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After working here at Smokingpipes.com for four months now, my Monday morning routine is pretty well fixed. I walk through the door around 8:30, say hello to Mark as I put my lunch in the mini fridge, hang my hat on the peg in my office, pack a bowl of Early Morning Pipe, and get to work. But last Monday morning, there was a slight variation in my comfortable routine. As I sat down at my desk, I noticed that there was a two-ounce tin of tobacco among the assorted tins that I keep handy that hadn't been there when I left on Friday. I recognized the label as one of G.L. Pease's blends, but quickly realized that the shape of the tin -- a bit taller and more narrow than the modern versions -- marked it as an older vintage. When I looked closer, I realized that this was a tin of Pease's renowned (and unfortunately discontinued) Renaissance. The real treat was when I flipped the tin over to look at the date stamped on the bottom: September 27, 2001. The tin was a gift from our very own Bear Graves, and it marks my latest entrée into one of the pleasures of working here at Smokingpipes and finding myself in the company of folks who've been smoking a pipe far longer than I: the treat of smoking an aged tobacco.
The years have been very kind to this distinguished blend. Smoky, spicy, leathery, and complex, the tobacco produces a room note that calls to mind Ian Fleming's fictional private-card club, “Blades”, in Moonraker (good novel, hilariously bad film), where James Bond defeats the dastardly Hugo Drax in a game of bridge after an evening of haute cuisine, champagne, and fine cigars. More to the point, my experience with this exceptional blend has confirmed for me the importance of developing a cellar. Like most of you, I greatly enjoy shopping for tobacco. The opportunity to try new blends is one of the things that makes our hobby so enjoyable. If you're like me, those new tins taunt us like so many Christmas presents -- the urge to crack them open, if only to sniff, is almost irresistible. But as with so many other things in life, patience offers rewards.
Many of the benefits of building a tobacco cellar are highly practical, beginning with taste. Most tobaccos, especially those with a significant component of Virginias, develop added sweetness and complexity with a few years of age on the tin. No amount of age will turn a bad tobacco into a good one, but I have sampled blends that I regarded as mediocre or unremarkable when they were young, yet that became exceptionally good after four or five years in the cellar. Beyond taste, many blends also burn better and more cleanly with some age compared to when they were freshly tinned. Finally, there is the economic benefit of cellaring tobacco. It's become a bit clichéd, but no less true: tobacco is cheaper today than it's ever going to be. And unlike building a wine cellar, one can assemble a pretty extensive collection of tins at a relatively low cost.
Beyond the practical value of building a cellar, there are romantic reasons to give those tins a little extra time on the shelf. Going back to my tin of Renaissance: In September of 2001, I was one month into my freshman year of college, taking Intro to Western Civilization with a group of guys who became my best friends, the nation was still making sense of the terrorist attack on the World Trade Center, and Black House by Stephen King and Peter Straub sat at number one on the New York Times bestseller list. Smoking a tobacco that had been tinned during that time in my life was a special and surprisingly emotional experience. In one of my favorite scenes in the 2004 film Sideways, Paul Giamatti's character, Miles, explains the reason that he is so captivated by old wines. "I like to think about the life of wine. How it's a living thing. I like how wine continues to evolve, like if I opened a bottle of wine today it would taste different than if I'd opened it on any other day, because a bottle of wine is actually alive." Much the same can be said for a tin of good tobacco.
Tagged in: At Smokingpipes Cellaring G. L. Pease Newsletter Pipe Culture Tobacco
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