I wonder if anyone recalls what I wrote in this space just three short months ago, in a column I titled “The Smoker in Winter.”
I wrote, “The best things in life are ephemeral. (Well, the best tobaccos certainly tend to be.) What we adore today can be taken from us tomorrow. So get while the getting is good; that’s what I counsel. Stock up!” When I submitted that column, cross my heart, I had not yet heard a word about the impending news concerning Sutliff and Mac Baren. I was just offering a bit of common-sense advice, a reminder whose wisdom soon bore out in the headlines of the day, as common-sense advice often tends to do.
The advice still pertains. If you have not yet taught your customers to form the habit of cellaring and hoarding their favorite pipe tobaccos, you certainly should, because the cellaring imperative is part and parcel of the pipe smoking hobby for reasons that should be all too obvious just now. The need to cellar is even more pressing for pipe hobbyists than it is for, say, wine collectors. I’m not hearing any rumblings about imminent closings among the great winemakers of the world, which are many. But tobacco manufacturers, which are few, operate in a league apart.
Sutliff certainly operated in its own, very specialized league for an impressively long time, having first opened in San Francisco in 1849 before moving operations in 1953 to tobacco mecca Richmond, Virginia. We are thus losing a 176-year-old presence in the pipe tobacco world; and we are losing hundreds of blends—most of them aromatics, which (by weight sold) the modern American pipe-smoking palate far prefers.
Sutliff was a master blending house of American-style aromatics, and also of contracted private labels (Seattle Pipe Club and Hearth & Home personal favorites of mine, now apparently on the chopping block). According to a company press release, surviving Sutliff blends are being pared back to four bulk aromatics (701 Crème Brulee, Rum & Maple, 250 Black Cordial and 792 Vanilla Custard and Cream) and to four packaged stalwarts that are sold internationally (St. Bruno RR 50g Pouch, and 50-gram tins of Capstan Original Flake, St. Bruno Flake and Three Nuns). That’s a short list compared to the 400-plus blends the Sutliff plant reportedly produced last year.
Then too, there is the pressing issue of the great many brick-and-mortar tobacco shops that depended on Sutliff to supply constituent leaf for their private house blends. With this in mind, I reached out to a number of affected tobacconists to ask where they will look for constituent leaf going forward. Some said they really don’t know. Most said at least some of their house blends would unavoidably go the way of the dodo bird. But I noted, too, a consensus of opinion among the retailers with whom I spoke, a consensus which rang persistently hopeful. The majority of retailers foresee that a way will be found toward some workable path, because a way forward always has been found. American tobacconists know very well how to remain flexible and resilient.
We all understand the inevitability of creative destruction. We can’t stop it, or even attenuate it. Business has always been that way; and business people have a knack for finding novel advantage in a changing market’s chaos. The disappearance of Sutliff and Mac Baren leaves a shortfall that venturesome tobacco professionals will inevitably seek to fill.
As an example, I notice Laudisi has just stood up a new line of tobaccos it calls Rivertown Tobacco Works. The company press release says these are “bulk pipe tobaccos across a range of classic flavors and blend archetypes—all with high value and low cost in mind. Crafted to offer quality and consistency as well as long-term dependable availability.” That sounds like a company seeking to relieve some of the pressure being felt by bulk retailers now deprived of their customary supply—a company trying to capture some of that freed-up Sutliff business. Look for other enterprises to follow suit.
One final note, as long as we’re waxing hopeful: Tastes in tobacco are a mysterious thing, bound up in body chemistry and mere habit. A tobacco user, forced to switch brands, can retrain his palate in surprisingly short order. It’s the same with cigarette smokers: First thing you know, a recently adopted blend will taste every bit as irreplaceable as that which it replaced. Like capitalism, our taste buds know no eternal loyalty. And for all the regret with which we bid old and venerated brands adieu, we are still left with a wide world of tobaccos to choose from. People will go on smoking their pipes, and buying what we have to sell.
It is now springtime, and the sun is going to keep rising in the morning. Seize every day!
– Article contributed by William C. Nelson.
This story first appeared in PCA The Magazine, Volume 1, 2025. To receive a copy of this magazine you must be a current member of PCA. Join or renew today at premiumcigars.org/membership.