As mentioned in an item in the soon to be defunct News page a few days ago, a new blend in the Old London Series is being readied for release. We’re all hoping to have it out in time for introduction at the CORPS show in Richmond in October. Those who read the news item may recall that I’d mentioned a contest. I know I’m asking for trouble with this, but here it is.

First, a little about the blend. This one has somewhat less Latakia than Quiet Nights, though the inclusion of more orientals and a deep red virginia backbone gives it a dark and rich presence. I’d call it a medium latakia mixture, with a very classic taste profile and a wonderful aroma. It’s more earthy and savory than sweet, and the orientals provide a lingering, fragrant smoke. It’s not as heavy as Westminster, not as tangy as Chelsea Morning. I’d think of it as orbiting the same planet as Charing Cross or Kensington without being really like either of them. It’s a wonderful addition to the series. I’ve smoked this one at all times of the day, but it seems most ideal for afternoons. If I were to attach it to the weather, it would be a crisp autumn day.

Like Chelsea Morning, this one is produced from whole leaf that has been stripped, blended, pressed and mellowed in blocks. The blocks are then sliced and tumbled to ribbons. This way of blending is one of the characteristic features of the Old London Series. The tobaccos are given a chance to get to know one another before being cut, and being cut together provides a consistency that’s more difficult to achieve with tobaccos that are blended as ribbons. It’s the way a lot of the old, classic blending houses did it in years past.

On to the contest. This one doesn’t have a name, as you’ve probably figured out, and it needs one. The “Not Contest” for Quiet Nights was so much fun, at least for me, I figured I’d do something very slightly more formal for this one. And, of course, there are prizes!

Simple Rules

1. The contest begins immediately, and will close on Sunday, 19th September, 2010, at 11:59PM. This gives me some time to make my selections and get the labels done.
2. Only one entry per person. This means one name, in one comment, so give it some thought before you post.
3. Your entry must have both the name, and a brief explanation of why you think it’s a good one. Don’t write a novel where a couple of sentences will do. Try to keep it under 50 words.
4. Entries must be posted as comments to this article. If you email them to me, they won’t be considered. Yes, this means that everyone will see your entry, but this will help to eliminate duplicate entires.
5. In case there is a duplicate, the first entry will take precedence, so read the previous entries first. This is also an encouragement to enter early, especially if you think you’ve got the killer name.
6. The name must not be in use, nor have been in use by another company for a tobacco product.
7. Winners will be selected by me at the contest’s end.

I think that’s it. I’ll judge the entries without mercy or malice based on several factors. (The following is meant to be light hearted, even a bit droll, so don’t take it too seriously.)

Consider the series (Old London), the names of the other blends in it, and the loose description of the blend written above. It doesn’t have to have a place associated with it, or a time, but the name should convey a feeling.

Obscure references are always fun, but if something is so obscure that you’re the only person on the globe who has any hope of knowing why it’s a good name, it’s probably not going to win. Sure, you can explain it with your entry, but that’s not ending up on the tin, so the rest of the world would remain clueless.

If the name is too long, or difficult to pronounce, it’s not likely to make the first cut. Welsh is lovely, but most of the world uses vowels somewhat less sparingly, so the consonant clusters would probably seem impenetrable to them. Sure, you could explain how to pronounce it … see the previous paragraph.

Short is sweet. A name that takes as long to say as it does to smoke a bowl probably isn’t a good idea. Instead of naming a blend Nightwatch, say, I decide to call it The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch, the original title of Rembrandt’s well-known painting. The tobacco world would soon be ablaze with Monty Pythonesque dialogues. Imagine the following scene in your local tobacconist’s:

Tobacconist: “May I help you?”

Customer: “Hello, my good man. I would like to buy two tins of The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. Do you have any in stock?”

Tobacconist: “No, I’m sorry, sir, we’re fresh out of The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. We do have some Westminster, though.”

Customer: “Westminster is lovely, but I’m after something just a bit less robust, and I have been dying to try The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch since I read of its release in the Briar & Leaf Chronicles.”

Tobacconist: “How about Chelsea Morning? Or, Quiet Nights, perhaps? They’re also part of the Old London Series, and we’ve just got our delivery.”

Customer: “Well, I will have two Chelsea Mornings for now. Do you know when you’ll be receiving a suply of The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch?”

Tobacconist: “I just called the distributor this morning asking about our order of The Company of Frans Banning Cocq and Willem van Ruytenburch. Apparently, it is currently out of stock. It’s been quite popular, and many people have been asking for it…”

The name should have some presence to it, and be easy to remember. Aardvark’s Holiday isn’t going to make the cut. (Yes, I’ve clearly gone completely mental. Now, it’s your turn.) And, it should be in good taste. I’m just sayin’.

The Prizes - Four Winners

1. First prize - Two tins of the new blend, plus one each of Chelsea Morning and Quiet Nights, not to mention fame and immortality. The guy who named Maltese Falcon is still all gushy over that.
2. Second prize - One tin each of the new blend, Chelsea Morning and Quiet Nights.
3. Third prize - Two tins of the new blend.
4. Fourth prize - One tin of the new blend.

Most importantly, have some fun with it, but not too much. I look forward to reading the entries.

-glp

When I was a young pipester, a relative newcomer to the fold, I was always deeply intrigued by The Celebrated Bengal Slices. There just wasn’t anything else quite like it. The rich, wonderful tobacco, served in those beautiful little black, red and gold tins had the deep Latakia flavours that I loved, and a beautiful pressed virginia sweetness, and exotic oriental spice, all harmoniously joined together and augmented with a delightfully subtle, artfully and precisely applied floral note. (To be clear, this is NOT the aromatic version, which was, even to my inexperienced mind back then, an abomination against all things sacred.) Legend has it that this was Balkan Sobranie in cake form, and I’m not going to dispute that. In fact, everything that I’ve learned about this blend in recent years has provided more credence to the claim.

The story, briefly, is that Sobranie House, wishing to take advantage of the success of Smoker’s Haven’s Krumble Kake (which Sobranie produced for them) decided to market their own version, made unique by the addition of a special topping. Though the blend became somewhat popular, it was always eclipsed by the overwhelming stardom of the better known and more widely available Balkan Sobranie mixtures.

Once Sobranie House shuttered, manufacture of the Smoker’s Haven blends was transferred to J.F. Germain & Son on the Channel Island of Jersey, while the tiger’s production was moved briefly to Denmark. The Danish-made product was still excellent, and remained something of a cult classic, but it was different enough from the original, I suspect, to impact sales. In the mid- to late-1980s, the blend was summarily discontinued, never to be seen again, while Krumble Kake continues, to this day, to enjoy great success.

There is something about Bengal Slices that still engages me on very deep levels. It’s not just the flavours and the room note of the tobacco, but the whole presentation. The beautifully elegant tin, the perfectly stacked thick slices, the amazing aroma that tantalizes as soon as the tin is opened. Unlike many lovers of English mixtures, I don’t really lament the passing of Balkan Sobranie, though I know I’m supposed to. There are many excellent tobaccos available today that fill that particular niche. But I do very much miss Bengal Slices. It was always, to me, something a little decadent, something special, even opulent. Fortunately, I have, over the years, squirreled away a few tins, and, it’s always a real treat to open one, which I recently did.

After all these years — I’m guessing this one to be from the 1970s —  the Latakia has softened somewhat, has given up some of its edge, and the additional scent has integrated more completely with the rest of the tobaccos, adding a little baroque ornamentation to the overall experience, without being in any way ostentatious or overbearing, and subtly enhances what would otherwise be just a really good mixture. It’s dark and opulent, a tobacco that Carvaggio might have painted. I can’t claim that I really remember how it was in its youth, but age has been very, very good to this. The thick slices have become almost completely black, with the occasional glint of red or deep brown shooting through the darkness. It is, in a word, magnificent in every way, and how often can we honestly say that about any tobacco, past or present?

The Celebrated Bengal Slices may no longer be produced, and there is nothing that can really take its place, but, at least until my small supply runs out, it will continue to be celebrated.

Marty’s site does not archive his editorials, and I thought this wonderfully reasoned piece deserved a “spot” where it might be preserved, so I asked him for, and was given, permission to reproduce it here, to remain in the archives for as long as this site may exist.

—glp

17th July, 2010

Regular visitors have come to learn that they can rely on this page for unerring directives on how to live their lives. (I apologize to those with strong religious or philosophical orientations for having, undoubtedly, created a conflict as to whom they should consult in their quotidian activities.) Recently, we’ve been able to recommend, for instance, what under pants to buy and we could just as easily field questions about where to get socks.

Today, though, I’m going to veer off that path and discuss pipes. I wouldn’t normally go there (people, me included, prefer to play to their strengths, not their weaknesses) but a long-time, smart Pipe Man brought forth an issue that deserves attention. It was during our Pipe & Pint Thursday and as at most discussions between pipe people, the name Dunhill came up.

It was then that Mark made mention of the fact that recent ads ostensibly promoting Dunhill pipes don’t even mention the name “Dunhill.” The ad only refers to the “White Spot.”

The unsubtle message is that the company that now owns Dunhill, Richemont, wants to distance itself from tobacco, tobacco use and mostly tobacco users. They are not going to have the name of a company they own, Dunhill, associated with tobacco use. This goes far in explaining why we no longer can find Dunhill tobacco blends, a staple for almost 100 yrs. We are, to clarify their exact position on this topic, the kind of whore they want to sleep with but whom, in the light of day, they will not be seen with and definitely not bring home to introduce to their parents. (If you don’t care to waste your time looking up Richemont, they own brands like Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, IWC, Piaget and other top watch companies, and other luxury good makers.)

As the whore (metaphorically speaking, only) who is providing the service, I can tell you that I am mighty insulted by that behavior…for a couple of reasons. One, of course, is the fact that it is smokers who have been more than just instrumental in providing the clientèle that made Dunhill a name of international renown. In return, for decades and decades, Dunhill proudly owned up to making and selling smokers articles of quality. (They are now just a brand name and make nearly nothing for smokers, as far as I can tell.) Now, they only want our money, but not our actual presence in their stores, which either no-longer exist, or exist but don’t sell smoker’s articles.

The 2nd reason I feel insulted is that they did not think we smokers, whom Richemont must think of as second class mentalities, would be able to discern, or react, to this kind of snub and we would continue to patronize their brand from the outside “To Go” window because we are not allowed into the store. If this reminds you of how Afro-Americans felt in Jim Crow America, you are on to something.

Considering that the current output of Dunhill hardly sends we pipe geeks into paroxysms of joy any longer (tobacco blender Joe Lankford spent hours washing the red stain out of his new Dunhill’s shank before he would dare smoke it, as is often the case with a new Peterson; they’re probably both made by the same bowl-dunking company) we can let the company lie in its own muck; no action is necessary. What must be irritating to the parent company, however, is the large business done in second-hand Dunhills. The sales and popularity of those pipes can’t add to the coffer of the company today. Tough.

Keep your eyes open for “White Spot” ads and then you can sneer and spit. That’s what I now do.

—Marty

Some tobacco manufacturers collect their tailings, the little bits of blended tobacco that are left over after packaging, and sell them as bargain blends. You never know what’s going to be in them, and they’ll never be the same twice, but they’re cheap, and some smokers enjoy the adventure. Me? Not so much.

What would happen, say, if one of my accidental “blends” turned out to be the most fantabulous blend ever produced, and dozens or even tens of dozens of enthusiasts from around the globe - a massed hoard of the world’s pipe smokers bought it, loved it, ran out of it, and then arrived, pitchforks and torches in hand, pounding clenched fists angrily upon my door, demanding more of last month’s Bert’s Blend. (Bert was the name of the chimney sweep played by Dick van Dyke in Marry Poppins, in case you’ve forgotten. It seems a fitting sobriquet for such a blend.) As I’d never be able to reproduce it, my sometimes vivid imagination can easily paint the ensuing doom drenched nightmares of finding myself pilloried in the village square at dawn, being pummeled by bushels of rotting fruit and pouches of Mixture 79. (I wonder if anyone remembers how to actually pillory someone.)

An unlikely scenario? Maybe. Consider the following tale of one of my earliest blends, one from my Drucquer days, the almost completely hitherto unknown and completely accidental Byzantine Mixture. (No, you will never find this on ebay.)

While at Drucuqer’s, working on the formula for what was ultimately to become Sublime Porte (which later evolved into Silk Road, and later into Samarra, each a subsequent reinterpretation of its predecessor, each flying a different brand’s flag), there were dozens of trials, each anywhere between 10g and 100g. Most of them were pretty good, but not quite what I was envisioning for a finished product, and being wholly inexperienced at the blender’s art and science at the time, I faced the development through blind trial and error, informed only by the fact that I’d been assembling the shop’s other mixtures, like a human mixmaster, for some time. I’d change one component, and taste, then another, and taste again. This approach is confounded somewhat by the fact that a blend is often remarkably different when first blended than it is even a few hours after the fact, not to mention what happens after weeks in a jar, or when toasted, stoved, steamed, or otherwise manipulated.

I learned a great deal in those weeks, about how tobacco works, about the ways different varieties of leaf interact with one another, about how to approach the work of blending them, about what went well with what, and, more importantly, what didn’t. It was a great beginning, and it yielded a pretty good result; Sublime Porte was tuned right, on the shelves, and people were buying and liking it. It was my first, start from scratch, commercial blend, done sometime in the early 1980s. It turned out to be a fine blend, and something of a hit for the shop.

But, there was this other thing, this jar of tailings; a glass testament to one blenders trials and efforts, not his craft, and certainly not yet his art. The leftovers of each and every experiment were sequestered in a large apothecary jar with a screw-on metal lid. After all the weeks of wild exploration, I couldn’t even guess what that jar actually contained. Latakia, yes; a few different orientals, perique, many grades of virginias, dark and light cavendish tobaccos, brown and white burleys, even. It was a kitchen sink blend with a London accent.

And, this accidental blend turned out to be really, really good - rich, complex, and tragically, owing to the fact that this was long before I’d learned to record everything when developing a blend, absolutely impossible to reproduce. (My lab notebooks, now, are rather more complete and disciplined than the 3×5 cards, Post-It notes, used envelopes and cocktail napkins on which I was inclined to record things in those days.)

I labeled the jar, Byzantine Mixture, and left it behind when I left Drucquer’s employ - again. (I worked at the shop under three different owners - this was the second one.) Somewhere along the way, that jar found itself buried and dusty somewhere in the back room. Can’t blame the shop owner. Why put something on the tasting bar that can’t be reproduced and sold? But, that’s not the end of the story.

A few years later, a friend of mine had taken over as manager of the shop, and while doing a little housekeeping, he’d found some jars of old tobacco in the back room, mostly blends that had been discontinued for one reason or another. Being the curious sort, he tasted all of them them, and found one particularly to his liking. I was visiting him at the shop one day when he was smoking that blend.

“What are you smoking? It smells fantastic.”

“It’s something I found in the back. I have no idea what it is, but it’s labeled Byzantine Mixture. I can’t find any record of it in the books.”

Before telling him the story, before revealing the secrets of the blend, I asked to try it.

“I think there might an ounce or two left. I’ve been smoking quite a bit of it…”

I filled my pipe and struck a match; it was fabulous, rendered even richer, riper and more complex by the passing of time, and I was reminded, just a little, of a Zen koan about tigers, a cliff, and a perfectly ripe strawberry.

A man walking across a field encountered a tiger. He fled, the tiger chasing after him. Coming to a cliff, he caught hold of a wild vine and swung himself over the edge. The tiger sniffed at him from above. Terrified, the man looked down to where, far below, another tiger had come, waiting to eat him. Two mice, one white, one black, little by little began to gnaw away at the vine. The man saw a luscious strawberry near him. Grasping the vine with one hand, he plucked the strawberry with the other. How sweet it tasted!

Pipe smoking tigers. I keep better notes, now.

-glp

Some of the tobaccos being branded today with old, established names are a good example. And, yes. I’m about to rant a bit.

Some of these “recreations” are fine tobaccos, to be sure. They taste good, smoke well, are carefully made, and well presented. They are just nothing like the originals, the real thing. If they were called something else, I would likely have no trouble with them, but when I see those old labels, and those old names, very specific expectations are formed, based on my experience with the originals, and not one of the new ones comes close to meeting those expectations. So, as good as they may be, I cannot seem to get past the cognitive dissonance that’s created by the differences.

Whenever I think about the past, it just brings back so many memories.

-Steven Wright

I have significant issues with many, if not most, hell, if not all of these recreated classics. Three Nuns, for instance, is NOT Three Nuns if it has no perique in its formulation, and the current manufacturer of the blend admits there is no perique in it. Huh? It may be a fine tobacco, today, but Three Nuns, it ain’t.

Some of the German-made “Scottish” tobaccos, too, bear almost no similarity to the originals they replace, which were made by two houses concurrently, both considered by many veterans of the pipe to have been the finest blenders of tobacco in the weed’s long history. Nor do the modern branded “Balkan” blends taste like the originals, but that’s been going on for a very long time. Then, there’s the Dunhills that everyone is on about, and, the list goes on. We’ll each have our blends that have changed through changes in manufacturers, changes in ingredients, cheapening of products motivated by profits, not by taste. Are we being duped? Sort of.

This phenomenon isn’t limited to tobaccos, of course. When Heinz bought Lea & Perrins, they mucked up the Worcestershire sauce to the point where it barely recognizable. Corn syrup? No malt vinegar? One can only wonder what else they’ve done behind the labeling requirements. The real thing is still available in Europe, fortunately, at least for now, so all is not completely lost in that department, but what of our loved and lost tobacco blends?

Bean counters and shareholders should not be utilized as the arbiters of taste. But, apparently, at least with the big firms, that’s exactly the case.

I’ve often been asked if I could recreate some of my old blends, using different leaf. The answer is, of course, yes, but they wouldn’t be the same, and I would have to call them something else. There’s just no way I could do anything else. If nothing else, it would confuse me to open a tin of something called Renaissance, only to find something different in the tin, something that did not taste like what the label says it is.

So, for those of us fortunate enough to have smoked the real things, we can legitimately pine for what is no longer made, despite new blends that wear the old livery. For those of us fortunate enough not to have had them, we can enjoy the newly produced versions, without the challenge of overcoming expectations wrought by experiences that can no longer be recreated. I’m not 100% convinced that’s an advantage, really, though it may be of some consolation. For me, I’m afraid, history has dealt me a hand of four aces of skepticism when approaching anything that claims to be a recreation.

As pipesters, we’ve got a dizzying variety of fabulous blends from which to choose. Some are modern, others, more traditional in style. Some have the potential to become tomorrow’s classics, but let’s all hope that they remain what they are over time. If not, the dissonance, the lament, the Remembrance of Things Past, will continue, as it likely has from the beginning of time.

Things is what they is.

-glp

(As always, your comments are welcome.)