Pfeifenbox

Back...

Testing Trever (II)

About three weeks ago, I gave you my first impressions of four testing pipes I had received from Trever Talbert in Brittany (see here for the basic outlines of the experiment). Meanwhile, I've smoked each of these pieces over a dozen times and am ready to draw some conclusions. Debunking a pipe myth, Trever's project casts doubt on the notion that a lighter pipe is automatically a better one.

I'm not fully at liberty to tell you what Trever did to the sets of four pipes he sent to Belgian collector Erwin Van Hove and myself. However, I've already disclosed that one pipe in each set (stamped 'D') was purely a placebo - an untreated bowl from the affordable Ligne Bretagne range, which the Talberts produce for budget-conscious smokers. The stummel had enjoyed decades of simple air-curing, but no further enhancements.

Pipes A to C, on the other hand, had been subjected to various, fairly sophisticated procedures, though mostly involving ordinary household substances. Each of these methods had resulted in significant weight loss - most notably in the case of the A pipes, with an average reduction of some 13 percent.

Ironically, both Erwin and I rejected these A pipes almost immediately. It later transpired that they had been given a greatly shortened course of oil-curing - something Trever didn't really expect to work, and which didn't. Lingering traces of oil and other factors produced a violent taste that refused to mellow as time progressed.

Smoke by smoke, B and C showed increasing merit. After a while, the B pipes really took off with Virginia/Perique blends such as Three Nuns, boasting a native bite that truly enhanced the tobacco's natural edge. Likewise, though not quite as symbiotically, my C pipe developed a sweet friendship with Peterson's University Flake - a strong, aromatic blend full of berry tones. Trever says that both methods could be refined to produce a more neutral experience than those delivered by the test pipes. Furthermore, production-grade pipes would have coated bowls to combat any remaining unevenness of taste during break-in. That said, it's hard to believe that B could ever do well with Latakia, for example. While it focuses so well on Virginia/Perique, it tends to blunt anything else.

All in all, both my fellow guinea pig Erwin and I agree with Trever that the untreated Ligne Bretagne bowls (D) offer the best all-round performance. Decades of simple air-curing seem very hard to beat.

"You can tweak the flavour this way or that," says Trever, "but always at the expense of something else… real overall improvements are extremely rare. The problem in the end is that all these techniques are extra time and work and expense, and you've experienced for yourself that none are a great - nor, more importantly, all purpose - improvement over simple air-cured briar."

Weight loss is generally thought invariably advantageous per se, but - as Trever postulates - perhaps "the end results depend a lot more on how you get there than on whether or not the supposed 'bad stuff' is removed from the briar."

Specialist pipes

All the same, the experience raises an intriguing question: Just as certain bowl shapes and sizes are often touted as ideal for flakes or curlies, couldn't the wood itself be preconditioned for a specific type of tobacco? The theoretical answer, as Trever's experiment indicates, is yes. But would the market be interested? As far as I know, that's a test that has yet to be tried. Talbert has an idea up his sleeve that could pre-destine a pipe for just about any desired flavour. But, as he points out himself, such strategies may not be viable in the lower price range, demanding "a lot of attention" for each individual pipe.

Another notable implication of the trial pertains to pipe making itself. Those labouring under the illusion that everything is a) pretty basic, and b) well-known to Dr. Grabow may be surprised to learn that one of the world's finest carvers still finds briar mysterious enough to justify elaborate experiments. Above all, it's interesting to note that Trever Talbert does so with a mind to crack such mysteries - he's not flirting with kismet concepts about the perfidy of wood. What's good for smokers might not always be apparent, but that does not render it inherently inexplicable.

Erwin Van Hove, my fellow lab monkey in this experiment, has been conducting a related survey among well-known carvers, and will hopefully publish the results when he is more certain of them. Without disclosing his findings in detail, I was intrigued to learn that many quality makers can tell within seconds when a raw block is going to deliver a superlative smoker. No, I'm not talking about some blurry sixth sense, here. The artisans Erwin contacted were able to describe the symptoms quite prosaically. Moreover, their collective responses were essentially uncontradictory.

There's quite a lot more to the theories Erwin has been following, and I don't wish to provoke premature publication by betraying their actual gist. But in the current context, his research and Trever's experiment underline that world-class carvers do care and know a lot about smoking properties. Despite the scoffing of egalitarianists in the pipe world, premium makers are not merely concerned with aesthetics, grain and vacuous prestige. Nor are they usually alchemists flouting concocted secrets (though such people do exist to harm the guild's reputation). The cream are dedicated craftsmen seeking to capitalise on what distinguishes them from machines - the ability to accumulate, utilise and improvise on experience.

(Martin Farrent)

(April 18, 2004)

Back...