I really hate smoking, but have in the past secretly envied cigar smokers. I hate the smell of burning tobacco of any kind, but reading about the experience of smoking cigars has made me wish before that I could enjoy the taste and smell of them. Connoisseurship of food, wine, and spirits is something I prize, and cigars seem to go right along with that.

Even so, I had never given the slightest thought to pipe-smoking, which nobody I know does, but Wil Hylton’s great piece in the NYT Magazine about a Belgian (!) tobacco makes me really, really, really wish I had the capability to savor what sounds like an amazing sensory experience. Excerpts:

I had no idea what the word meant, but inside the pouch, I found the strangest pipe tobacco I’d ever seen. It was dry and brittle and smelled like a barn, and if anyone else had given it to me, I’m sure I would have tossed it back. But Dario was a special case. In the years I’d known him, he introduced me to some of the best mushrooms, moonshine and cigars I ever tasted, and if he now recommended this packet of old straw, it seemed only fair to try it.

As I lighted the first bowl, what struck me was the heat. Without much moisture, the ribbons burned fast and sharp. Yet as I drew more slowly, a deep, earthen husk spread into my mouth, at once pungent and delicate, with floral hints that drifted above a rich and savory base. Over the next week in Italy, I smoked little else. Dario kept a brick of the tobacco at home, wrapped in golden paper with the words “Pur Semois” stamped on top, beside a drawing of a 1950s man and the name “Vincent Manil.” Before I left, I snapped a photo of the label, planning to buy some at home. This, Dario warned me, would be difficult. The tobacco was hand-prepared in the Semois Valley of Belgium and was nearly impossible to find anywhere else.

More:

It should go without saying that tobacco is deadly and addictive and ought to be consumed in moderation. Anyone who tries to dismiss the deleterious effects of the plant is blowing smoke. But if the danger of tobacco is undeniable, so is its exceptional flavor. One afternoon, Vincent and Gaëtane invited a neighbor to join us for lunch, a typical Ardennes dish of endive wrapped in ham, then smothered in béchamel and baked to a crispy finish. Vincent set out a sampling of beers, including the legendary Westvleteren, and as we gathered around the large wooden table, the conversation drifted between the savory qualities of Belgian food, beer and tobacco.

I was struck by how unfamiliar the scene would have been to my American friends who have, in a fashion typical of our generation, embraced the current culinary boom with maniacal fervor, boiling obscure reductions to drip onto bits of fruit exploded by bicycle pumps in homage to Ferran Adrià, and yet, despite this globe-trotting gustatory zeal, haven’t the slightest comprehension of the exquisite flavor that haunts tobacco. If the modern mythos of the kitchen had arrived a decade earlier, before the vilification of tobacco was complete, the pipe might occupy a place on the palate alongside argan oil and hijiki and yuzu. Somewhere in the multiverse, there is an alternate New York City where the Union Square farmers’ market brims not just with heirloom melons and leeks and squash but also with local tobaccos as vibrant as the Cherokee purple tomato. There is a literature still waiting to be written on fine tobacco; tobacco awaits its Julia Child — who, it should be said, loved to smoke, as so many other chefs have and do. It is axiomatic these days that smoking ruins the palate, but this would come as news to Thomas Keller, Anthony Bourdain and all the other celebrated chefs who enjoy a good smoke.

What makes the pipe distinct from other forms of smoking is that it refines the experience to its most distilled form. Unlike that of cigars, the tobacco in a pipe never touches the smoker’s tongue, so the taste is purely of smoke. Unlike that of cigarettes, the tobacco in a pipe is not meant to be inhaled. The proper way to smoke a pipe is more like sipping iced tea through a straw than Hoovering a cigarette. You draw a little up the stem, let it linger in your mouth, then gently let it go.

There is exactly zero chance that I would ever try smoking a pipe, or anything, not after watching my sister, who never smoked, die of lung cancer. Still, this sounds a pretty awesome aesthetic experience.

UPDATE: A reader sends in this link to a Christian Pipe Smokers forum, saying, “Proof that there’s something for everyone on the interweb.”