On Tobacco

To me, collecting pipes that you don't smoke is like collecting CDs that you don't listen to. It makes no practical sense. So, being a pragmatic collector, my hobby has been fueled with various tobaccos over the year. Some have become favorites, others not. For the most part, I wander around amongst different tobaccos, rarely settling down in one area for long.

The journey has been interesting. My first purchase was a pouch of Captain Black, which I most likely picked up at Walgreen's. After that experience (unsatisfactory), I started purchasing bulk blends from a local brick-and-mortar shop. They were most certainly Lane Limited tobaccos, treated with propylene glycol to increase jar life, and I grew increasingly frustrated with how much of each bowl was lost to the goo-soaked dottle that remained. By this time, I had connected with an online pipe smoker's community and was getting some good referrals on premium blends to try. In the early years, I tried Escudo (too intense), GLP's Haddo's Delight (made my head spin), Peterson's Sweet Killarney (not bad), Blue Note (still one of my favorite aromatics), MacBaren's Plumcake (not a favorite) and Vanilla Cream (still a favorite). I never took a shine to English blends; for some reason, Latakia tastes like soap to me. I did buy a tin of GLPs Piccadilly, which is a mild English blend. It wasn't bad at all. In those early years, I also bought a few better bulk blends from a fellow I knew in Michigan (Guy Wallace of affordablepipes.com) that sold pipes and tobacco. I'm sure there were many other tobaccos that came through my cabinet that I don't even remember.

In buying tinned tobaccos, I discovered they tend to dry out rather fast after you crack the seal. I bought some bail-lidded mason jars--the ones with the rubber seal--and started storing most of my tobacco in them. This made moisture management much easier to accomplish.

One of my jars has the label "Kitchen Sink". Into this jar I pour all my little bits of tobacco that have been left in tins or pouches. This makes "Kitchen Sink" an ever-changing blend, a singular creation that can neither be defined nor recreated. I dip into "Kitchen Sink" occasionally, and it always proves to be a pleasant smoke.

Right now, I have another jar that has two or three different Burley blends mixed together. That Burley concoction seems to bite my tongue rather hard, so I've been trying to attenuate it with some BCA (BCA is a very mild Cavendish that is used rather frequently in bulk blends). I bought a half-pound of BCA before I remembered that it was a Lane Limited tobacco, a brand I swore off years ago (see above). My tobacco inventory is usually limited to 3 or 4 choices. When I finish one or relegate its remnants to the "Kitchen Sink", I go out and look for something else.

The quest for a new favorite continues. I've barely made a scratch on the breadth of tobaccos available, so I figure it's a search that will continue for the remainder of my natural life. Something to look forward to, I say.