London Dock - A Review

PappyJoe

You can read my blog post about Daughters & Ryan London Dock at

https://pappyjoesblog.com/tie-up-to-london-dock/

motie2

@PappyJoe -- <<Daughter & Ryan’s London Dock is a blend of double-toasted Burley, Virginia, Oriental, and Perique, topped with rum and coumarin, making for toasty, earthy, slightly sweet smoke with just a hint of spice and fig.>>

Coumarin? Shouldn't the Virginias provide the hay notes?

PappyJoe

What hay notes? As I wrote, the original blend reportedly had deer tongue (a plant not the animal) in it which provided a vanilla flavoring. D&R is now using a flavoring to replicate the cherry and vanilla flavor.

My impression is that the blend is Burley based and the Virginia is just a there in the background.

motie2

@pappyjoe

Coumarin has a sweet odor, the scent of newly-mown hay, and has been used in perfumes since 1882. Sweet woodruff, meadowsweet, sweet grass, and sweet clover in particular are named for their sweet (i.e., pleasant) smell, which in turn is related to their high coumarin content. Deer tongue is a related plant.

Coumarin has been used as an aroma enhancer in Pipe tobacco and certain alcoholic drinks, although in general it is banned as a flavorant food additive, due to concerns regarding its toxicity in test animals.

PappyJoe

@motie2. You forgot it’s use in rat poison. 

motie2

@PappyJoe
Coumarin is used in the pharmaceutical industry as a precursor reagent in the synthesis of a number of synthetic anticoagulant pharmaceuticals similar to warfarin (brand name Coumadin) and even some rat poisons.

thebadgerpiper

@PappyJoe Nice review! I have a tin of London Dock, and I think you did a good job describing it. I wasn't impressed with it when I smoked it, as it was a bit too sweet for my tastes. I can see how it would taste like a cherry hard candy, though for me, I'd say it reminded me of a cherry vanilla soda. It's not bad by any means, and I'd keep it smoke around others, but it won't be an everyday smoke for me.

ghostsofpompeii

I remember smoking the original London Dock back in the day, and it was more of an English blend and not an aromatic. And being an aromatic smoker I found it stand offish. There were no cherry or vanilla toppings. And as I was an uneducated pipe smoker in the early years I tended to puff like a locomotive ... so naturally it gave me serious tongue bite. After the first package I never returned to it. Sounds like the new version might be more to my liking.

PappyJoe

@ghostsofpompeii - Which original version? That can probably be determined by the year you smoked it. 
From what I've learned, the earliest version was by the Christian Peper Tobacco Company in Saint Louis. It was sold to the Bloch Brothers of Wheeling, Wv in the 1950s. Sometime later, Bloch sold some of its pipe tobacco blends to American Tobacco which became owned by General Cigar/Culbro. (General Cigar/Culbro was sold to Scandinavian Tobacco Group in 2005) Middleton bought Kentucky Club from General Cigar in the late 1980s and that included London Dock and other pipe blends.  Middleton was bought by Altria in 2007 and London Dock went out of production.

The earliest version by Peper was an aromatic with Lakeland essence (rose)
I don't know what the Bloch Brothers version was but it probably was an aromatic.
The General Cigar version was an English Blend with no flavoring.
Middleton's version was an American Blend with rum flavoring.
D&R's version is an aromatic more closely related to the Peper version but without the rose.

I find all the connections between the tobacco companies and blends to be fascinating. I wish they would have kept good records of what was in the blends back then. Looking at who owned who is sort of like digging into a tobacco ancestry.

motie2

@PappyJoe
I smoked the Middleton version (I think) back in my very early first pipe life, when I was limited to drug store blends. I hesitate, because I don't recall any "rum flavoring," so perhaps it was the General Cigar version. In any event, I don't remember it being aromatic.

riobrusa

So far can I remember, London Dock that smoked was an aromatic but that is all I remember.

ghostsofpompeii

@PappyJoe The version I would have been smoking would have been around 1967 or 68.

motie2

@PappyJoe -- My smoking of London Dock was around 1964.

PappyJoe

@motie2 @ghostsofpompeii you both smoked the General Cigar/American Tobacco version which was the English version probably. 

motie2

That was my second guess. It was around the same time I was a newbie, trying Holiday, Cherry Blend, John Rolfe, Rum and Maple, and other drugstore/codger blends

RockyMountainBriar

I was still “in the oven” for the first half, or “shitting myself” for the second half of 1964🤔

PappyJoe

@RockyMountainBriar

Kids.