Brad Pitt is never going to win a Best Actor Oscar. Plain white rice tops very few lists of favorite foods. And you rarely see Red Virginia all by itself in a tin of tobacco. These are all things that are good in ensemble but alone tend to be rather dull. There are just a…
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When you are a collector sometimes something lands in your hoard that your hand just shies away from when you look for something new. Maybe it’s a bottle of brandy you bought despite being a bourbon and scotch only kind of drinker. Or you ended up with one, or more likely twenty, games in your…
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I don’t believe I’ve reviewed a Scottish Blend on Simply Stogies yet. Scottish blends don’t get much notice. Scottish blends aren’t even advertised as such. Are you a fan of Dunhill (now Peterson) 965 or Seattle Pipe Club’s Plum Pudding? Well, you like Scottish Blends. A Scottish Blend is simply an English Blend – Virginia,…
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Frequent readers will throw up their hands and ask ‘What! Another Brown Virginia?’ New readers will ask ‘What even is Brown Virginia?’ As we’ve found in previous reviews, Brown Virginias are another name for Orange Virginias, which are in the middle of the stock, above the yellow Virginias at the base, and below the Red…
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For many pipe smokers, Cornell and Diehl, despite their 400+ blends, equates to strong burly blends. Haunted Bookshop, Big’N’Burley, Old Joe Krantz, and their Burley Flakes are recognized for being bold, rough and tumble, and unapologetically strong. However with 40 burley blends and counting, there is a wider range of flavors C&D offers. Among these…
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Growing up my family traveled constantly. We drove from the east coast to the west, from the gulf to Edmonton, up and down the rockies, blue ridge mountains, catskills, and sierras. Invariably we’d pass a truck stop that was bustling and my mom would say “Must be good if they’re that busy”. Solani Virginia Flake…
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Burley lovers are the redheaded stepchildren of the pipe tobacco family. Do you like English? There are over 250 readily available options for you. Fancy Virginia? Over 300. Just a Virginia Flake? You still have about 100 options. Okay you want a pure Virginia? You still have dozens of tins and handful of widely distributed…
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In the last decade HP Lovecraft has had a revival. Once relegated to the black fingernail polish set, now even your mom and maybe your baby is passingly familiar with Cthulhu and the concept of the Eldritch horror. And maybe why the person behind the expansive literary exploration of dread is not to be celebrated….
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Tinkering with your pipe tobacco is something that occurs naturally for pipe smokers. You begin with thinking that two of your tobaccos might taste better together than apart. You build or buy a press to turn your ribbon into cake. Maybe you start burping your jars of Virginia when you hear it speeds up the…
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Longtime readers know that this time of year, like many pipe smokers, I’ll dig through my cellar to find the smokiest blend I haven’t yet reviewed, smoke it all winter, and drop a review once the snow starts melting. Ashton Artisan’s blend is a highly regarded heavy Latakia English blend. It gets spoken in the…
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