Pipe Tobacco Review: First Days of Spring by Tsuge

• $12.95, 50g tin
• Sample provided by Drew Estate rep

Background

You may recall that some time ago, I wanted to get someone to review pipe tobacco on these blogging pages. I had one person set up to do it…and he had to back out before writing word one. Then I had a second person wanting to work it…and he never seemed to get time to get work done. Then I’ve had a couple others interested…and they faded into the woodwork, too. It’s all left me wondering what it is about pipe tobacco reviewing that scares people. We see no shortage of cigar reviewers on the interwebs…I’ve been doing this about 7 years myself and I’ve seen dozens come and almost as many go…and I don’t even pay that close attention anymore to what everyone else is doing! In the end, I figured I would give this whole pipe tobacco review thing a whirl myself. I may not know as much about pipes as I do cigars, but I know what I like and what I don’t.

As you may know, I recently broke my ankle. I’m stuck at home a little more because of that, but don’t really have more cigars to smoke. At the same time, our local Drew Estate rep dropped off some sample tins of pipe tobaccos they distribute, so I figured this would be a great time to try some new stuff there…and share the experiences with you.

Tsuge pipes and pipe tobacco has been around for a bit…I couldn’t find the company’s website so I can’t say exactly how long…but they do exude a Japanese design ethic into the pipe and pipe tobacco industry. The “Four Seasons” line came out in 2014, debuting at the Las Vegas IPCPR that year, which is also the time that it was announced that Drew Estate would be distributing their tobaccos in the United States. Each of the 4 aromatic blends are meant to capture the essence of a season in Japan.

Today I’m getting to sample the “First Days of Spring” blend…which is apropos since we are still in them. Details are scarce on official websites, but one online purveyor of pipe tobaccos notes this as using Burley, Perique and Virginia tobaccos.

Notes

Prelight, the “First Days of Spring” has a light, indistinct fruitiness to it…a mild sweetness that is hard to categorize decisively, but is very pleasant nonetheless.

I have designated my “cheap” Churchwarden as my “aromatic” pipe. It is basically a basket pipe, with fairly cheap construction qualities that will allow it to stand up to one or two bowls a week for quite some time…and if you start doing my more than that, it will probably burn up fairly quickly.

This tobacco lit fairly easily as pipe tobaccos go. At the first, I got the mild fruit notes that I detected on pre-light, but they came through more solidly as peach and a very mild cherry.

Further on, I got a very mild white pepper and lemon zest note on the retrohale, as well as light wood and natural tobacco notes on the palate.

As aromatics go, this is not a very strong one. I would characterize this as a “mild aromatic” that is definitely sweetened and flavored, but not to the point of some of the bulk pipe tobaccos I’ve met…those that threaten to knock you over when you get a whiff from the container.

I enjoyed this first taste of Tsuge pipe tobacco, but I wouldn’t call it my favorite pipe leaf ever…or even my favorite aromatic. It was pleasant and I wouldn’t mind smoking it again, but I can’t see that I would buy a whole 1.5 oz tin…which would translate into about enough pipe tobacco to smoke 15 to 20 bowls.