A SUITABLE PIPE TOBACCO FOR A WOMAN

Back in the seventies many manufacturers started producing tobacco mixtures with what can only be described as whore-house scents.
At that time it was virtually unthinkable that a well-bred woman would smoke a pipe in public, and such people were clearly not the intended audience for these noxious concoctions.
Their dissolute older brothers were.
There is something very unnatural about a cavendish that reeks of strawberries and coconut. It's Frankenleaf.

Unsurprisingly, such things appealed to men of questionable tastes.
As well as highly individualistic clothing choices.

Back then such people did not have tattoos or piercings, and the poor dears had to express themselves in a different vulgar fashion.

One of the selling points of these perfumed monstrosities was that they would not offend the gentler sex. It is more than likely that they offended so well that the anti-smoking movement was given a boost beyond all reason.
Even pipe-smokers like this blogger were almighty upset.
For years, whenever I smelled burnt cherries or chocolate vanilla and boiled nicotine exudate bubbling in the unclean brier of some macho degenerate half a block away, I was outraged, and resolved to give the hairy savage a piece of my mind. Of course my youthful indignation was tempered by the realization that it is useless to lecture such people, as it only makes them more convinced of their own irresistible sex appeal. They will puff up, and think to themselves "dang I must be studly....... because of this wonderful aroma of tropical fruits and nuts!"
It was usually a balding dweeb with a beer gut.
Pathetic, but let the man be.
He's got issues.
Idiot.


If a man shouldn't smoke crap, then a woman should not either.


A WOODSY SORT OF SMELL

In the early eighties I knew a woman whose taste in pipes and tobacco was beyond compare. One of her prizes was a Sasieni sandblast that made men swivel their heads when she entered the room. To my knowledge, she never ever smoked an aromatic therein, solamente full Latakia mixtures (Drucquer & Sons Blend 805 -- now no longer made). The fragrance was heady and sensual, and added more to her attraction than she could possible realize.
Because of her, all over Berkeley there are middle-aged men who still associate the smell of certain tobaccos with likable lovable women. Especially bespectacled brainiacs with a ready wit and impeccable taste.
She didn't drink, by the way. That wasn't her thing.
Good books, fine pipes, excellent tobaccos.
Absolutely ladylike. Well-bred.

Nice women should smoke nice tobacco. Leave the questionable fruity stuff for questionably fruity boys.

Go for smoky Latakia blends and good pressed Virginias. Perhaps something full and dark, or a robust British flake. Even a Burley mixture for solitude, and also if you have a fondness for corncobs.
In fact, there is nothing wrong with a corncob; properly cared-for these will last for years and yield an excellent smoke, especially if you stuff air-cured leaves in them. Burley and a cob are miraculous.

But under most circumstances, the well-bred young lady should probably tend toward fine tinned tobacco with a noticeable Latakia content, up to nearly half of the mixture. These inspire thoughtfulness and vibrancy, and abundantly reward the woman of good taste. Nothing adds to a good book as much as a nice long smoke, quietly by oneself, while any relatives or roommates who lack understanding are off gallivanting about elsewhere.
If you were to have a spot of sherry or a cup of oolong tea while thus engaged, that would be excellent too.


Looking around my own rather crowded living quarters, I can spot several tobaccos that would be utterly perfect.
Wilderness, Legends, Three Oaks - made by McClelland.
These are well-balanced full Latakia mixtures.
Over two hundred tins of G.L.Pease tobaccos, mostly somewhere in the Oriental spectrum, ranging from mild Latakia and Turkish content all the way up to Westminster, which is a lovely full mixture with a profoundly old-fashioned character, splendid with a strong cuppa.
Samuel Gawith and Germains are well-represented - again, full Orientals, additionally various lovely Virginia compounds.
A three year supply of Rattrays, mostly the Virginias, but also Accountants, Black Mallory, and Red Rapparee.
Several boxes filled with tins by Cornell & Diehl in Morganton; full Latakia, exotics, and Burley blends.
More boxes, containing various Dunhill tobaccos, nicely matured.
And of course numerous jars with my own blending experiments, the majority of which range from 20% Latakia to 42.5 percent. Given that I do not have access to the range of raw leaf that commercial blenders can command, I seldom go beyond the low forty range in my Oriental mixes.
My best blends are around one third Latakia or slightly more, and one of which I'm particularly fond is only in the low twenties. In all cases I rely on a good solid Virginia flake to give spirit to the blend; that is key.

After you've had one or two bowls, and before your housemates come home, air the place out a bit, and wash your face. If necessary, fry up some bacon to confuse their sense of smell.
Yes, you will still have an echo of a dark perfume.
But it will be mysterious and alluring.
Quite complimentary.
Enchanting.

A few good pipes, a selection of tobaccos, a favourite tea-cup, and a private place to smoke. That, and a book you cannot put down. Can you imagine anything nicer?

If your room overlooks a garden, open the window one summer evening and enjoy a bowl of flake in the twilight. It will be magical.


AFTER THOUGHT

Of course it is not a good idea to drink tea late at night, and while sherry or singlemalt are nice, you might not have them on hand.
And perhaps you do not drink alcohol.
In that case, I recommend a glass filled with equal measures of ginger ale and cold water, pepped-up with a squeeze of lime. The slight sweetness and the acid will prevent dry-mouth or minor discomfort on the tongue, and will also help bring out the flavours of the tobacco.

TOBACCO INDEX


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OLD GOWRIE: PERFECT PIPE TOBACCO FOR BADGERS

Per Wikipedia, "Gowrie (Scottish Gaelic: Gobharaidh) is a region and ancient province of Scotland, covering most of the eastern part of what became Perthshire. The province is the home of such ancient Scottish royal sites as Scone and perhaps Forteviot.
Its chief settlement is the town of Perth. Today it is most often associated with the Carse of Gowrie, the part of Gowrie south of the Sidlaw Hills running east of Perth to Dundee."

[Read more here: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gowrie.]


OLD GOWRIE

The reader will now recognize a resonance; this explains why Charles Rattray named one of his tobaccos thus.
Perth is where mr. Rattray opened his own shop after several years in the trade elsewhere.
There is no tobacco grown in Gowrie, the climate is unsuitable.

The product is described as Virginia with a hint of Perique, and fully rubbed out. That isn't strictly accurate, as to my mind it requires a little more reduction to make it pack properly in the pipe. Fortunately it is moist in the tin and can be handled without crumbling.
Let it dry a while ere lighting up.


As with most of the Virginias I have been enjoying of late, the best smoke is the one I have after having a bite to eat in Chinatown on the weekend. These are the contrast, the capstone, and the dessert rolled into one.
Virginias have a sweetness on the tongue and a sparkle on the palate which can be utterly enchanting, and I have long associated them with young ladies of wit, charm, and strong character.
Sparkling eyes, expressive faces, and a hint of fruits and herbs.

There is no young lady in my life at present; a relationship of many years came to an end in 2010.
I wish it hadn't. But what is done is done.
While there is nothing else, good pipe tobacco ameliorates much.


Mr. Badger had a chicken bun and some siu mai for lunch today, followed by a full bowl of Old Gowrie while sitting in the sun. Old Gowrie has a sweetness similar to Marlin Flake, albeit with a somewhat browner profile and broader flavour-spectrum. The smell in the tin is fruity-spicy, definitely reminding one of the colonies.
A very fine product made with much more flue-cured tobacco than some of the popular English pressed tobaccos, and consequently no need for the degenerate funkums which mass-market manufacturers spray on their leaves.
It isn't really a VaPer ("Virginia - Perique blend"), and therefore might not satisfy the afficionados of that type.
Who are troll-like people of ursine build, with fur on the outside of their chest, and hair on the inside.
No, they will likely not be pleased.

But civilized creatures, like badgers, beavers, and even some ferrets, will find it quite delicious.
On sunny days they will leave their burrows, wearing a nice tweed coat or a jaunty cap perhaps, and amble through the tall green grass of early spring, humming to themselves while whisps of smoke trail behind them. Life is good, that siu mai was truly excellent today, very juicy. Then they will sit for a while on a fallen tree trunk (in my case, a concrete bench), enjoying the warmth and brightness, while the remainder of the bowl attracts their attention.
Sweet, fragrant, soft.......

A suggestion of plum, of prune, of apricot. Tea or chocolate.
Old Gowrie possesses an almost syrupy quality.
The Perique is just a subtle hint.
Flue cured dominates.


If Old Gowrie were a human, she would be youthful, slim shouldered, and vibrant. Possibly wearing a dark blouse and a pale skirt - one can imagine a little black brassiere underneath, with a matching pair of panties....... nothing visible, but she knows about them, and she can feel the smooth cool fabric against her warm silken skin.
For innocent middle aged men like myself, thoughts of such things provide a sweetness to the day as delightful as Old Gowrie itself.
And at least I've got the pipe tobacco.
That is a reason to smile.


Emptied out the ashes after my smoke and headed East along Washington Street, past the insane man standing on a bucket chanting "happy happy happy", past the park where a Chinese violin prefaced an air from a Cantonese opera. The singing sounded better when I got a block further down, distance having mellowed the static from the amplifiers and softened the edges of the song.

It was one of the most enjoyable lunches I've had in a while.

TOBACCO INDEX


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RATTRAY'S VIRGINIA TOBACCO: OLD GOWRIE, MARLIN FLAKE, BROWN CLUNEE, HAL O' THE WYND

Brash young boys and elderly roués smoke strong Latakia mixtures or Turkish blends. Scholars and well-bred young ladies, however, vastly prefer good solid Virginia flakes.
I am somewhere in between youthful brashness and aged rake - where exactly depends on my mood - but there are also times when the pressed flue-cured tobaccos hold my attention.
For the past four months I have smoked a fair amount of such.
Particularly products manufactured under the Rattray name.

Charles Rattray of Perth made four stellar Virginias which have become standards, and which have attracted fans for generations.
It is not known how many of those aficionados were intelligent little women with sharp intellects.
One suspects rather an awful lot.
Those that didn't smoke Rattrays may have instead preferred Samuel Gawith, but Rattrays was nevertheless a standard in their universe.
One or two of them may have loaded their pipes with a navy flake, but they were just asking for trouble.
Probably liked dark twist and shag tobacco too.
Some people are eccentric.


Even today, here in San Francisco, there are probably numerous bright-eyed bespectacled misses who keep a canister or two of Charles Rattray's fine leaf in a desk drawer, to be stealthily enjoyed while their older sisters are out of the house or their parents are asleep.
When all is quiet, and the rest of the family has gone off to that dreary clan-association banquet at the large restaurant on Pacific Avenue near Stockton Street, they pull a favourite book from the shelf, fill a bent sandblast with tobacco, and settle down in the battered wicker chair behind the pantry for a good long read.
One match. Puff. Tamp.
Ah, heaven!

Let us explore the tobacco preferences of brilliant demoiselles in the descriptions below.


OLD GOWRIE
Broken flake.
Slightly comparable to Escudo and McConnel's Scotch Cake, earthy with a fruity tin aroma.
Hints of molasses and chocolate due to a Kentucky leaf addition, low level of Perique.
Clean and rich, if puffed slowly. It is mellow, and a good solid smoke.
Leaves one a bit light headed if too much is smoked.
Renders to a fine white ash.


MARLIN FLAKE
Long folded strips of pressed tobacco.
When fully rubbed it provides a soft smooth smoke with considerable character.
Not really similar to McClelland's or McBarens products, though some have drawn comparisons, possibly because a prune - plum - fruitcake redolence.
Mixed mostly dark and flecks of bright. Toasty, tangy, slightly tart.
A milder flavour than Hal O' The Wynd, but seemingly more nicotine.
One can smoke a full deep bowl, or two pipes in succession.


BROWN CLUNEE
Ready rubbed brown flake.
Semi-sweet, spicy and toasty. Reminiscent of good black tea, with a natural aroma of fresh-mown hay and summer fruits.
Delicately spicy. A fine Virginia (perhaps with a touch of Kentucky?), and a mighty good introduction to its class.
Burns easily, requiring little thought. Soft and smooth, simple and straightforward for the most part .
There is a slight darkness near the end of the bowl, a hint of hidden complexity and character.


HAL O’ THE WYND
Ready-rubbed Red Virginia flake.
Presents a spectrum somewhere in between peaty, fruity, herbal, and earthy.
Zesty and complex, but with a straightforwardly satisfying quality. This is a tobacco that has both brightness and a very likable character.
In many ways the most old-fashioned of the lot, with a beguiling room-note.
Probably the one which this smoker will open up again and again.


The type of young lady who smokes any one of these four products probably also has a favourite tea cup and saucer. Maybe willow pattern, if she has a sense of irony, or a lovely mille-fleur for the sparkly type, even plain ivory glaze with a blue line around the rim café style, or celadon for a sense of summer.
Her tastes are neither loud nor brash, and she tends toward quietness.
What's certain, however, is that she is unique among her friends and kin, and does not read the same books or pursue the same interests.
An independent type, of considerable character.
Charming, attractive, but self-contained.
Keen, strong-minded, and resolute.
Someone worth knowing.


NOTE: a few years ago I spoke ill of Kohlhase & Kopp in Germany who now manufacture the Rattrays product line, based on bad experiences with some of their products. Since then I have been quite favourably impressed. Not only by their approach to Charles Rattray's legacy, also by other horses in their stable.
Consequently I must take back what I said then.
It was undeserved.

TOBACCO INDEX


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ME SMELL GOOD SOME DAY!

Enjoyed the last of the tin of flake in the television room last night while my roommate (Savage Kitten) was asleep. My chamber opens into the t.v.r., whereas her door goes into the hallway. Consequently she never noticed that I was smoking, though whisps of pressed Caledonian may have crept in and favourably influenced her dreams.
Had it been the other way around, I'm sure they would have done so to mine.
Unfortunately, she doesn't like tobacco.

This is the thirtieth time I've fired-up a load in the Savinelli that I got at the smoking competition.
It is finally fully broken in, and has become a very nice companion.

No, I didn't win, but I was probably the only person to tap out a fine white ash at the end instead of wet shreds. That isn't so much praise of my own pipe-smoking hand as it is a testament to the oddness of the tobacco provided in a two gramme measure for the contestants.

[It really should have been 2.2 grammes, but the dope-dealers' electronic scale did not measure so finely - there's a lot to be said for analog devices.]

Really, there are NO winners when everyone is combusting a vanilla-cream and fruit essence funk-a-roo. We are not Europeans!

Savinelli makes some damned fine pipes. Pity so many of them will be loaded up with aromatic funkums. Many Euries don't know any better.


FRAGRANT THINGS

My father's stern lecture to me when it was discovered that I was a secret teenage smoker many years ago still rings in my ears: "good tobacco does NOT smell like a Turkish cathouse!"
Profound words. I took them to heart.
Good tobacco requires no aromatic jazzing up.

His advice on what I put in my pipe was as succinct AND as excellent as his talk about sex. In which he explained that one should ONLY have congress with someone very nice, preferably a good friend.
He did not specify gender, but I believe he meant 'opposite'.

Once I explored the non-aromatics, I realized what a horrible sin it is to doctor a decent product with a cheap skank odour.
Not only tobacco, but also coffee (no toffee, no hazelnut, no amaretto!), liquor, and tea.
Good coffee is strong and bitter. Good alcohol is not augmented with vanilla - cream - berry - cherry - mango syrup.
Good tea does NOT contain fruit by-products and cheap spices.
And very nice people do not reek of Hello Kitty perfume.

Rattray's Marlin Flake is an honest product with real tobacco flavour. It has that faint herbal scent that aged Virginias are known for.
Mellow, on the sweet side.
It needs to be fully rubbed and dried a bit before it can be used.
But fresh from the tin it is malleable, and a bit of effort yields pillowy mounds of medium-hued shreds.
An hour's exposure leaves these perfect for the pipe.
Smoke it contemplatively.

Last of the can. Once I've also finished all of the Samuel Gawith's St. James Flake, I may crack another tin. Either that or one of the other Rattray's Virginias.
I particularly like the Hal O' The Wynd.

I learned a lot from my dad.

One thing I learned on my own happened last night while I was smoking the last of the Marlin Flake.
When you pull a football-team sweatshirt over your head, because it is freezing in the teevee room at one in the morning baby and you wish to be warm, it is wise to remove the pipe from your mouth and the reading specs from your face.
BEFORE you attempt to put on the garment.
Not during.

My nose still hurts from having my glasses jammed down hard on the bridge, and I'm sure that the Medrash Gohova sweatshirt will now always reek of burning Scotsman.
At least right around the middle-chest area.

It was a very good smoke.
Quite a lovely smell.
Educational, too.


TOBACCO INDEX


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A VERY WOMANLY TOUCH

One of my coworkers doubts my sanity at this point.
While I grasp the reason, which I concede is moderately understandable, the logical explanation I offered for my behaviour failed to satisfy, and may have made the perception worse.
You see, he is not a smoker.
It means nothing to him.


IMAGINE WHAT IT FEELS LIKE

You may remember that my job involves substantial telephone work, yes?

While I am on the phone, listening attentively to someone two thousand miles away talking about how their mother-in-law's car failed to start so she had to call a tow truck and rent a limo to attend the wedding of her favourite neighbor's granddaughter which meant that funds need to be wired especially because the very expensive rent-a-limo got into an accident and crushed the hand painted antique municipal garbage receptacles at the corner of Grove and Podunk and the mayor's donkey and that is why that invoice which is past-due will have to be only a little bit later yet (three months), my hands need something to do.

I'm a very good listener. I am sincerely interested in all these details, and my voice tells them so. It's a question of modulation, you see.
Regarding how I sound and how I respond, I betray that I am actually a warm and social person. It's just that my body language well and truly doesn't.
Bit of a disadvantage face-to-face, but in phone conversations it's entirely immaterial.

My body language, when I'm on the phone, involves doodling, twiddling, eye-rolling, yawning, scratching, twitching, wiggling, vibrating up and down, kicking my desk, and a few minor ticks.
As well as playing with my tobacco.

It was that which caught his eye. He sits five feet away from me, and he had never noticed it before.
While I was enthusiastically uttering the fourth or fifth "oh reeeally, do tell" into the phone, I noticed his eyes following my fingers, which were meticulously separating a sheet of pressed flake strand by strand, so that I could dry the product for smoking sometime later in the day.

[Rattray's Marlin Flake - a 'full dark Virginia', with a certain amount of black leaf in the recipe. It comes in foot long strips, and like most tobaccos it is tinned too moist for immediate smoking. And flake also needs to be rubbed out or teased apart. Hence my actions. Marlin Flake smells lovely, by the way. A nice aged almost chocolatey fragrance. Darn good stuff. ]


His eyes were wide, appalled, and fixed upon the tobacco. So after I got off the phone, I explained what I was doing, and showed him the roll still in the tin. Which looks like some kind of jerky. It's a fascinating product. That style of tobacco used to be far more common, but nowadays there are only a few manufacturers with that keen an attention to detail, as well as the love of the craft.
A pity, really. Quality smoking material.


"You know, I never really got into tobacco."


I muttered something about how coffee, tea, tobacco, spices, and perfumes all share certain unique and fascinating traits, and had an air of romance, adventure, history, mystery, attached to them. Interesting!
It didn't help. He's a man with a healthy life-style.
Such things mean nothing to him.
No imagination.


I've got the rubbed-out flake on a sheet of paper between my computer and the phone. Tobacco when it's drying feels cool and silky-velvety to the hand.
Very sensuous. Very erotic.
There are good reasons why it is described in feminine terms.

I like stroking it with my finger tips.
Mmm.



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IN PRAISE OF PIE

I had pie for dinner the other day. Let me inform you that doing so is not good for a peaceful night's sleep.
But I shouldn't blame the pie. It was good pie, and I like pie.
Pie is a food that speaks of warmth and wholesomeness.
Just don't eat half a pie before bedtime.

It was a real pie. Peach!
Not sausage and anchovies - which is only pie if you're an east-coaster.
That explains why there were no black olives either.
Olives and peaches, yecccchhh!
Honestly!

And everyone knows that unlike east-coast grease-pie, real pie needs to be washed down with coffee. Or milk tea.  Not beer.
It may have been the coffee that made me sleep fitfully. Beer simply knocks you out, whereas coffee makes you happy.
If I were a sports-watching man, I would probably be high as a kite after the game - two pots of coffee if you factor in the half-time extravaganza - and alertly bouncing off the walls, rather than sodden insensate like most American men after Sunday football.
There may have been some athletic contest on Sunday, but I do not know.
The pie was NOT connected with a sporting event.

It was just pie, all by its own existential self.


PIE DOES NOT NEED A REASON!

One problem with pie is that after burying my snout in a wedge, I end up with goo all over my whiskers.
I would offer to let someone lick them clean, except that my beard and moustache normally have a faint reek of tobacco and coffee, and that first smell mentioned might conflict with the fresh peach taste she would expect.
Assuming it's a she.

Many young ladies do not associate the sooty saveur of Rattray's Black Mallory (a fine full English mixture) or Rattray's Hal O'The Wynd (excellent ready rubbed red flake) with sweet pie goo. That's unfortunate, as matured tobacco has a faint fruitiness from fermentation, but there it is.

[As an important detail, my moustache also perfumes discretely of cigarillos - one cannot take a half hour pipe break during the working day, on the street outside the office. But cigarillos only take a few minutes. Never cigarettes. Cigarettes are the trashy teenage boys of the tobacco world. It's question of standards and taste.]

Also, very few young ladies have quite the tolerance for a hefty dose of caffeine that grown-up men such as myself possesses; they just can't hack it, it's too much for their delicate systems.
At least that's my theory. It would explain why I seldom see actual young ladies in coffee shops, unless they work there....... behind the counter, staring with open-eyed panic at the vulgar consumer-whores and shrill tattooed heffalumps ordering a grande hazelnut toffee mint brickle cappufrappé.
Young ladies drink milky tea with a modicum of sugar.
Not crap that tastes of hazelnut toffee mint brickle.

Dolled-up steam-drinks are for dolled-up trollops.
Young ladies have MUCH better taste than that.


Ideally, I would have invited a young lady over for some pie. We could've shared a pleasant hot beverage with milk. Tea. Or hot cocao, with whipped cream.
But probably milk tea.

Had I done so, I would NOT have been up smoking Rattray's fine tobacco (both Black Mallory AND Hal O'The Wynd - two bowls each) till shortly after four in the morning.
Instead I'd be licking cream off my chops. Or hers.
I will open up a tin of Esoterica's "And So To Bed" sometime soon - it might induce sleep.
It's a fine mixture, rich with dark Virginia, Maryland, Latakia, and Greek leaf.
Even without a young lady to wean me from caffeine, and eat my pie.

If there WERE a young lady present, she too might appreciate the same tobaccos, whether the fine product from Esoterica Tobacciana mentioned above, OR that lovely Black Mallory by Rattrays.
I would gladly share them with her, and I've got plenty of briars.
We could both smoke the dark stuf.
It's fragrant!


I must make sure to get more pie.
Pie is happiness.
3.14



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RATTRAY'S HAL O' THE WYND

Miss Lodewyks was a small, almost frail looking girl, with a kind face and hair that captured the glow of sunlight. There always seemed a note of amusement in her eyes whenever I came around, and she was anxious that I should have a cup of coffee with milk and a cookie. She wanted to spend some time with me. And we would pleasantly talk a bit first.

But this post is not about her, even though she was my own age, and a very nice person indeed, far nicer than I was at that age.
This post is about her father, mynheer Lodewyks, whom I had really come to see.
Every week we would spend an hour with my French textbooks from high school, before taking two hours to wade through the volumes on his bookshelves. Rama and Sita came back to life for a small while, Yudisthira journeyed northward through the wasteland with his faithful dog Karma, Gatotkaca blustered his way through a horde of sub-trolls...... a railway got built to Pakan Bahru, the Alifuro came down from the hills to harvest heads, a farmer traded his precious karbau for some beras......
Once or twice he mentioned the camps, but those memories did not glow.
Much revolved around language, phrasing, spicy shared vocabularies.

Shortly before the 'lesson' ended, his daughter would come in with a tray on which there was some more coffee, and a plate of cookies.

I really did not need the cookies...... but another cup of coffee, and a smile from her, was quite the perfect cap to the afternoon.

After she left the room, the old man would reach over on his desk and grab a pipe, fill it, and touch a match to the tobacco. For the last half hour we would take it easy, discussing what a word may have meant several centuries ago, what its descendants might mean now.
Not only English adopted wandering orphans from other languages, so did Dutch. Though in Dutch they may have acquired a garb that belies their foreign roots entirely.

Most Dutch, for instance, might not recognize 'fruit' as a borrowing, to say nothing of 'koffie', 'tabak', 'sigaar', or even 'pisang', 'pasanggrahan', and 'pinda' (Malay for banana, a lodgement along the Great Post Road, and a West-African word for peanut respectively).

I almost never smoked my own pipe in his study, because I liked the gentle reek of his tobacco, and did not wish to dilute the fragrance or spoil the mood.
A mildly sweet grassy incense, that marvelously complemented the afternoon sunlight streaming in on a summer day, or the dark wet twilights of a Dutch winter.

This post, then, is actually neither about his daughter or him, but about his tobacco.
He filled his pipe from a cannister of product unavailable locally.
Qua texture and appearance it strongly recalled the standard Dutch cavendish products I was familiar with: Sail, Amphora, Van Rossem.
But there the similarity ended.


HAL O' THE WYND
A pure Virginian tobacco of "a most unusual share of strength"
Blended for CHARLES RATTRAY (of) Perth, Scotland

It's a quality Red Virginia Flake, rubbed out for ease of packing.
Made in Germany, distributed in the U.S. by Arango Cigar Co.


My first bowl of it, when mr. Lodewyks offered me some, did not please me. Unlike the Dutch pressed Cavendishes it so seemed to resemble, it needed more skill to keep lit and bit me ferociously.
Truth be told, my smoking habits when I was fifteen years old were not attuned to the subtle approach. Stuff it in, fire it up, and suck.
There's no way I could possibly enjoy it then.
Most unsuitable for a growing boy.
But I would not say so.

Mighty fine tobacco, sir. Thank you!

In actual fact, it was only in appearance that it resembled the Dutch Cavendishes - like them it was ready rubbed. But there it ended.
Dutch Cavendishes are composed of Burley, Maryland, Indonesian, some Virginias, and God only knows what else, plus added sweetening, aroma, and incendiary aids to keep it lit.
Rattray's Hal O' The Wynd is pure, a very high quality fish indeed.
Blessed with a far more civilized room-note than any Dutch weed.

This is a lively maiden among the leaves, very lovable company.

There's something about the fragrance of a fine Virginia which stirs the mind and conduces reverie.


I shall now holler various evocative terms at you, attempting to stimulate your affection for this tobacco of which I have had several bowls recently:
Yeasty, malty, slightly sweet, heavy, bright, faint caramel, springtime, leathery, medium brown, zesty, hay, robust, consistent, peaty, dried fruit, tweed, herbs, straw, earthy, old barn wood. Dark coffee, tawny port!

You must smoke it slowly, like an adult. Not fast, like a child.

Dried out a bit and not jammed in but springy-packed, it is most rewarding.

Good stuff. Very good stuff. I have several tins of it, but none that are open.
The stuff I'm smoking now came from one of the tins for sampling at the local tobacconist.
You see, like a typical cheapskate Dutchman, I saw opportunity. They allow customers to take a bit of the tobaccos in a little plastic bag to get a better impression of the product - at today's prices, that's a profound kindness - and seeing as they had popped a one hundred gramme container of Hal O' The Wynd, there was plenty to spare.
I took a generous sample while one of them was working, then came in the other day when someone else was working to get another sample. A very generous sample.
And I told both gentlemen exactly what I was doing, too - "I'm afraid I'm going to be awfully greedy now, it isn't a pretty sight, taking huge whomping handfulls, best you look away ".
Paid for my actual purchases, left happy.


This is not just a tobacco for opportunistic Dutchmen and elderly linguisticians.
It will also appeal to intelligent young ladies studying for their history exams, craftsmen, musicians, confirmed bachelors, and self-assured women who wish to spend a quiet evening reading.
Anyone with a contemplative streak, in other words.


In retrospect, I should probably also have associated more with mr. Lodewyks' nice daughter.
It would have built character and made me a better person.

TOBACCO INDEX


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TEA AT THE OFFICE

When I got on the bus at Polk Street today, I entered last. It often happens that way. As a general rule I let the pushy people on first. And old folks. Mothers with children. Women of any age.

Even, and perhaps especially, an attractive young lady wearing dark tights and spectacles and a long striped jersey. She tried to yield, possibly because the white in my beard may have suggested seniority.
But no, please go ahead, I am not a geezer yet.
And this way I can keep you in view.
You have a lovely face, miss.
And I’m still vibrant.
I’ve got vim.

She got off the bus at Hyde Street. Much too soon as far as I’m concerned.
Didn’t know that there was someone so nice in the neighborhood.
Such intelligent expressive eyes.
Is it springtime yet?

She looked shyly embarrassed at having gotten on ahead of me.
Call me a pervert, but I thought that was charming.
Also noticed that her hands looked soft.
Such pretty fingers, too.


I may be the only person in San Francisco who actually likes riding the bus.


In Chinatown a mother and her vivacious little daughter got on. When the bus rocketed down the hill the little girl had the most joyfully ecstatic smile on her face I have ever seen. Crazed bus drivers heading to a long over-due bathroom (or smoke) break at the end of the line are far far better than any roller coaster, possibly because you didn’t expect blood-pounding excitement on public transit – this isn’t New York.

They got off at my stop, and the mother affectionately put her hand on the child’s shoulder.
The little girl’s ponytail bounced happily along as they walked ahead.
Such lovely feathery dark hair.
Twenty years from now she’ll probably be dating a race car driver.
Or a Muni chauffeur with a tiny bladder.


NOW FOR A NICE CUPPA

About the title of this post? Well, I left the house far later than normal, right around mid-afternoon. Got to the office just after four. And in keeping with the hour I am swilling tea and nibbling on a lemon shortbread.
It may always be time for tea, but it's only tea time once.

See, I had a very late evening yesterday…… went to the Occidental and smoked several pipefulls.
Kohlhase, Kopp und Company in Germany seem to have finally gotten it right.
At the very least, the current version of Rattray's Black Mallory is an excellent product, with a lovely old-fashioned reek to it. Very nice in a somewhat larger bowl.
A classic Oriental blend with feminine allure.

Brings back mental-echoes of a more straightforward place and time.
In retrospect I should've had it with cognac instead of whiskey.
Why it has been described as "fishy" is beyond me.
Possibly other pipe smokers are nuts.
Thank you, Kohlhase & Kopp.
Darned fine stuff.

Got home late. Woke up late. Coffeed late. Bathed late. Left house late.

Happiness might very well consist of pretty girls on the bus, old-fashioned pipe tobacco, and cups of tea.
Plus occasionally stopping by a familiar watering hole in the financial district on a Saturday night, where one can sit a while in peace and quiet.

Life, really, isn't all that bad.



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TOBACCO COMPANIES, TOBACCO BLENDS

This post is about pipe-tobacco, and consequently there will not be much here for many of my regular readers; sorry, but I promise that there will be the usual zany antics later on - in particular something quite perverse in time for Purim.

[NOTE: There are several links scattered throughout the text below - clicking them will bring up my own posts on that subject (EXCEPTIONS: GLP and C&D).]


TOBACCO COMPANIES

Since the nineties several of the old tobacco houses have changed, due to the deaths of guiding hands and profound legal and tax developments in Britain.


DUNHILL

Dunhill blends have not been made in the British Isles since the late nineties, and have been unavailable for the past few years nearly everywhere.
British American Tobacco, which had owned the blends since Rothmans ceased to exist, quarreled with the company to which they had farmed out the manufacture.

Dunhill tobaccos were made in England till 1981, when Rothmans (who had acquired the company from Carrerras in 1972) moved manufacturing to the Murrays factory in Belfast. While a lot of later smokers praised the Murrays product in comparison to what Orlik put out, it should be remembered that the early Murrays tins were quite unsmokeable - sourcing and quality control improved considerably over the years.


RATTRAYS

Now manufactured in Germany by Kohlhase, Kopp und Co. KG (who also do Astleys, formerly of 109 Jermyn Street, as well as the blends of Robert McConnel) according to the recipes developed by Charles Rattray in Perth. The Germans are doing a decent enough job. The one thing they cannot reproduce is the microclimate of the Scottish home of these blends - moisture content in the air, temperature ranges, and the eccentric non-standardization of manufacture combined to produce some very fine tobaccos. What Charles Rattray never realized was that combining different batches of the same blend had more impact on smoking quality than his much vaunted panning method. A variety of ages united to produce richness, whereas uniformity of age and heat treatment makes for a mono-dimensional smoke.

[PLEASE NOTE: The Rattray Virginias are described in this later post: RATTRAY'S VIRGINIA TOBACCO: OLD GOWRIE, MARLIN FLAKE, BROWN CLUNEE, HAL O' THE WYND. They are excellent, still. If you age the tin for a year before popping the seal, you will have a treat. There's enough Rattrays of various ages stashed under the bed, in the book shelves, and on the desk to last quite a long while. Good stuff. ------- ATBOTH, August 12, 2013.]


SAMUEL GAWITH

Still the same, still in Kendall, boruch Hashem. An ancient company with all of the eccentricities of previous generations smoothed out by age, still producing tobacco as they believe it should be. Except for a few monumentally odd aromatics, they are right. They also make snuff.
Supplies are spotty at present - no explanation.


GAWITH HOGARTH

Less pronounceable a name than their cousin Samuel, but no less respected. More steampressing, and more aromatic disasters, but a fine company.
They also make snuff.


MURRAYS

The originators of Erinmore. Which has been described as the painted whore among the tobaccos, the veritable clapped-out harlot drenched in cheap cologne that shakes a syphilitic tit at the unwary. The factory closed in 1998 and the blends moved to Denmark. If you ever wondered why Dunhill Flake seemed reminiscent of a perfumed tart, now you know - same factory and same machines as Erinmore Flake.
Which, despite my austere Calvinist tastes, I am actually fond of, though I will not admit it.

Erinmore Flake, calmly smoked, burns down to a fine white ash, and leaves scant funk. If smoked fast, the top-dressing boils into your cake, and you will experience profound regret.


J. F. GERMAIN & SON

This company makes some very fine tobacco, both under their own flag and for Esoterica Tabaciana. Unfortunately it is becoming harder and harder to find either - blame the continentals for that, as the Europeans have become as daft as the Californians and wish to cripple the tobacco industry entirely. A good place to start the final assault is small eccentric family companies, in the estimation of Brussels.
Supplies are spotty, there is no explanation. And that is likely to continue.


BALKAN SOBRANIE

Yes, it was only a matter of time before I brought up that name - you were anxiously waiting its appearance in this text, weren't you? The company was started by an Eastern-European Jew with Russian and Southern Slav connections. He made very fine cigarettes and a limited range of pipe-tobaccos. The Balkan Sobranie Mixture in the white tin was more famous than any other product, and is no longer available. Nor could it be reproduced exactly in any case - European Tobacco laws would prevent it.

In order: Syrian Latakia, Yenidje and other Orientals, a medium flake, a lighter Virginia ribbon, a dark toasted or steamed flue-cured leaf, and something I cannot identify that wasn't tobacco. Probably deertongue, but I wouldn't stake my life on it. Combine everything except the Latakia and meld with light heat, then add the Latakia, age for a few days, and press it into the tin - which means more heat. Like many tinned tobaccos, the moisture level was upped to make it more malleable and less likely to crumble and fragment with this treatment.

Note that the preferred Syrian Latakia in the sixties and seventies was choice Shek El Bint with far more smoke-curing than is used for any Latakia-style tobacco nowadays. Consequently that exact flavour will not be possible. Yenidje may be replaced with other Greek or Macedonian tobaccos - again, not an exact match. Prilep might not be a bad choice, with Samsoun and Smyrna for a better spectrum. It is worth experimenting, but don't get your hopes up too high.
For more about the Balkan Sobranie Mixture than you would ever want to read (no exaggeration), click here: BS CLICK

[NOTE: Because this post discusses Balkan Sobranie, as of this writing it will be the very first post that you see - simply scroll down for other articles.]



Even though these companies and many others have disappeared, the situation is comparatively rosy. Here in the States we have three companies that make enough fine English tobacco to sink the empire.



GLPEASE

Greg Pease worked at Drucquer and Sons in Berkeley nearly a decade after I left that firm. He learned far more than I ever did. Drucquers was known for its English mixtures, and Greg continued that blending tradition on his own. To such commendable result in fact that his nickname on the internet is "The Dark Lord".
G. L. Pease owns Latakia in the same way that McClelland owns flake.
He has in recent years also done some very fine things with pressed tobaccos and Virginia mixtures.

[For all other posts mentioning his tobacco, click here: GLP. This post will also be shown - just scroll down to whatever you have not read yet. Same rule holds for some of the links embedded elsewhere in this post.]


CORNELL & DIEHL - CRAIG TARLER

Despite having a peculiar fondness for Burley tobaccos, Craig produces some of the best blends in the business. As well as manufacturing Greg Pease's blends. If you are so inclined you can purchase many blending tobaccos from his company, or simply order the blends that your local tobacconist does not stock.
I particularly recommend Red Odessa.
Yale Mixture and Old College are also very fine products.
His flakes are excellent and deservedly well regarded.


MCCLELLAND

By now this company has the hoary veneer of respectable age, having been founded over a quarter of a century ago, and many of the other tobacco houses having disappeared since then. This company is famous for pressed Virginia, on which they more or less base all their products. They also employ heat and steam for particular effects. Many house blends at local tobacco stores are bulk McClelland mixtures; many other retailers depend on blending tobaccos supplied by McClelland. Not everyone likes them. But without them, pipe smoking in America might have disappeared.
You can find out everything you need to know about them elsewhere.



With GLPease, Cornell & Diehl, and McClelland in the market, we need not worry overmuch at present. These three are keeping America's smokers more than adequately supplied with high quality pipe-tobacco.



BLENDING A BALKAN MIXTURE

Balkan Sobranie Mixture as made by Gallagher was probably around 36.00% Latakia, 24.00% Oriental (Yenidje etcetera), 32.00% Mixed Virginias, and 8.00% Black Virginia (steamed and baked, rather than pressed or fired), or an unflavoured Black Cavendish.
Black Virginia is quite unavailable nowadays, and unflavoured Black Cavendish is extremely hard to find.

If you simply want to blend a good Balkan, you may increase the proportion of Latakia or Virginia - the Oriental is nearly at full capacity anyhow, and as long as you use some remarkable Virginias you can not go wrong.

Fluffed flake should not be much more than the other Virginias unless you are aiming for a slow and almost boring blend; ribbon Virginias increase smokeability, but also heat and tongue-bite.
Plain Cavendish is smooth, and doesn't add much flavour - it can be used in lieu of too much yellow ribbon.

Toasted Cavendish (actually fire-cured Kentucky) up to one twelfth of the total adds depth and body. Any more and you might end up with something too acrid.

If you use Perique, be discreet. Optimum percentages are between four and eight.

Avoid dark pressed (black) flake as a blending tobacco. It doesn't really work, as it is only narrow-range compatible. Which means Virginia mixtures and nearly nothing else.


Final note: Do NOT create a Latakia dump. While Latakia is a remarkable tobacco, it works best in concert with others, not as a solo. Anything over fifty percent is both juvenile and excessive - maximum 45% is plenty. You can increase the dark component of your blend by adding unflavoured black Cavendish (if you can find any) and Toasted Cavendish (which is actually similar to Burley and other air-cured leaf).
Doing so will produce something remarkably Scottish in character, which is probably what you want anyway.


LABELS

For further reading, do please note all the labels underneath this post. Clicking any one of them will bring up all posts which have those labels appended - today, this post is on top of the heap (and you have already read it) so simply scroll down to the next one.

TOBACCO INDEX


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NASTY SMELLY SCOTS

The Scots, as is well known, are the meanest, stingiest, penny-pinchingest, cheapest, most penuriating tightwads in the entire world. Tightest bunch of skinflinting, coin-hoarding, expense-begrudging, penny-dragging turnips in all of human history. They are very unpleasant about money.

Being a Dutchman, it gives me great pleasure to say so. We Dutch also have a modest reputation in that regard. I am happy to note that the Scots are far far worse, the bastards.

[I am American-Dutch. Not one of those rapacious and sadistic Netherlands-Dutch, not a degenerated southerner from Flanders, not a rigid and constipated Afrikaner, nor a Ceylonese or Malaccan Burger, and certainly not one of those sneering young immigrants who have decided that they might as well experience the world a bit and screw stupid Yankee chicks before going back to marry a nice girl and talk trash about Americans.]


Yes, the Scots are indeed everything they are made out to be.

Except.

They aren't.

Not really cheap, that is. A nation that produces very fine woolens, great cakes, and the best whisky in the world should NOT be called 'cheap'. High quality and 'cheap' are not on the same page.

Which makes the prevalence of Scotch pipe tobaccos among the nomenclature of so many manufacturers baffling. One would not imagine that a reputation for cheapity would be a desirable mental connection for one's product. The more so as there is no such thing as a Scotch blend - it's merely a naming convention.



SCOTS MIXTURE, SCOTS BLEND, SCOTS ROPE

The Scandinavians think it means Cavendish mixed with ribbon Burley and mild flavourings. The Dutch and the Germans call anything sauced with honey and liquor a Scotch blend. American companies think it's a Burley-Virginia mixture, or the cheapest nastiest leaf in the store dolled up with an aromatic agent, or even a cheap strong flake mixed with Perique to cut the tongue-bite.
The Scots no longer produce tobacco, and the British companies always called a darker English blend a Scots mixture.

[English blend: a goodly amount of smoke-cured leaf from Syria (Latakia), Turkish and Greek leaves, on a basis of Virginias. Maybe some Perique added, only rarely air-cured leaf, and then only Maryland, in minute quantities.]


The confusion probably stems from enterprises like Charles Rattray in Perth, who manufactured several different tobaccos, all based on full Virginia flakes. At one end of the scale, these would be blended with Virginia ribbon for smokability and Orientals for complexity. At the other end, Perique might be added, or two or three flakes mixed in proportion. Other than the assertiveness of the Virginias, the only thing they had in common was a heat-process (panning) and a brief aging period to meld the flavours.
Most Scots tobacco companies used panning or steampressing to improve their products.

[Heating tobacco, in addition to rounding the rough edges of some tobaccos and making them more gentle on the tongue, allows the addition of flavouring agents, as the leaf is receptive and will readily absorb aromas. Which, of course, explains why Charles Rattray used that method - the various tobaccos absorbed each other's characteristics, and the result was a much more uniform product.]


Much Burley is processed with heat to make it mellow. Cheaper grades of air-cured tobacco definitely also benefit from such treatment. And both Burley and cheap Virginia are common ingredients in aromatic mixtures and Cavendish. It's but a short leap to call anything made with heat-treated cheap leaf 'Scots'.
It is, however, a horrible misnomer, and a repulsive canard.


None of this has anything to do with 'Scotch Cut Mixture' by Samuel Gawith. They produced it for the 2009 Chicago Pipe Show in a limited edition. Scotch in this case probably means that they didn't know what else to call it. The tartan on the label looks like the material Ronald Reagan had suits made from, twixt dull and dowdy-garish.



SCOTCH CUT MIXTURE
Samuel Gawith

'Blended from Fine Virginias, Black Cavendish, Burley & Latakia for the Chicago Pipe Club'

This product has been described as being like an electrical fire, smouldering rubber, dead chickens, mildewed sofa, and mother-in-law repellant.
So naturally I had to try it.

It's fine.

Not enough Latakia to satisfy the members of the dark side, nor enough Burley to keep all the drug-store blend smoking old farts happy. The Virginia is excellent, but not of a type that would please smokers of flake. This is a pleasant medium strength natural mixture that would appeal to many Europeans finally making their escape from syrup-soaked Dutch and Danish steampress garbage, being a fairly neutral mixture of good quality leaf.
I cannot judge the smell - it smells okay to me. The taste is like some of the Dutch natural mixtures which lost the battle with the candy Cavendishes before most Dutch tobacco companies were sold to the Americans. The texture, too, is reminiscent of products long unavailable, being a crinkled narrow ribbon-cut that packs easily.

It is not at all perfumy, but faintly earthy - the merest echo-whisp of pasture, with a hint of cow.

All in all a decent and somewhat unremarkable product, the kind of blend one might purchase every month from the tobacconist in the nearest city while supply-shopping.
Assuming one lived out on the moors or beyond the forest.


The smell from the tin reminds me of rainy summer days years ago, when I was still living in Valkenswaard. All the day would seem dull and gloomy, and wherever you went, you switched on the light. Sitting in an unlit room made even space and the distance between objects hard to gauge, let alone details and textures. During the frequent downpours a wave of darkness enveloped the world and the falling water muffled the sounds from outside.
It was very womblike, and I thoroughly enjoyed those days.

Naturally, the comfort of the womb is much better with a good smoke.

You should probably have some tea while you're at it.
And take off those sodden socks , just hang them on a chair to dry.
You are glad to finally be inside.

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ASTLEYS NO. 99 - FULL LATAKIA MIXTURE

In the seventies there was a middle-aged medical gentleman at the Eindhovensche golf-course with whom I would occasionally share pipe tobacco. He would have some of my ribbon cut Maryland, I would try some of whatever he had in his pouch. We did not speak much, and having lit up, would part and go our own way - I did not drink in the clubhouse in those days, and preferred to wander around near the swampy end of the links where the scrubby pines and sand gave way to pools of black water in the forest.
Occasionally I would run into him there also - especially if he was golfing by himself, and hitting his balls badly.


RATTRAY'S
In 1981, when I still restored pipes in the backroom of Drucquers, and lived with my grandmother in Berkeley, I discovered Rattray's tobacco. Charles Rattray of Perth produced blends of great repute, seasoning assertive Virginias boldly with Turkish, Latakia, and Perique.

In those days I would go out to the end of the Berkeley Pier after teatime to watch the sun set and smoke a pipe. Doing so was peaceful, and allowed me to forget things. The pipe was often a Castello, the tobacco was Rattray's.

That autumn my grandmother finally succumbed to cancer, and I severed my ties to Drucquers, crashed the car, and put aside Rattray's tobacco.
I no longer have that Castello pipe.


KOHLHASE & KOPP
Rattray closed and the blends eventually landed in the care of Kohlhase & Kopp in Germany, who, despite many recent negative reviews by crotchety old crocks, are doing a credible interpretation of the blends. The only major difference, and this is actually a serious problem, is that the climate in their part of Germany does not resemble the climate in Perth - average temperatures differ, as do moisture levels in the air. It really does change the flavour of the blends considerably. The bacterial influences are not the same.


ASTLEYS
Quite recently I cracked open a tin of Astleys No. 99.
Astleys is another brand that was once ranked up there with the legendary British tobacconists, most of which were eccentric operations run by opinionated gentlemen sincerely devoted to guiding their smokers on a fragrant journey. Many of them were either heirs to a family business, or staff who had purchased the company upon the owners retiring. Astleys had been founded in 1862, and was owned by Mr. Bentley, whose family had acquired the store in the nineteen thirties.
Astleys was located in the Piccadilly Arcade - their address of note was 109 Jermyn Street. They blended their own tobacco, and had pipes made for them by Comoy, GBD, and Charatan. They closed their doors about four years ago, I believe.
Their tobaccos are now, like Rattray's blends, manufactured by Kohlhase & Kopp.


Almost all of the great London tobacconists are gone now. Times have indeed changed.



ASTLEYS No. 99 ROYAL TUDOR
Full Latakia Mixture
"Traditional full strength English mixture of Virginia, Turkish and Latakia."

Kohlhase & Kopp
Von hand gemischt und gepakt


This tobacco smells in the tin precisely like an old fashioned British mixture should; nicely plummy-raisiny, due to a proportion of pampered Virginias. The problem is the description of the product as a full Latakia mixture.
Which it isn't. Not by a long shot.

Unless you started smoking a pipe back in the nineteenth century, when this blend would indeed have been at the full end of the spectrum, Latakia-wise.

It's an excellent product, and the cut is lovely. It is, however, so old-fashioned a blend that many modern pipe-smokers will not understand it, nor want to understand it. It reflects a blending tradition that based everything on the interplay of condimentals and base tobaccos, with the seat of honour given to a ribbon Virginia. Such blends were frequently melded by panning over heat, causing the flavours of the tobaccos to mix and unite.
As such it cannot possibly appeal to young men, or smokers searching for a full strength Latakia dump. It is far too restrained.

There is a nice sweetness to the first few puffs, that slowly gives way to a more complex range of flavours, before gracefully closing at the bottom of the bowl.
It smokes easy, and will not bite unless provoked.

This is perfect for wet summer days. Teatime and early evening. Perhaps with a bottle of sherry and a good thick book.


AFTERTHOUGHT

You will note that I have already mentioned Kohlhase & Kopf in reference to Rattray's. But there is another point where Rattray's and Astleys coincide - the Astleys No. 99 is remarkably reminiscent of the Rattray's blends that I smoked in 1981.
I suspect that the medical gentleman at the Eindhovensche Golfclub must have been a smoker of either Rattray's or Astleys, and I'm inclined to believe that it was actually Astleys' tobacco in his pouch. There was a Londonian temper to his habits.

I shall not smoke this often, but I will order more of it from back east, along with a few tins of Astleys No. 1 Medium Latakia Mixture. Which is a little more Scottish in its tendencies.



Post-teatime afterthought: You might want to read up on Rattrays. In October of 2006, when this blog was still young, I quoted several angry people on the subject of Rattray's tobaccos.
See here:
http://atthebackofthehill.blogspot.com/2006/10/they-are-beasts.html
Their remarks can fairly be described as cheapskates mad with both barrels. Each one of them spent money on that tobacco.

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RED RAPPAREE & SAMARRA

Some tobacco mixtures, no longer extant in their original form and having been farmed out to successive outside manufacturers, have prompted profound memory-shift in their erstwhile smokers. What might be called a migration of remembered sensations, if you prefer.

Memory is odd that way. What one person remembers about a taste or smell may focus particularly on a characteristic that someone else's nose elides over entirely.
[A rose is not a rose is not a rose is not a rose.]


Rattrays Red Rapparee is one such blend.

I smoked several tins of it in the late seventies and early eighties. It was quite good. I do not remember it with any sharp detail, yet others do. But they all remember differently.

Accordingly they have described it as:

1) A nice mild-medium mixture.
2) Quite gentle, medium English - smells delightfully oriental.
3) Medium English blend at its best.
4) Medium Oriental blend.
5) A complex, mid-strength blend. -
6) A fine all-day smoke.
7) A nice full blend.
8) A hefty English blend at its finest.
9) A fairly stout English blend.
10) An end of the day blend, an outdoor smoke.

Terms used are spicy, sweet, musty, robust, fragrant, wonderful, perfumed, Oriental, pungent, dense, rounded. Classic. Kaleidoscopic.

In addition to being compared to that other famous Rattray blend, Black Mallory, it has been likened to Balkan Sobranie, Dunhill 965, Dunhill London Mixture, Dunhill Standard Mixture (Medium), Samuel Gawith's Squadron Leader, and several of Greg Pease's mixtures (including Samarra).

Lament and keen for what Red Raparree used to be is intense, poetic, lyrical, nay even tragic and melodramatic, among the tribe with wooden objects in their face.

Makes me wish I had smoked it........ Oh wait, I did!

Meh.



On the other hand, I smoked a pipe-full of G. L. Pease's Samarra this morning.
Medium strength, aged red Virginia with Latakia, Turkish, and a touch of Perique. Sweet, spicy, and well rounded. The Latakia and Turkish are in perfect equilibrium.
It was extremely good indeed.

It did not remind me of anything in particular, not even of the bowls I had last year. Something else. I cannot put my finger on it.

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THE SMELL OF JOCK

It isn’t what you think, you pervert!

Let me begin by first pointing you to the comments underneath a post on Dovbear’s blog (see here: http://www.haloscan.com/comments/dovbear/3363981839643963800/), and then pointing you towards a lovely photo on e-kvetcher's blog (see here: http://search-for-emes.blogspot.com/2007/07/if-youre-planning-to-run-with-bulls.html).


Now breathe deeply. What do you smell?

------------------------

All of the above serves as preamble - this post is actually about tobacco.

I have a tin of Rattray's Jocks Mixture on my desk. I am airing it out - I had forgotten that I had added some extra moisture to it a while back, and the tobacco has since then turned a tarry speckled brown-black and smells marvelously figgy. I keep reaching over and sticking my nose into the tin - it's like smelling a spice-cake cooling on the rack. Perhaps after drizzling some whiskey down the center. Autumnal and toasty-rich. Pomegranatish.

Like an old-fashioned drogistery with a row of odd herbals. Like a countryside bar-billard in late autumn. Like a grossier's warehouse with crates of tea and boxes of spice.

I am sheerly intoxicated by the aroma.


Jocks Mixture used to be a blend of Latakia and Black Cavendish, full-bodied and spicy, with a wine-like fermented tang. Zesty.

In the day when the mixtures were still made in Charles Rattray's shop in Perth (at 15B High Street), the blends were truly magnificent. Then in the mid-eighties the blending was farmed out to the Danes, who made a complete pigs breakfast of it, followed by the Germans, who are actually fairly decent. Unfortunately by the time the Germans got a hold of the blends, it had become almost impossible to purchase varietal Turkish tobacco, and Syrian Latakia was nearly unavailable (and most blenders had substituted Cyprian Latakia).

So it has not been the same for years.

The Germans do make a good product. But there is something distinctly missing.....

The smell of Jock.


Mmmmmmmmm.

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THEY ARE BEASTS

No, this is not lashon horo - I mean it in a good sense. I guess.


This is about pipe tobacco - or actually, it's about smokers talking about pipe tobacco, and ripping into a well-respected blend with poetry and venom. Pipesmokers, as you may have guessed, are a remarkably opinionated bunch, and often penny-pinching tightwads to boot. So imagine what their reaction is when they believe they've just bought a tin of tobacco that they will never want to smoke again.

Petulant and childish.

But also brutal and eloquent.


As the small selection of quotes below will illustrate.[All examples lifted from http://www.tobaccoreviews.com/index.cfm - a website where a number of different subscribers go on and on ad puke about tobacco. Some of them wish to educate, some to egoflate, and some to praise. Others are sheerly unreadable.]


The quotes are all about pipe-tobacco mixtures from Charles Ratray, a fine old company from Perth in Scotland, recently revived by the Germans. The name of the mixture which is reviewed heads each selection of quotes. These are actually very fine tobaccos, but they just didn't work for the reviewers. Who are of course convinced that they are right, any idea of degustibus non disputandem est be damned.
Enjoy.


3 NOGGINS"Smoked in the evening, it is just plain boring... "
"A strong moist tobacco that burns hot and harsh."
"I found nothing positive here and for the price, this was a total disappointement. "
"It gets tiresome very soon."

7 RESERVE"If you have enough tastebuds left to enjoy a well behaved, tasty, top quality mild English blend, then pick up a tin and give it a whirl."
"Denuded of any aggression, a pleasant smoke though in the latter part of the day one searches for something a little more assertive."
"Save your money this one is a real stinker. "

ACCOUNTANT'S MIXTURE
"I am not sure that this tobacco or any other is just cause for vulgarity; however pipe smoking is no longer exclusively for gentlemen. "
"I can't believe Rattray would allow this to be sold with their name on it - this is a perfect example of how shit in a tin will sell with the right name on it. "
"I don't dislike it. "
"This is as dull and boring as anything you can imagine. A grey taste, with very little variations or pleasant notes. "

BLACK MALLORY
"The Virginia is harsh and the nicotine level stronger than one would imagine."
"Wonderful to smoke while you guzzle your dad's expensive single-malt."

BROWN CLUNEE
"Brown Clunee, Old Gowrie and Hal O' the Wynd are morning, afternoon and evening smokes respectively - all three are delicious examples of its genre; why the darker stoved Marlin Flake pierces like a cornered porcupine ( ) is a mystery. "
"There is nothing of any great interest here."
"One of the most anonymous blends I've ever tried."


HIGHLAND TARGE"This is a decent tobacco, unquestionably better than a lot of German blends out there, but I certainly will not purchase more."
"It is difficult to tell what this blend attempts to be."
"It is bland and has virtually no character. Aren't there enough bland rip-off blends already?"

JOCK'S MIXTURE
"Jock's Mixture is like drinking a light beer. I know what it is when I taste it, but when I smoke it in bunches, all it does is make me pee."
"Yet another shit in a tin blend from Rattray. After smoking Marlin Flake, HOTW and Ol Gowrie, Its hard to believe the same company puts their name on this vomitous abomination."
"Another totally insipid light English/Scottish mixture from Rattray."

PROFESSIONAL MIXTURE
"I tried it and was not pleased - nearly burnt the nose hair right out of my head."
"Variations on the theme of dullness - examples of very uninspiring tobaccos. "
"The flavor is bland to the point of boredom, absolutely monochromatic and reminding of burning paper."

RED RAPAREE
"Uniquely harsh compared to any other English or Oriental mixture."
"The tin aroma had a distinctively unpleasant smoky sourness to it, and the tobacco itself was damp and greasy. "
"A very peculiar smoke"
"My German Shepherd hates the smell but loves the way it smokes."



That last one says it all, doesn't it?

I wonder if the dog also likes his dram of an evening.

And a dog is, after all, a man's best friend. Those two must have a wonderful bond.

TOBACCO INDEX


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