After seven years, we’re almost completely updating our pipe department — a reboot of sorts. When we opened our doors, pipes were a small part of our business. With The Smoke Shop (opened around 1947) and Fader’s firmly and successfully serving that market, we felt that our pipe department should, at best, augment their efforts. But now, seven years later, both of those pillars of the local pipe community have closed their doors and there is a void in the local pipe community that needs to be filled by more than a few key punches on the Internet.
So, we are tripling our pipe tobacco offerings with the addition of Cornell & Diehl, G.L. Pease and Briarworks. Our main focus with C&D is bulk tobaccos, although we are bringing in some of their most popular tins as well as the whole Black Serviceman Series, a tribute to the rich history of African-American’s in our armed forces. GL Pease and Briarwoods are tin based companies and we will carry several of their most popular products.
Pipewise, we are refreshing our inventory to focus on new lines from Italian pipemakers Savinelli and Rocci in addition to our Ireland made Peterson of Dublin, German made Vauen and Japanese Drew Estates by Tsuge. As a nod to our Colonial America heritage here on the site of one of the late 17th / early 18th century Londontown, we are bringing period authentic clay, terra cotta and corncob pipes from Old Dominion Pipe Company in addition to timeless Missouri Meerschaum corncobs.
With the new FDA regulations set to begin a two year countdown on August 16, 2016, we will try to continue bringing you highly rated both pipe tobacco blends as long as we are able. While we hope that Congress helps us out with alternative regulation, we are preparing to build blending kits from tobaccos that came out before 2/15/2007 for you to “mix” your own favorite blends at home. (we can’t blend them for you because that makes us “manufacturers” and subject to a whole host of regulations that we couldn’t possibly manage at our scale.)
Finally, we are activating our pipe club, the Londontown Pipe Club, as a way of helping the local pipe community come together for education and camaraderie.
