going to get a haircut and trim the bushy beard. Because he's sick and tired of looking like an artist or a hippie.


And dress like you're normal, for crap's sake!




Pipe club meeting coming up.
Should be interesting.





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YOUR COMPOST HEAP ES MUY MACHO

A female pipesmoker who lives at the other end of the country writes favourably about a Halloween-themed tobacco. Now, I should at the outset mention TWO things.

1) Aromatics are DISGUSTING!

2) She's an extremely likable person.

This, naturally, skews my judgment. And, given that I will not try the tobacco in question under any circumstance (reportedly it smells like kandy korn, with hints of chocolate, kramble apples, and shit), it is best that I quietly and tolerantly smile and say nothing. Probably.


About three years ago the manager of a nearby tobacco emporium thought it was a good idea to sell a pumpkin pie flavoured aromatic for the last four months of the year. Halloween, Thanksgiving, Salem Witch Burning, and Christmas.

Two years ago, because of the nine-plus pounds of it that were left (bulk tobacco comes in five pound bags, do the math), it was "rebranded".
There are still nine-plus pounds of it left.

Half a year ago five pounds of Lane Dark Red appeared on their doorstep. Bing cherry black cavendish.

I believe a dozen bowls of that product were smoked.

Same with the Concord Grape.


If you want to celebrate the season with an aromatic (other than Samuel Gawith's 1792 Flake), please smoke Mixture 79. It is ghastly, yes, as are all aromatics, and it will leave your pipes smelling like a urinal in a seedy bar frequented by bikers and deviants, but it is hallowed by Tradition.
It was first introduced in the early thirties (1933, I read somewhere), well before most of the other sickly boiled babies that now infest tobacconists shelves, and many people fondly remember their grandfather or some other crusty old pervert smoking it during their youth. Smells like the talcum that an old lady would put in her underwear. Granny panties.

Frank Sinatra and Bing Crosby both smoked it.
So it's an all-American abortion.

Yes, it will burn your tongue and ghost (ruin) your pipe. But that's what aromatics are supposed to do. And someone will come up to you drooling to inform you that it smells sexy oh my god you total macho stud muffin come to me now so it's totally worth doing.

Aros are 80% of the market.
Effing deviants.


Latakia. Now that smells properly autumnal.
Smoky, leathery, booky, tweedy.
Set fire to something.

TOBACCO INDEX


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THE PERFECT BABY SITTER

Normal readers may look somewhat askance at my frequent mentions of pipe smoking and fine tobaccos. In fact, normal readers might even fear that I will lead their children and puppy dogs astray, and teach them all about my evil habits.

In truth, I would like nothing better.

Introduce me to them.


It is my fond hope that each new generation throw up a few pipe smokers, as otherwise there will be nobody to wheel me to the designated smoking spot when I am old and knackered.

I doubt that the nurses at the retirement home for disreputable geezers will, as there are probably rats in the overflowing dump five blocks away that will have been designated a municipal non-smoke-free zone.
Along with discarded needles and politicians.


There are, however, some things that I do not wish them to ever be familiar with, or know about, those darling kiddie-winkies and doggie-woggies.
Because I am civilized, and a considerate and humane person.
And there are heresies that even I won't touch.


CULT - BLOOD RED MOON

"This dark, decadent blend combines fire-cured Cavendish, bright Virginias and Burleys with the delicious aromas of natural Royal Ann cherry and dark chocolate. A bit sweet, extremely rich, and unquestionably smooth."
[See: Tobacco Reviews.]

The best that can be said about this product is that there isn't too much goo. Which is relative. If you are used to goo bubbling away at the bottom of your bowl, this isn't for you. But it does have a powerful cherry reek, with hints of chocolate, pepto, and vomit.

It will appeal ONLY to lovers of cherry tobacco.
Who are ALL frightful effing perverts.
Except Miss Walters.


I have never understood the popularity of cherry tobaccos, but suspect that these appeal to people with steampunk goth tendencies. Especially if they love creepy sh*t, which Miss Walters does.
She also likes Molto Dolce.

So far no one has had any luck persuading her to only smoke nice discreet stuff. She and her husband constantly dabble in tobaccos that taste like Halloween candy or overly fermented pumpkins. Probably a rebellious thing. Brash childhoods transformed into daring adulthood, pushing envelopes, and going where none have gone before.

I am jealous of their stamina; I couldn't hack it.

The chocolate is more prominent near the end.

Amazingly, there also seems to be vanilla in it.


What this means is that the new crop of pipe smokers must be caught while young, BEFORE they develop queer tastes. A regimen of Latakia blends and Perique mixtures is recommended, after accustoming them to pale blonde blander products to begin with. As their tastes develop, they will seek out Turkish leaves and matured flakes, possibly pairing them with straight coffee rather than the overly sweet frappuchony crap they usually drink, or mango passion fruit iced bubble tea.

Plus good literature; that's important!
Stretch their little minds.


Perhaps even at some time Lakeland Flake and Fanny Hill for laughs.
Or 'Life in a Girls' Reformatory', and Black Rope.
Anything but cherry.

TOBACCO INDEX


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AN UNPLEASANT REEK OF RANCID VANILLIN

Badger puttered around with pipes and cigars today, much like he does three other days of the week while at work. And got zipped to the eyebrows on Pu-Erh tea. Which is also a regular occurrence.
Work involves fine cheroots, pipe restoration, and a selection of choice smokeables. There were no degenerate Habsburgs in the vicinity, and the man with an imaginary wife and fifteen year old daughter was also absent.
I suspect that he will be avoiding us rather much for a while.
Someone asked him questions about his "family".
A person who has known him for years.
And never knew of those two.
This upset him.

Consequently, he's off his game.


THE PHANTASMATIST

He's harmless, but a bit of a burden. In his slightly over forty years on this planet he's been a marine, a jet fighter pilot, a green beret, a doctor of comparative religion, a podiatrist, a brain surgeon, a nuclear physicist, a research chemist, a computer engineer, a martial artist, a neurologist, a prize winning photographer, and several other highly impressive things.
It is only in the last half year that he has started mentioning his darling wife and teenage daughter.

The sad thing is that those two entirely imaginary people obviously love him very much.

There are times when I envy him his rich inner life.


TEA, BLONDE LEAF, AND CHEAP CANDY

Badger had several cups of tea throughout the day, and also discovered the bowl of cheap chocolates. Selectively raiding said bowl provided a nice boost of sugar and theobromine. Plus, one might argue, valuable anti-oxidants. So it was a healthy time, despite the nicotine and caffeine coursing through the system.
Badger only smoked three pipes, however, rather than the four he had planned.

Badger considers that he might wander around Nob Hill after dinner enjoying the fog which rolled in, while having a final bowl.
Perhaps there will be raccoons.


The Badger enjoys clean tobacco, not the horrid stuff popularly known as Hobbit Weed, which consists of two parts BCA, one part Lane's Very Cherry, and one part Sutliff 1M. Both the first and the last of those components are Vanilla concoctions, so you can imagine how it smells, and also what Mr. Badger thinks of such an abysmal cocktail.

Sutliff's 1M is made from Virginia, Burley, and Green River Black Cavendish (which is a cooked Burley tobacco), with the addition of what is unbelievably described as a "subtle hint" of Vanilla.

There's nothing subtle about it.


Mr. Badger's present favourite blend consists of Virginias and a little air-cured leaf etcetera, discretely jazzed up with a dose of Perique, quite unsuitable for Hobbits; it lacks 4-Hydroxy-3-methoxybenzaldehyde.

An old-fashioned blend, no added goop.
With a natural room note.
And good taste.


Tolkien, in case you were wondering, smoked mostly Capstan Medium Navy Cut (a flake, now made by MacBaren's, and though no longer the same, it is an altogether respectable product), sometimes Ogden's Gold Block (Virginia with a minor amount of Burley, and a mildly perfumy top-dressing, pressed together), possibly Dutch-style Burley broken flakes, possibly Three Nuns (spun-cut mostly Virginia discs with a little Perique, now also made by MacBaren's, but without any Perique as far as I can tell), and probably quite a few other things as the mood struck. Almost any decent medium flake would have been plenty Tolkienesque. What he did NOT smoke was Black Cavendish Aromatic, or any of the tooty frooty spagnum that appeals to Hobbit and Gandalf wannabees.

Why DO so many people smoke ghastly perfumed dreck?
Is it just stupidity and bad taste?
Or perversion?

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AROMATIC TOBACCO SICKNESS

One of the very few female pipesmokers is on Facebook. Where, in the context of several FB pipe fora, I often end up commenting underneath some of her posts. She's a very chipper borderline goth with lovely pipes.
Regrettably, she smokes flavoured tobacco. Which may be her way of resisting the inexorable march toward crusty old bastard that seems to mark so many pipesmokers.

Not me, please understand, because I am a lovable and ever-upbeat gentleman possessed of eternal youth. Who is altogether the right person to know, introduce to your younger relatives, or have squire you to the museum or the prom. Everybody will be SO impressed!
Hawt! And cheerful!
Dang!


But I can understand her fear. I know several pipesmokers who seem to be in their nineties, who with their toothless rotting gums clenched tremblingly around an encrusted stem will dodderingly light up something strong and foul, then drool, hack, spit, and start mumbling smack about everybody under seventy.

While totally ignoring the hot Filipina nurse who wheeled them out to the distant alleyway so that both of them can enjoy a nice smoke away from the eyes of their savage bitch supervisors at the facility.
Never ignore the hot Filipina nurse.
Stupid old fart.

She doesn't want to end up like them.
Understandably.

Hi Mary.


Aromatics?


Over the years I have smoked or experimented with several such things.
In no particular order: Erinmore Flake, Clan, Niemeijer's Scottish Mixture, Niemeijer's Irish Mixture, Troost, Sail Aromatic, Amphora Aromatic, Blue Note, Da Vinci, 1792 Flake, Perfection, Grousemoor, Sherlock Holmes, Germain's Plum Cake, BCA, 1Q, Seven Seas Royal, Savinelli Aroma, Borkum Riff Bourbon Whiskey, Borkum Riff Special No. 8, Ennerdale Flake, St. Bruno, Flying Dutchman, Stanwell Vanilla, Mellow Mack, Cherry Ambrosia, Sutliff up the wazzoo, Skandinavik, everything under the Larsen name .....

Cherry Cordial, Peaches And Cream, Caramel, Coffee Toffee, Berry Strudel, plus several English things that smelled like blue-haired old lady.

And a whole range of crap made for Peterson by Orlik.

Most aromatics are pretty rancid.

Some are good.


I have a fondness for the Sam Gawith tobaccos mentioned above, as well as good memories of Niemeijer stuff (among my first forays into tobacco), and Erinmore Flake is one of my nasty secrets.

Underneath my civilized veneer, sometimes I'm a fruity pervert.

Aromatics are a sign of the End Times.

A mark of the beast.


For a very long time I only smoked medium or full Latakia mixtures, nowadays my pipes more often see Virginias or Virginia and Perique compounds. The two most degenerate things I've done recently are trying out versions of a new blend by Lane (very sweet grape syrup aroma, no actual tobacco flavour), and eight bowls of steamed cigar leaf in one day, which left me with a nicotine hangover van jewelste.



AFTERWORD

This past Sunday I purchased another tin of Russ Oullette's version of Bengal Slices. Which is, clearly, a topped substance. But I find it quite enjoyable, and fear that the FDA's new regulations will nix it along with many other fine smoking products.

In the past two weeks I've smoked several bowls of Back Down South, made for BriarWorks by Cornell & Diehl. A rather strong-minded VaPer, with a note of clove spritzed over it, and possibly something citrus.

For much of the past year I've been alternating Rattrays with one of my own more recent blends: three different Virginias, perique, and two other tobaccos to balance it out; a pure unsullied mixture.

Plus Dunhill Ready Rubbed.

TOBACCO INDEX


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SWEETNESS AND LIGHT

Last year I wrote a short and probably far too favourable review of a pipe tobacco. This morning, in a Facebook group, someone took me to task.
I had been unchristian in my estimation of the substance.
Degustibus non disputandem, and all that.

The smoking mixture in question was a MacBaren's product -- MacBarens makes a vast range of blends, many of which are exceptional -- concerning which I had penned "Some Danes Are Mean Bastards".

I believe that it was gently remonstrantic, and I said less than I could have; he feels that it was altogether too much.

He wrote:
"I guess taste in tobacco is very subjective. I personally tried 7 Seas Royal recently and really like it. You might not like it but there is no need to abuse it so thoroughly."

Okay. Short review.

Seven Seas (by MacBarens) is shite.


That is not subjective. It is a fact.


SHITE

Actually, Seven Seas is almost as bad as Clan (a Dutch Product), and far, far worse than Erinmore (which, underneath the fruit-salad perfume, is actually a rather restrained flake, and, if smoked slow, pleasant).

Nothing, however, can beat Molto Dolce, by Sutliff. Which has so much humectant added that it cannot dry out. It is mummified, and will still be moist and fragrant centuries after nuclear war has wiped out mankind.
The evolved rats and cucarachas who take over the planet after we're gone will be baffled and enchanted after they dig up tins of the stuff.
It has so much sauce that it does not taste like tobacco.

Someone else in the group posted a picture with the caption: "Molto Dolce in a Nording."

Balanced individuals just do not smoke Molto Dolce.
Shan't say anything about the Nording.
I have met Erik Nording.
And I respect him.

Rather than venomously slamming that dubious fellow-pipe smoker at great and inordinate length, and speculating about a lack of manners and morals, or whether or not sterilization is advisable, my sole response will be to post a recipe for a cocktail.

GRASSHOPPER

1 oz green crème de menthe.
1 oz crème de cacao (clear preferred).
1 oz heavy cream.

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.


Another drink, for smokers of Molto Dolce and Seven Seas, is this:

PINK PERFECTION

3 oz gin.
2 oz Apricot Brandy.
2 oz lemon juice.
Two heavy dashes of grenadine.

Shake over ice and strain into a cocktail glass.



Very rarely do I indulge in such things myself. They are not to my taste, and while I was once much younger than I am now, I have never been a Sailor Moon fangirl with Hello Kitty Decals all over my panties.

This evening I shall indulge in Irish whisky with a friend from the used book business, who also has never been a pubescent girl with a rabbit fetish.


Degustibus non disputandem est.



POST SCRIPTUM

Someone else on that list let us know that she is very much enjoying Devil's Holiday, by Dan Tobacco. On Tobacco Reviews dot com, the product is describes thus: "Inspired by the 30's and 40's Swing music from the CD of the same name, our master tobacco blender has created this raven-black smoking mixture full of aromatic mysteries. Smooth and creamy Black Cavendish with a few tips of fluffy Golden Virginia, topped with a most refined flavour composition of tasty wild forest berries. Slow burning with pleasingly cool and gentle smoke full of fresh aroma and wonderful scent. Hellishly mild and heavenly delicious. There's music in the air."

There are a number of favourable comments.

I am slightly intrigued.

Slightly.

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THE FUNK OF SHEER EVIL

As part of my work environment I occasionally come into contact with reprehensible tobaccos. Most of the time it does not faze me.
But at present I feel quite unclean.

This morning I happily waltzed in to work, and was greeted with a sickly odour. My esteemed coworker answered my question by issuing a request that I try the offending weed, and then answer a little on-line survey.
Okay. I'm a glutton for punishment. And up to a challenge.


On a dare once I memorized the entire Rhyme of the Ancient Mariner (by Samuel Taylor Coleridge) in one day.


One hundred and forty three verses. Abysmal doggerel. And very silly to boot. I have an excellent brain, but sometimes common sense is missing from the toolbox. Coleridge has scarred me for life.

There were two samples, one variegated with a fair admixture of Black Cavendish, one pale ribbons of probably Virginia with a bit of Maryland. Same topping. To give them a fair test I smoked two bowls each.
Four bowls in total.

It took me a couple of minutes to identify the fragrance.

Cheap grape candy. Precisely what you would find in a bag of fruit chews or bubble gum. Worse than anything Hello Kitty would smoke -- after her early experiments with McClelland's Honeydew, I have determined that she graduated to mature Virginia flakes, because they go great with tea; she's a beast for tea -- and conceivably the most intellectually repulsive perfume for tobacco EVER!

In the evening, with her sherry, she might indulge in some Samuel Gawith Saint James Flake. She's never told you about that bottle under her bed, has she? When everybody else is asleep, she secretly gets squiffy while enjoying a pipe or two and several tumblers full, reading either wicked romance novels or murder mysteries.
She's quite a naughty beast.
Hidden sherry habit.
Bad girl!


Hello Kitty would savagely bite and scratch if offered what I smoked this morning. And possibly plot foul murder. Go out and buy an assault rifle, empty an entire clip into the vile person presenting the sample.

Grape effing candy. Artificial flavour. Four bowls in all. Smooth, bite-free, and totally degenerate. Had to have some of Russ Oullette's version of Bengal Slices to soothe the trauma. Russ Oullette's crumbly flake is as good a stab as any at that fabled product, and though dressed (he has a queer fascination with top-spray) is delightfully reeky and a cure for what ails you. Wimps may wish to Pousse-café it on a fully rubbed out flake, and like anything with such a generous measure of Latakia it should not be smoked around shoe-collecting types or poets.

[Had a second bowl of Bengal Slices shortly after.
And a third around tea-time.]

There's an open tin of Bengal Slices at work. By Monday it will be empty.
Which will be my doing.


On the other hand, that horrid tooty-fruity cotton candy bazooka bubblegum blowzy trailer slut in the making spoiled brat tart, even if it ever goes into full production, will never enter my pipes again. It is the devil.
Mild and easy to light, no tongue discomfort at all.
Nor the slightest hint of tobacco flavour.
I feel used, and damaged.
Icky.

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THE TOBACCO FOR A FIT OF EXISTENTIAL ANGST

Okay, I did it. I tried a second bowl of Dark Red in my pipe. And, like the first time, it tasted wonderful for about the top third. Oh my, I am in flavour country now. This stuff is growing on me. Like having dried dates rupture their oozy juices all over my psyche. Mmmm, orgasm. After that first part, however, it took more effort to get a pleasant effect, the realization that it was completely monodimensional and didn't even taste remotely like tobacco hit me, and I started questioning my behaviour.

Why must I suffer so?

What the hell IS that room note?

Was I only doing this to piss off my coworker?

Why did I feel the need to apologize to a regular who dropped by?

How many microwave pulses of eight or nine seconds each time would it take before this tobacco had actually dried to smokeable level? I mean, was it so full of goop and propylene glycol that, like Molto Dolce, it would not die, unless you recited ancient Egyptian spells over it?
Was it afraid of cats?



Yep, the last third tasted like toxic waste again.

Dark Red is bound to win lots of fans.

Many people will like it.


And, precisely like the last time, it threw off my entire day's smoking schedule. By now I should know not to do such things. I would much rather smoke four or five bowls of good tobacco than spoil the entire rest of the day with nuclear waste dump mouth. Some people smoke nothing but aromatics, often re-using the same pipe over and over again till the damned thing is drenched and dripping rancid juices, and those same perverts so rarely use pipe cleaners that you are surprised that their mouths aren't filled with canker sores and festering gum death. Plus drooling pus.
Many of those people love black cavendishes.
There's nothing better ever made.
Taste-bud barbarians.
Perverts.


There are at least four people I will recommend this tobacco to.

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ARE AROMATIC TOBACCOS LESS MANLY?

Some readers come here by looking for answers to all the wrong questions. Usually what they find stares them right back in the face, and wiggles its tongue out at them. "What", they may have asked, "can I do to get the lovely Kumiko to jump into the sack with my dessicated old self?" And the answer is "pray for a miracle, you nasty old prune". Trust me. I have a direct line to Kumiko. She can't stand your ass. Loathes it, despises it, hates it utterly, and wishes you not only stop breathing heavily whenever she's around, but stop breathing altogether.
She doesn't know WHERE you got that naked picture of her from.
But she suspects that photoshop had a role in it.
Never-the-less, it's embarrassing.

Naked pictures are always embarrassing. There are none of me. I am never naked when there are cameras around. Or cell-phones.
I don't even own a cell-phone.

Imagine how painful it would be if I was naked, and someone else had a cell-phone. And it rang.

"Oh hello." "No, nothing." "Nah, I'm just here with my friend... who is a naked middle-aged man with a pipe in his mouth and a silly smirk on his face." "Describe him?   
I couldn't. You'll just have to see for yourself."


CLICK!!!!!!!!!


And within minutes her father decides that I am not the right man for his daughter. Yeah, she's old enough to make her own decisions now. And her own ghastly mistakes. It's her life. But no. This one is just wrong.
Time to hang up the wanted posters. Hire a hitman. Or hitwoman.
Cell-phones can be a problem when there is nudity.
Always, ALWAYS, wear something.
Hide your sinfulness.
Don't smirk.


PUMPKIN SPICE CAVENDISH? GOOD LORD!

Anyhow, the other day someone found my blog by posting the query "are aromatic tobaccos less manly?" To which the answer is 'yes'. Yes, they jolly-well are. Aromatic tobaccos are a sign of posturing depravity, weak spine, and a lack of vital juices. The Kremlin had a hand in their development, and generations of men who were fooled into smoking that garbage eventually became nauseating old sex-maniacs, waggling their hairless behinds in sleazy hotel rooms, shaking their wattles at innocent schoolgirls, and desperately hoping the mega-dose of Viagra wouldn't fail them this time. Anyone who smokes aromatics habitually has no taste, no intellect, and quite likely possesses all the manners and morals of a prancing Yorkshire hod-carrier.
Likely they will catch diseases from toilet seats.
Rot from the inside out before dying.
Vote the solid Jesus ticket.

Almost all the people I know who smoke fruit-flavoured pipe-tobacco have shallow little minds, countless depravities, rotten gums, and stained underwear. They whip themselves nightly. There's a collection of spiked rubber garments under their beds. They weep without reason.
They have existential crises.

A real man smokes either English mixtures -- Latakia and Turkish on a basis of Virginia leaf -- or restrained and civilised flakes or VaPers (Virginia blends with a smidge of Perique tobacco).
A real woman does likewise.

Aromatic tobaccos are, by definition, not real.
Good tobacco does not need fruity sauce.
Aromatics are syphilis set aflame.


Yes, some very good friends smoke aromatics. I keep telling myself that they're doing so ironically.



One of the nastiest things I know is fifty percent Mango Cavendish, with the rest golden cherry-vanilla ribbon. It is a very popular product. I've never been able to finish more than half a bowl.
A perfectly beastly tobacco.

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THERE'S TOXIC WASTE IN MY SWAMP

While I spent all day in Marin, in the distinctly un-gentle company of cigar smokers, my ex-girlfriend stayed at home engaging in what she euphemistically calls "sleep bleeding". Rather than detailing what that precisely is -- because some of my male readers are uber-sensitive individuals -- I shall merely say that Aunt Flo visited.
As she does once a month.

This is something I would like to have happen to the cigar smokers in Marin. Instead, they enjoyed a nice sportive show on television, and many curse words were uttered. Not sure if I should call that "fun", as watching a ball game on the boob tube is a far worse trial than any amount of "sleep bleeding", but those freaks thoroughly enjoyed it.
I tried to drown out their insane shouting by running the buffing wheels all afternoon, restoring several pipes, but in the background was the constant carnivore feeding sound of America's past-time.

[Fortunately I have Mondays and Tuesdays to myself. To the very best of my knowledge, there are never any sporting events on those days. Or on Fridays (also a day off).]


Now, lest you assume that this is no more than my usual screed against the stogey-chomping psychos of Marin (and elsewhere), and a sneering boast that pipe-smokers represent the very acme of sensible behaviour, the Ultima Thule of civilization in all its splendiferous glory, I hasten to claim 'not so'.

[Yes, I am a pipe smoker. And I like to think of myself as 'splendiferous'. But not all are thus.]


NOT SO!

The owner of the pipes I restored favours a syrupy mixture which is fifty percent mango-flavoured tobacco, and over a third black vanilla Cavendish.
It is nauseatingly sweet, and deposits a hard gummy tar, in addition to burning hot and randomly carbonizing briar. I would describe it as the AntiChrist of pipe mixtures, if I didn't know that there were plenty of far worse products out there. But it IS the "sleep bleed" of tobaccos.
Some people just naturally have extraordinary bad taste.
All that sports addles their tiny brains.
They crave self-abuse.


These are male trollops with diseased habits.
And highly aromatic pipe tobacco.

I am a very temperate man. My tobacco is unscented, and completely honest. There is no candy store reek adhering to my indulgence.
I am horrified by the concept.

I am clean-minded.

And clean.


Sleep-bleeding. It's what I'm thinking about.
But there are worse things.



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