In my defense, I have been involved with that subject for four decades. And have had strong unbearable opinions about it quite as long.
Smoking a pipe, that is. My involvement with women has not been nearly so intense, more of a haphazard and sporadic bit of good fortune.
I can't claim any expertise there, they still confuse me.
WOMEN SMOKING PIPES
The same words of advice also apply to men, but due to a dense fog of masculine boys' club attitudes, women may not have as much access.
Or might try to avoid mansplaining old farts.
Of which there are very many.
Me too. Sorry.
Actually, many men want women to enjoy smoking a pipe, because it gets very lonely in the treehouse with only loud jocks around, and women doing so validates us in our peculiarity. Mom and the kids sent us to the far end of the yard and told us not come back inside until we have rinsed off with the garden hose after smoking.
They're "refined", you see, and want to hog all the comfort.
And they still haven't forgiven us for something.
Lord knows what; we've forgotten!
They haven't.
Pipes, Tobacco, Matches, Cleaners, Tamper
Pipes are made of briar, that being the burl of the Mediterranean heath tree, commonly considered the most suitable material. All blends nowadays are based on the interaction with briar, and the spectrum of flavours it highlights in the chosen tobacco.
Tobacco is problematic. Suitable pipe tobaccos will have a minimum of flavouring and sweeteners added, preferably nearly none. "But it smells good" is not an excuse for gunking up you pipe and sending clouds of burnt vanilla, rotten cherry, and rancid chocolate and coconut into your environs. This statement goes especially for bearded hipsters and people who vape, but the sad thing is that over eighty percent of the pipe tobaccos sold today smell like a teen game-boy's basement in his parents' house, and that this completely disregards any virtues or unique qualities that the leaf may have had. In addition to turning a good piece of briar into a sewer on a stick.
Matches provide a broad and gentle flame that you can suck down into the tobacco to light it, rather than a directional flame which scorches the rim. Hold the match slightly above the bowl, light the entire surface, but don't puff and suck like a grampus. You're not starting a forest fire.
Cleaners (long wire twists with absorbent cotton) are an essential adjunct. Use one or two of them while smoking (do not take the pipe apart while doing so, as that eventually causes looseness to the tenon and mortise), and one or two of them afterwards. This prevents juices from building up in the shank and boiling in, and preserves the usability of the pipe for years to come. After two or three dozen smokes use a cleaner dipped in vodka to swab out the inside of the shank. Take the pipe apart before doing so, and let it dry out for a day or two before putting it back together.
Use the tamper to compress the burning surface slightly. This will help maintain a burn, and needs to be done as you progress down the bowl.
Do not use it to compress unlit tobacco, that's what a fingertip is for.
Do not use the scoopy thing to take tobacco from the pouch and put it into your pipe, it's only function really is to clean out ashes and unburnt scrap.
There is also a long prong attached to most pipe tools, for poking through obstructions in the packed tobacco or the shank. If you pack tobacco in the bowl lightly enough, and regularly employ pipe cleaners, you will never need to prod, and may end up wondering why it's there.
Packing the bowl should be firm enough that very little falls out if you accidentally knock the bowl over, light enough that you can easily draw on it, and thus keep the tobacco burning.
Allow your pipes to rest for a few days after use, ream when the carbon layer deposited in the bowl becomes thicker than a penny or uneven. A pipe store can usually ream and clean a pipe for you, but beware of people who don't know what they are doing (there are a lot of those).
Blends with plenty of Latakia (smoke-cured Levantine leaf) can be great fun just powering through a bowl at a clippy pace, whereas Virginia (flue-cured large yellow leaves with a high natural sugar content) and Virginia & Perique mixtures need slowness, almost on the cusp of going out.
Latakia blends can get weirder the more you relight; put only enough in the bowl as you will smoke at that time. Virginia blends do not suffer too much flavour degradation upon relighting, and it is okay to put the pipe aside and come back to it later.
Aromatics quickly turn funky, and can burn hot, sticky, and wet. That may be how you like some other activities, but we can smell the nastiness of that misused pipe across the room. Please don't.
Inexpensive old-school Burley blends are the pidgin of toothless farmers in bib-overalls plus monumental cheapskates, and most of them are shite.
Excepting thoughtful things put out by beloved antiquarians.
I've always been enchanted by women who enjoy pipes and tobacco, it seems so thoughtful and civilized, especially when they don't make a big highly individualistic stink about it. Much more than with the men, who sometimes fall into pipes right after they get out of diapers.
When a woman habitually enjoys a pipe it indicates calmness, contemplation, and well-considered tastes and decisions.
For women, smoking a pipe may lead to conversations. Some of which will veer into mansplaining. Feel free to tell us to hush, because if we talk too much the pipe goes out.
AFTER WORD;
Easy tobaccos to start with are, in the Virginia category, Dunhill Ready Rubbed (green label, mostly flue-cured, a smidge air-cured), Samuel Gawith Golden Glow (a marvelous Virginia from a respected company), and Greg Pease's Stonehonge Flake, Montgomery, or Regent's Flake.
All three are stellar.
In the Latakia category ("English mixtures", also called Oriental or Balkan), you will find Greg Pease's Westminster a lovely tobacco, Samuel Gawith's Squadron Leader is a much loved standard, and, under the Dunhill label (made under license in Denmark) there is some good stuff: Standard Mixture, London Mixture, BB1938, and My Mixture 965.
Russ Oullette makes extroverted stuff; approach with caution, then dive in enthusiastically when you find something you like. Which you will.
MacBarens producs excellent anomalies under the HH label, but much of it is too peculiar for beginners. I thoroughly enjoyed the Old Dark Fired (steam-pressed flake, dense), but it has a tonne of nicotine.
For something decent, try the Virginia No. 1.
HH Latakia Flake is ... sensual.
Peculiarities you might want to give a miss are Dunhill's Royal Yacht, with which Pipestud in Texas once sabotaged an entire clutch of competing pipesmokers (the winner was given a tin of it after a heave-break) and Samuel Gawith's 1792 Flake (dark, strong, with a topping like grandma's perfume), as well as MacBaren Modern Virginia (both flake and ready-rubbed, and both rather unpleasant).
Many tobacco stores package stuff under their own label: RLP 6, 1Q, and BCA. Indeed, the pretense is so thick that some smokers firmly believe the backroom is filled with underpaid gnomes working night and day preparing exquisite and impossible to find anywhere else smoking products for the lucky and discerning few. These blends are often favoured by middle-aged men who, like their soggy pipes, have become more unlikable and odoriferous with age.
Among these, Very Cherry (Lane Ltd) is not particularly bad. It is utterly monodimensional, fairly clean smoking, does indeed smell cherry-like, and can be enjoyed during momentary fits of perversion. It will take alcohol and three of four bowls of something better to unghost the pipe afterwards, though. Like most other aromatics, it does not taste like tobacco.
Molto Dolce, Cult Blood Red Moon, and Blue Note are to be avoided. These products are what Frank Sinatra, Bing Crosby, Hugh Heffner, and Vladimir Putin would smoke if they were still alive.
[See this: Molto Dolce, Blood Red Moon, and concerning Blue Note, absolutely not.]
Many male pipesmokers become frightful effing perverts.
It's a risk. But don't worry about it too much.
Avoid them, rely on your own taste.
TOBACCO INDEX
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