My first fills were American pipe tobaccos like "Revelation", "Sir Walter Raleigh" or "Bond Street". Two years later I had an episode of experimentation with Danish and Dutch tobaccos that were flavoured with all kinds of ingredients such as hickory or whiskey, maybe even a vanilla additive.
By that time I realised there are only two kinds of pipe tobacco:
The altruistic and the egoistic type. While the former spreads agreeable aroma into the air around you but burns your tongue, the latter is smooth and aromatic for yourself but annoying to your neighbourhood.
Opting for the egoistic kind, I quickly arrived at my final choice that I have adhered to for the past 48 years. It's an English mixture called "Dunhill My Mixture 965". Before noon I light another Dunhill blend called "Early Morning Pipe".

This is the story of Alfred DunhillÕs numbered pipe tobacco mixtures. It dates back to the times when English nobility chose to smoke pipe.
The unique system was still alive when I regularily went to London on business. I would enter the shop at 14, Duke Street St. James, not far from Piccadilly Circus, move up to the counter, where a smoking-liveried gentleman behind rows and rows of numbered little tobacco kegs would ask me: "How do you prefer your smoke, Sir?" After stuttering something about Virginia, a dash of Latakia and general smoothness, he would get busy with the vats and weigh out a few grammes from four or five of them into a copper tray, half of which protruded from under the counter window.
After trying his blend right on the spot, I would venture "Maybe a little more Latakia to make it stronger?". Back to his old-fashioned scales he goes. If, after a few tries I am satisfied to have found "My Mixture", the gentleman opens a huge book and enters my name. From then on I could always order it using my number in the book. No. 965 is not my number, but suited me better than my own 21 tousand and some. Moreover, Dunhill My Mixture 965 is a brand I found available in many countries.
Look through the book and you will find some impressive names in it. No. 965, which became the most successful blend, is said to have been mixed for a retired colonel of H.M.'s army in India.

Those were The Days. They're fading into memory now. Today, when you go to Dunhill's main store on Duke Street you find that they cater mainly in fashion goods, especially perfume. One can probably make much more money selling overpriced smelly waters to nice English ladies than by providing their husbands with their favourite smoking mixture. To be sure, Dunhill still has his pipes, both for sale and in a museum. Stands of neckties and cigarette lighters, however, have replaced the romantic old wooden smoking room.
In those days (until the late seventies) the U.K. had the highest quality of life in the industrialised world. You can believe me, I've worked in, or at least travelled to, a substantial part of it.