Tobacco Reviews is the place on the internet to learn about and share your impressions of the panoply of pipe tobaccos in the world today.

From long-gone legends of pipe smoking to the newest cutting-edge blends, from the most obscure gems from boutique blenders to the most widely smoked tobaccos today, they are all here.

Thousands of your fellow smokers have written tens of thousands of reviews of all of these tobaccos, sharing their wisdom, wit and honest opinions. You are cordially invited to join the discussion and add your thoughts and reflections to our ever-increasing stock of collective knowledge on pipe tobacco.

Take a look around the database, see what others have written about your favorite pipe tobaccos, discover some new things to try out, and when you are ready, join us and let us know what you think of the tobaccos you have smoked.

Pipe smoking is a gentle hobby, and we strive to treat each other, and our differing opinions of pipe tobaccos with the respect and restraint due to the ladies and gentlemen that we are, or hope to be. Please help us to maintain this atmosphere by refraining from disparaging the tastes, writing styles or opinions of your fellow users. It is generally best to confine your reviews only to the tobacco in question and not to respond to what others have written previously. While lively arguments about the merits of certain pipe tobaccos can be entertaining to all, this is not the place for them.

From Jon Tillman ...

It was ten years ago that Tobacco Reviews first came to be. Originally, it was meant as a personal project to allow me, as a novice pipe smoker, to keep track of the pipe tobaccos I had smoked and what I thought of them. It soon began to grow beyond that initial use into something that could allow multiple people to compare their reactions to pipe tobaccos.

From those humble beginnings, through the explosive influx of users from the alt.smokers.pipes newsgroup to the steady growth it has seen from then on, Tobacco Reviews has always been my labor of love. With the support of all of those who donated over the years, I have been able to just about cover the costs of maintaining the site and purchasing more and more bandwidth and processing power as the traffic on the site has grown.

In the intervening decade, as the site has grown, my life has seen changes as well, and now I am back in school, pursuing a new career in medicine. As a result, I find myself stretched thin. Between school, full-time employment and projects like Tobacco Reviews, I find that there are not enough hours in the day to do justice to all of the tasks in front of me.

Fortunately, Dayton Matlick, Chuck Stanion and the rest of the fine folks at Pipes and tobaccos magazine have ridden to my rescue. They will be taking over the ownership and management of Tobacco Reviews from now on. I couldn't have asked for a better answer to my time-crunch dilemma. Tobacco Reviews will continue to receive the attention and care it deserves, benefit greatly from the close attention of a team of experts in the hobby, and I will have enough time freed up to pursue my studies.

To all of you who have submitted reviews, tobaccos, corrections and pictures over the years; thank you. Tobacco Reviews would not be what it is without your generous sharing of your knowledge and time. I hope that you will continue to do so for many more years and keep Tobacco Reviews the ultimate resource for opinion and information on pipe tobaccos around the world.

To all of you who have donated financially to help keep the site running; thank you from me personally. While I have never made any income off of the site, I appreciate that your help has kept it from being a money loser for me as it got bigger and bigger. You kept it going through times when I frankly would not have been able to afford to keep it online on my own.

All of those who have signed up for subscription donations will find that those subscriptions have been cancelled. If you wish to continue to support Tobacco Reviews financially, subscribe to Pipes and tobaccos magazine, join Foundations or watch this space for whatever goodies Chuck and company have in store for you in the future.

Jon Tillman

From Pipes and tobaccos magazine ...

You’re probably wondering what this change in ownership will mean for you, the tobaccoreviews.com user.

Most important: We have no plans to ever make this a pay site. There’s a remote possibility that 20 years hence, when the antismoking scourge has dissipated and 95 percent of the population smokes pipes and enthusiastically anticipates investing in pipe information, this business plan could change—but for the foreseeable future, tobaccoreviews.com will remain free. Until we’re overwhelmingly swamped with urgent requests begging us to accept as much money as our consciences allow, that won’t change.

We won’t be making many changes at all. Jon Tillman has developed a wonderful venue for sharing tobacco information, and we don’t want to injure it through excessive meddling.

However, there will be a few noticeable differences. Pipes and tobaccos is, after all, a for-profit entity. That’s a mainly theoretical distinction—we’ve never actually made more than could be technically defined as an embarrassingly small token profit, and some years not even that. Still, our owner, Dayton Matlick, has clearly outlined his expectations: “Try not to lose money,” he says. “I don’t want to spend my retirement years in an appliance carton.” So, though I have no personal objection to seeing Dayton live in a Fridgedaire box and have investigated the same possibility for my own golden years (I’m thinking extra-wide with reinforced cardboard and a two-flap skylight), we need to try to make this site self-sufficient enough to cover costs.

To that end you may see some banner ads appear when we find sponsors. We hope you’ll support any companies that advertise here—we need them to keep the site operating and to finance future improvements and additions.

We also hope to use tobaccoreviews.com to help promote our own products. We’ll soon be adding links where appropriate to the P&T “Trial by Fire” tobacco reviews, including the complete database of William Serad reviews as well as all of those subsequent to his tenure. We may provide links to our retail print advertisers as well. Those options won’t alter the tobaccoreviews.com experience—just don’t click on the links if you choose not to.

We send out an email to our list about every month or so, usually promoting some product in the P&T store and sometimes including news items more timely than the magazine can accommodate. We’ll soon be sending that email to tobaccoreviews.com users as well. We think you’ll enjoy receiving it, but if not, opting out is a simple click.

So if you’re wondering why we’ve purchased tobaccoreviews.com and what’s in it for us, that’s the sum of our motivations. But our primary purpose is goodwill. We like to do things that are good for the hobby, and maintaining this site definitely falls into that category. We all owe Jon Tillman profound thanks for what he has done here. P&T magazine hopes to continue his good work and become a reliable steward of his accomplishment.

Chuck Stanion
Editor
Pipes and tobaccos
cstanion@pipesandtobaccosmagazine.com