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Most casual tasters try blends in pipes they’ve used for numerous other brands, though often within a definite ‘family’ of tobaccos such as Virginias, Latakia mixtures etc. Obviously, a really serious reviewer needs to avoid crossover completely and must aim for more neutrality. What’s the best smoking gadget to use? A cob, perhaps, or a clay?

JT: Well, there are a lot of different approaches to reviewing tobaccos, as it pertains to the equipment used. The majority of folks, I believe, smoke a bowl or two at most in whatever pipe happens to be available, without too much thought as to what went in to that pipe previously. In my opinion, this does not supply the reviewer with any kind of objective experience, and since pipe smoking, and tobacco evaluation and reviewing are inherently subjective activities, it makes sense to me to eliminate as many subjective variables as possible. To that end, I like to dedicate one pipe to a blend when I review it, usually a pipe that has only smoked somewhat similar blends in the past. In addition, I try to make sure to smoke the blend in a variety of different pipes in my collection; a clay for the pure unadulterated tobacco taste, a meerschaum for much the same reason, a bent pipe, a straight pipe, a corncob, etc…

How many bowls of any given blend would you smoke before considering yourself qualified to review it?

JT: I personally like to smoke at least 50g of a tobacco, in a variety of pipes, which I enumerated earlier, before passing any type of judgment on a blend. Sometimes though, this expands to two tins, one for the dedicated pipe and one for the ‘review pipes’ as I call them.

What’s the general tasting procedure?

JT: The way I review a tobacco is quite a bit longer than most people would take, so my personal procedure goes something like this:

1) Find a new tobacco.

2) Secure a tin or two of it.

3) Open the tin and make a couple of notes regarding tin aroma, moisture content, etc…

4) Examine the tobacco physically, picking apart clumps and generally just communing with the tobacco, getting to know it before I smoke it.

5) Decide on what pipe is going to be dedicated to it.

6) Start smoking the tobacco in a variety of situations and keeping notes when I can.

7) When the tin(s) is empty, sit down with my notes and attempt to put them into some sort of coherent form.

Do you take the notes while actually smoking?

JT: Sometimes. It isn’t always convenient to take notes when smoking, but I do try to be cognizant of my reactions to a tobacco, and to watch the interplay between the tobacco and other stimuli, such as what I am doing when I smoke it, any beverage I may have, what food I have eaten recently, etc…

How do you put it all into words that are meaningful for a maximum number of people? Which metaphors are comprehensible, which should be avoided? Which verbal categories do you employ?

JT: That is a great question. Tobacco, unlike wine, or to a lesser extent cigars, lacks a coherent vocabulary, or even a readily accepted taxonomy. There isn’t even any agreement about what subjective qualities to include when reviewing a tobacco. I suppose that at some point, I should make a template for what I would like to see on tobaccoreviews.com, but I am not so sure that I want to push my version of what a tobacco review should be onto the world…

Running the largest database of reviews in the world, how do you recommend readers make the most of it?

JT: Use it. Read what other people have to say about a blend before trying it to see if you might like it. Leave your thoughts for those who will come after you. Correct mistakes and fill in missing information where you can. The database is 95% user created, 5% my work, so it is, and will continue to become, a reflection of what people do with it.