The Briar & Leaf Chronicles

Tobacco Reanimation - Bringing it Back to Life

14th May, 2008: Posted by glpease in Technique, Science

The other day, I was cleaning up part of my desk, when my eye fell on an opened tin of State Express London Mixture that had been hiding for a while. This tin dates to sometime in the 1980s, by my best reckoning, and I’d first opened a few months ago. I had smoked a few bowls, taken a few notes, and then had an out-of-sight, out-of-mind experience with it, as it found itself buried under a stack of papers and a few other tins of tobacco - also opened and drying out.

As I always do, or almost always, after I’d opened it, I’d put a double layer of foil over the open top, pressing the lid back in place. This works well for keeping the contents of these flat tins in good smoking condition for a week or three, and I’d fully intended to finish the tin within that time, but the best laid plans, and all that. Had I known I was going to forget about it, the tobacco would have been put into a jar for safe-keeping. On the other hand, I often forget to label these little jars, and once they get shuffled from place to place, usually separating themselves from the original tins on which they are sitting, with the tins ending up on one side of the office, and the jars on the other, I forget what they contain. Maybe it’s a blessing that I forgot to jar this one. But, how did it fare after several months of sitting? Read more…»

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Home from Chicago

9th May, 2008: Posted by glpease in Pipes, Enjoyment

After a fantastic weekend with far too much fun and far too little sleep (my dear friend Tom says, “You can sleep when you’re dead”), and an amazing thunderstorm, I’ve returned to the slightly more mundane California sunshine. Monday night, I couldn’t sleep at all, so I went down to the shop to restore a pipe that I’d gotten at the show. Yesterday, I napped. Twice. Today, I begin to feel human, but only just, so it’s time to share some thoughts from the show, beginning with a single word. Read more…»

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A World of Choices

15th April, 2008: Posted by glpease in Enjoyment

Some years ago, I was having lunch with a friend, a classical pianist with a penchant for the avant-garde. We always had lively conversations, and hours would fly by in what seemed minutes. He was telling me about the challenges of some of the latest pieces he was adding to his already impressive repertoire.

It was always a joy listening to his insights into the music, though, at the time, I didn’t share his passion for much of the modern 20th Century works. It was all Baroque-and-Roll for this longhair, whilst my shave pated friend, with the countenance of a Zen monk, was a gently walking lexicon of Hindemuth, Shoenberg, Arvo Pårt, Philip Glass, none of which I really ever got my musical brain wrapped round. Read more…»

4 Comments »

The Pipe Whisperer - Part I

22nd January, 2008: Posted by glpease in Pipes

For quite a few years, this little Charatan Special has been hiding in its box, feeling bad about its broken stem. It had one of those peculiar Charatan “Double Comfort” mouthpieces that had gotten its fingers slammed in the glove box or something, snapping it right at the junction between the first and second comforts. Truth be told, I’ve never really liked this style of mouthpiece. It’s always seemed like a lot of extra effort in an attempt to solve a problem that doesn’t exist. The result is a stem that is neither particularly comfortable, nor particularly attractive, and the removal of so much material makes it demonstratively weaker at the junction of the additional “step.” (For those who don’t know what the “Double Comfort” mouthpiece is, it’s a stepped saddle-bit, cut quite flat, with the thinnest section just behind the button where the smoker’s teeth clench it, and a thicker section making up the balance of the saddle.) Read more…»

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Nothing Special?

27th September, 2007: Posted by glpease in Pipes

About three Saturdays ago, I was gazing at the latest offerings presented in the very-nearly-weekly update from Briar Blues. A lot of pipes caught by eye, as they always do, but one grabbed on with whitened knuckles, and refused to let go. I kept closing the window, only to open it again and. I wrote Mike about it, asking if he thought I’d like it. Mike and I have been friends for years, and he knows my tastes well. I can always trust him to render an honest, if understated opinion in full candor. I believe his response was something along the lines of, “It’s an okay pipe, but nothing special.”

I asked if he was trying to dissuade me from the pipe. “Yes, I suppose I am. It’s a nice piece, but you’ll probably find it heavy and awkward. Your call, though.” Almost his exact words. My call. I guess, really, it always is. Read more…»

7 Comments »

Just Old Tobacco…

10th August, 2007: Posted by glpease in Tobacco, Enjoyment

Old tobacco is amazing stuff. I mean the really old stuff, the vintage tins that people talk about and pay astronomical sums of money for. By now, most of us are cellaring tins of our favored blends for the blessings that time bestows upon them, and, of course, we should keep doing this while we continue to explore the pleasures of getting to know tobaccos in their juvenescence, and at various stages of their development. In fact, some enjoy their smoke most when it’s still possessing the exuberance of youth, and some tobaccos seem to lend themselves particularly well to being enjoyed while young.

I’m talking about something different, though. I’m talking about those distinguished old blends, long unavailable; those marvelous and revered tobaccos that have been sitting on dusty shelves for years or decades, lying in wait as little hermetically sealed time capsules containing something of both our collective, and our individual pasts. There is sometimes much more in those tins than old weeds. Read more…»

16 Comments »

Robusto - Revival of a Classic?

3rd August, 2007: Posted by glpease in Tobacco

A few weeks ago, I received from a friend a generous sample from a 40+ years old knife lid tin of the venerable Sobranie Virginia #10. The sample was vacuum packed in thick, freezer safe plastic film, and arrived looking more like a Slim Jim than tobacco. My friend had sent email telling me it was on its way, so the anticipation was already in top gear, and the arrival of the little sausage put that anticipation into overdrive.

I didn’t instantly open the sausage-like package, but allowed the suspense to linger a bit longer, waiting for just the right moment to begin the exploration. When I finally slit open the top, fresh air crept in, coaxing just a whiff of the aroma out. One of the things I love most about opening old, puffy tins of vintage tobaccos is that explosion of scent that erupts as soon as the seal is broken. The vacuum-pack robbed me of that, and forced me to work a little harder for my first of what would prove to be many rewards. Sticking a nostril under the bag, I began to tease the still tightly compressed tobacco apart, releasing some of its goodness to the air. Read more…»

9 Comments »

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…»

2 Comments »

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…»

19 Comments »

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…»

4 Comments »

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…»

3 Comments »

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…»

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