(Reprinted from NASPC’s The Pipe Collector, Vol.9 No.5, October 2001)

The piece “Myth of Brand and Maker in Pipe Smoking?” is dead-on the money. Great smoking pipes do not have to cost a small fortune. I feel that the myth largely arises because of the financial vested interest the pipe owner has in his Dunhill ODA or Larsen Pearl or whatever the pipe aficionado’s folly is. Let’s face it, it looks like a $750 pipe by God so it had better smoke like a $750 pipe. And lo and behold, it does. It’s tough for anyone, let alone a pipester, to admit that the purchase wasn’t worth its smoke. A Cadillac won’t get you from Columbus to Nashville any quicker than a Hyundai, but, for many, the added cost in the Caddy is well worth the esthetic value they receive. And so it is with a finely crafted briar pipe—they’re beautiful to their owner, but everything else being equal, will smoke no better than a $50 pipe. Poppycock you say!

I contend that an exceptionally grained and hand-carved piece of wood will smoke no better than a manufacturer’s second. Fred gives in too easily--the briar has got little to do with it. Certainly briar being harvested from the different regions will be nurtured under different soil and climate differences, as do our various tobaccos, be it bright, burley, or oriental. However, the tobacco is burning in a pipe, and we’re going to taste and smell something. Soon after a thin cake has accumulated in the bowl, I contend, the wood does nothing to affect the taste, merely acting as a combustion chamber.

I agree with several other writers’ views, including Reiner Barbi, that beyond a certain point (typically 30-50 years) the age of the burl adds little to nothing in improving the quality of the smoke; akin, if you will, to a sandblasted or rusticated pipe providing a cooler smoke. But hey, if the marketing hype makes you happy, buy, buy, buy, and be a more content smoker. Parenthetically, two well-respected English pipe-making firms known to me and few others undertook a project some years ago to hire a biologist/agronomist to investigate the feasibility of growing cultured or planted briar. The study concluded it could be done, producing quality ebauchons the likes of which are suitable to most ardent pipe smokers. So there!

Alas, I’m afraid that Mr. Hanna strays too far in allowing the aficionado some respite. The facts are clear to me that many of our beloved colleagues and friends in this trade are rather anal, as becomes the case within many hobbies, and in the case of pipes are smoking(read: buying) nomenclature. Their tastes are swayed, and difficult shall be the task to separate fact from fiction. Alas, I too fall into this rather dismal category and buy silly things that seem to make me happy and the wife stupefied. Such is human nature.

But more important, and in deference to the wonderful analogies Fred provides to the more exacting science of wine tasting, there are other quite plausible——but hardly scientific——explanations as to why “baccy” does for some while not for others. The three contributing factors are geometry, combustion, and cake. The age and quality of the briar as far as I’m concerned are a static: That is to say, most of what we connoisseurs buy has relatively sound merits in regards to aging, be it air-cured or to a much lesser extent oil-cured, as in Ashton’s fine work, and apparently not so with Dunhill any longer——a shame I say, but I’ll have to ask my fellow members at the Pipe Club of London for the skinny on that dirt.

There is so much that is happening in the combustion process, though no one will ever be able to figure it out; it will remain a mystery, and frankly I like it that way. Look, the variables, so many variables, that play on the combustion process will boggle the mind and, that’s correct, the taste buds. Only a wild animal has the sensory perception to figure it out, but that opossum that raids my trash every Thursday night smoking his Stanwell second always scurries when I fire my .22 at it, so I’ll never get the chance to ask him to explain it to me. Think about this: relative humidity, temperature, tobacco blend, rate of puffing, wind velocity, venturi affect down the pipe bowl, tobacco moisture, relative density of tamped bowl fill, degree of tamping during smoke, and on and on. And we’ve not even discussed those of us who load different styles and brands of tobaccos into our pipes.

There’s also no question about the fact that our beloved cake plays a part. How much? I don’t know. But that cake definitely heats up as the tobacco burns, so it must be contributing something, maybe some essential oils or wisps of some other subjective essence: possibly camel dung, plausible eau de Captain Morgan.

As for geometry, I’m talking about the shape and size of the bowl——the combustion chamber. The dimensions will affect the passage of air in and out of the burning zone and thus, to some degree, the taste. Beyond this, straight or bent, large bore or normal bore stems will add little to no affect to smoke taste.

Tobacco blenders work more or less precisely with a tobacco blend’s sugar, nicotine and ash levels (burn rate). The quest for a consistent smell can lead the blender astray, as this is a very subjective area. The leaf is always changing, as is the blender’s nose. And, as is the recurring case I’m sure, there is no way for a blender to perfect batch-to-batch consistency from year-to-year. They may come close; they may not. But it’s always labeled the same on the tin. Perfection, or shall I say consistency, is the blender’s carrot-on-a-stick. So where do we go from here? Relax, smoke a pipe, c’est mieux. Keep buying those ODAs and Pearls. Be happy, it’s a hobby. Be content that your wife thinks you’re nuts messing with this stinky stuff and spending no more than $20 on a pipe, rather than chasing skirts (apologies to pipesters of the fairer persuasion). If you feel more comfortable paying $250-plus for a satisfying smoke, more power to you--support your local tobacconist. But don’t tell me my Stanwell second (an inside joke with NASPC/SPC member Ed L.) won’t taste as well——everything else remaining equal, of course. As for me, it’s the gourd calabash. There is no way on God’s green earth that briar will ever expose the true rhapsody of the stinking weed better than in a gourd/meerschaum pipe. And it must be a classic English tobacco, that is to say, absolutely no cutesy casings. Those who prefer American or Danish aromatics are smoking junk food tobacco. Opinionated you say, but just wait until my forthcoming book is released in 2002 (The History of The Calabash Pipe was actually completed in the early spring of 2006 and released months later at the Chicagoland Pipe Show).