The Briar & Leaf Chronicles

Curiously Strong Brand Identity

25th July, 2007: Posted by glpease in Enjoyment

The other day, I was compelled to pick up a couple tins of the Original Celebrated Altoids, the Curiously Strong peppermints that have been an almost constant fixture in my house since I was a lad. I can easily remember the first time I popped three of the little lozenges into my eagerly waiting gob, and thought my head would leave my neck, and rocket into orbit from the rsulting blast of curiously strong peppermint multiplied by three. Lesson learned. Even a single Altoid was intense enough to make the senses take serious notice. Peppermint isn’t a match for capsaicin for a pure incendiary wallop, but it freshens the mouth, settles an upset stomach, and can be pleasantly refreshing. Altoids did their job with aplomb, if not a bomb. Read more…»

Embarcadero - A Point of Departure

2nd July, 2007: Posted by glpease in Tobacco, Stories

As the release of Embarcadero, the newest entry in the Fog City Select approaches - begin looking for it in mid July - I’ve been asked a few questions about it. What was the inspiration for this blend? What did you have in mind? What’s it like? Why Embarcadero?

They’re fair questions, and I had to do quite a bit of probing into some of the dusty bric-a-brac shelves of my mind to come up with something that would pass for reasonable answers; after all, it’s been a few months since I started working on it, and a whole host of synapses have fired since then, or so I’d like to think. Read more…»

2001 - A Tobacco Odyssey

27th April, 2007: Posted by glpease in Tobacco

In an on-line forum, Paul wrote, “There are comments made, here and there, that if you leave a tin of tobacco in your car on a hot day in direct sunlight that it increases the aging process.” I’m sorry to say this just isn’t correct, and, in fact, a lot of fine tobaccos may find themselves ruined, or at least not as good as they should be as a result of this “technique.”

Recently, a friend sent me a little unlabeled sample of something, and asked me what I thought of it. I wasn’t very impressed. I found it overly sweet, out of balance, lacking life, and overall, rather mono-dimensional. I wrote to him, identifying what I thought was in the blend, and sharing my impressions, explaining that the tobacco tasted like it was really over the hill. His response? “It’s 2001 Odyssey, dude.” What? At least I’d identified the components correctly. But, what had happened to the tobacco that I know so well? Had Kubrick returned from beyond to mess with my friend’s 2001 Odyssey? [Sorry… -glp] Read more…»

Fillmore - Almost One Year Later

2nd March, 2007: Posted by glpease in Tobacco

Writing about tobacco is a challenging thing, sometimes. The list of adjectives, those that are appropriate, isn’t infinite, and quite a few of those that are have been overused almost to the point of being completely debased, nearly valueless currency. What does spicy mean? Complex? Rich? Creamy? Certainly, these words all have their meanings, their legitimate value, but, by the gods, even I have been too-frequently guilty of spraying them haphazardly on the wall when I have been too lazy to seek better ones.Yet, here I am, finding a need, or at least a whim, to write something about tobacco, and hoping that in the process of simply doing it, I might find something more fresh to say. If I don’t, I apologize. There’s a limit to how much time I will agonize over this. Read more…»

The Road to Westminster

5th January, 2007: Posted by glpease in Tobacco, Stories

The passage of time can be a strange thing. The engagement we experience with the things of life can dilate time in ways that almost seem drug induced, confounding our sense of rhythmic transit in ways that are inexplicable, producing a sort of temporal dissonance. So it is for me with the history of Westminster’s development, and while it feels like well over a year since I first found myself submerged in this project, it was really only in March of 2006 that I was going at it it full tilt. The background to the project, however, extends much farther in history, in some sense, back to my earliest days of pipe smoking, when a particular tobacco caught my fancy, and hasn’t really let it go. Read more…»

Two Little GBDs

13th November, 2006: Posted by glpease in Pipes

Over the past few months, I’ve managed to acquire a couple of rare GBD 9438s, saddle rhodesians. I love the shape, but only seek out those that are unusual at this point. I’ve been chasing a Granitan and a Rockroot in the shape for years, and finally scored. (For some reason, while the shape is quite common, it seems to be quite rare in these finishes.)

The Rockroot came from a fellow 9438 aficionado, the Granitan from ebay. Both arrived in serious need of some restoration work. The stems were not in great shape, but everything was there to ensure they’d turn into really nice pipes. Last night, suffering from some sort of back trauma of unksnown cause that’s keeping me from being my usual hyperactive self, I sat in front of some mindless flick on the tele (I know - it’s redundant) with sandpaper (400, 800, 1000, 1500, 2000 grit Wetordry) and the pair of stems, and began the work.

Kensington - Three Years After

13th July, 2006: Posted by glpease in Tobacco

The Classic Collection has been around for a little over three years, now. Last week, I pulled one of the first production tins of Kensington out of the cellar to see how it was doing. The tin I grabbed was just a little puffy on the bottom, brining greater enthusiasm to the prospect of exploring its contents. Read more…»

New Blends and Coffee Lust

10th July, 2006: Posted by glpease in Tobacco

For some time, I’ve been working on a couple things behind the scenes. Lots of good have come from the exploration, but one thing in particular, a blend currently code-named Westminster, has really captured my heart. Read more…»

A Few Words about Laurel Heights

23rd March, 2006: Posted by glpease in Tobacco

This is a first. Laurel Heights hasn’t even hit the streets yet, and I’ve already been bombarded with questions about it. The most common one is a little surprising: “Does it contain Latakia?” Certainly, it’s billed as a red Virginia blend. My description of its smoking character doesn’t imply that it’s a Latakia blend. None of the people with whom I’ve shared the prototype, many of whom are die-hard Virginia lovers, have jumped back in shock and awe by the dark an sinister appearance of the tobacco because of some obvious Latakia content. Read more…»

First Bowls - Impressions of a new Will Purdy Pipe

11th November, 2005: Posted by glpease in Pipes

I was working on an article, This Old Pipe, about restoration of vintage briars, when I was derailed by something else; I don’t always have the longest attention span in the world. As I was writing, I was also smoking, really “breaking in” my latest pipe by Will Purdy, and simply HAD to take some time to put a few words on the page about the pipe, its aesthetics, it’s construction, its maker, and its characteristic Purdy smoking qualities. The other thing will just have to wait.

This pipe, one of his “007” models, was one of those unexpected gifts that sometimes arrive to bring some light to a dreary day, and it did that well. It’s a smallish pipe, with a conical bowl, somewhat narrower than Will’s “Martini,” and fitted with one of his exquisite saddle stems in brindle (“Cumberland”) vulcanite. The tobacco chamber, about 19-mm at the top, is drilled almost parabolically, to fit within the constraints of the bowl’s exterior. It’s 29-mm depth provides room for about 3-g of tobacco, just right for a morning’s smoke. Read more…»

Burns the Nose

28th October, 2005: Posted by glpease in Pipes

In the years I’ve been accumulating pipes seriously, my “collection” has undergone many metamorphoses. Even now, it’s more of a collection of collections, than one cohesive entity. I’m not sure it’s every going to have a specific concentration, or even begin to converge upon one, but only time will tell.

In the early days, I was, and still am, fascinated by the bent bulldog and its variants. I set out to acquire a significant collection of the shape, representing as many makers, important and less so, as possible, in as many sizes and variations as I find. The early part of this phase of my collecting was fairly easy. The shape has always been popular among pipe smokers, and makers have responded by making them in respectable numbers. But, the collection began to plateau at a certain point. There were still important pieces to add, but as I already had the easy ones to get, and was finding myself drifting into the thin air of the esoteric, increasing the collection became something that was either going to require a great deal of time, or a great deal of cash - money can almost always be exchanged for time. Finding myself with a shortage of both commodities, I decided to try a different tack. Read more…»

What now, Montgomery?

8th July, 2005: Posted by glpease in Tobacco

It’s unusual for me to write about one of my new blends that’s as young as this one is. I generally wait at least six months to dip into the library to see what’s going on with recent creations. For some reason, though, I couldn’t wait this time. Four months have passed since I put the first production of Montgomery to rest. Four short months. But, the development that has taken place in that narrow span of time is remarkable, and well worth exploring a bit in these pages. Read more…»

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