What a beautiful day for the pipe club meeting! We met at the home of Eric Stendal in Stittsville in the backyard oasis. We welcomed our new member Felix at this meeting. He brought two very cool pipes to show us – a long church warden pipe made by Vauen, and a really beautiful Savinelli.

There were some munchies, beer, wine, sodas, hard booze, and various types of tobacco to try and sample. Club members even left with some hefty amounts of tobacco to do some further blending and exploration with. Felix was presented with his Ottawa Pipe Club pin.

The star attraction at this meeting was the tin of Samuel Gawith/Danish Pipe Shop Brown Sugar Flake. This tin was gifted to Eric by Geir Arne Håløyger last year in Bodø, Norway. This blend has been regrettably discontinued by Samuel Gawith so it was nice to be able to try the blend to see (a) what we will be missing, and (b) see if it’s something good enough to search to find more of. (Psst…..it is).

We were all loving the aroma and flavour of this blend. It was not overly sweet and you could really taste the Virginia in the blend. If this was going to be around for a while, we would certainly be ordering lots of this particular blend.

How About A Rare English Blend?

Jeremy is new to pipe smoking and was eager to try out an English blend for the first time. Eric went down into his stash and brought out a jar of G.L. Pease’s Ravens Wing from 2004 for him to try. Luc and Felix also had some of this. It was a fantastic follow up to the B.S. Flake. This was a real treat being able to sample this legendary tobacco. With its age, it is a tad dry, but there’s still enough there to get the idea of how stellar this blend was.

The double hit of both Syrian and Cyprian Latakia was forefront on this one. Beefy and still juicy. The sidestream was equally enjoyed by us all as we puffed on this blend.

Jeremy found the Gammel Opland Aquavit from Norway to be to his liking. Same with the Bushmill’s Prohibition Whiskey. This was prepared the way they used to do it back in the days of Prohibition which makes it a really tasty whiskey to drink.

Our Next Club Meeting

Our next meeting in June will be held at Luc’s place in Gatineau. Date and time to be announced soon. If you’ve not been able to make it out yet, we hope to see you at the next meeting. It’s been discussed that a few tins will be offered up to sample and some select cheeses and meats will be on hand. This shouldn’t be missed.