The Briar Report - Lots of information going back years and updated regularly.
How-To - Series of articles from Smoking Pipes
Pipes Magazine - They have articles, tobacco reviews, forums, and information on each week’s episode of Pipes Magazine Radio Show.
Pipedia - It’s like Wikipedia for everything pipes and tobacco.
Smoking Pipes Daily Reader Blog - Articles on everything from new blends to history of pipes, etc.
Tobacco Reviews - Exactly what it sounds like, this site contains reviews and ratings of thousands of tobacco blends. While I would never recommend putting too much stock in what other people think about a blend, it can be useful for getting a general sense of what something is like when you’re deciding what to put in your online basket.
Informational Sites
Blue Room Briars - If you start getting interested in artisan pipes, this site is worth checking out. It’s owned by two pipe makers and they specialize in artisan pipes, both new and estates. One of the cool things is that if you buy a pipe from them, you can ship it back to them once a year and they will give it a professional cleaning for free.
Country Squire, Jackson, Mississippi - As well as selling pipes and accessories, they do some great house blends, all purchasable by the ounce. A few worth checking out:
Aromatics
Bill’s Blend
Rivendell
Polar Express, Cordial Friends, Figgy Pudding - all Christmas release only
Non-aromatics
Bag End (Scottish)
George’s Dragon (Virginia)
Ruins of Windsor (Virginia, Perique, Burley)
Cowboy Coffee (Virginia, Kentucky)
Danish Pipe Shop - Again, if you start getting interested in artisans, this is the site for the heavy hitters from Denmark and Europe. More of a “window shopping” experience, since a lot of the stuff here is crazy expensive because we are talking rock star makers. That said, there are some great pipes at very reasonable prices to be found as well.
Esterval’s Pipe House - Don’t even keep reading this unless/until you really decide you like pipe smoking. This is the place in Germany that you can order tobaccos that you can’t buy in the US, like most of the HU tobaccos. Here’s where the patented Dalton justification gene kicks in. The shipping is crazy expensive; it’s DHL Express or UPS, and ends up being like $50. But, if you create an account on the site and set your location to the US, you’ll see that the price you’ll pay for all the tobacco on the site is tax free (since you’re not in the EU). So on average, the tobacco is $5-$8 a tin cheaper than the cheapest you’d get online here. So the key is to buy enough to balance out the cost of shipping (while not going crazy enough to make the authorities pay attention). As long as everything you order is in stock, it usually arrives in under a week.
L. J. Peretti, Boston, Mass. - One of the oldest tobacconists in the country. Some of my favorite “go to” blends are from here. Like many brick and mortar tobacconists, they bought blending components from Sutliff, which closed its doors in March of 2025, so how that will affect the blends listed below remains to be seen.
Non-aromatics
London Flake (Virginia, Perique)
#8 Slices (Virginia, Perique, Burley) - crumble flake. If you get this, give it 6 months in a mason jar to breath and it really gets good.
Royal (English) - This is easily one of my top five English blends. It’s really good.
D-7485 - One of their original mixtures, it was blended for a British prime minister. It’s what some call an American blend because while it has Latakia (English), it has a good amount of Burley too, which adds nuttiness. It’s a good entry into English as the Latakia is fairly light.
Cuban Mixture - Another of their original blends, it’s a kitchen sink blend, with over half a dozen tobaccos. There’s a reason they’re still mixing it.
Ampersand Flake (Virginia) - This is their take on the kind of Virginia flake that was popular in the 60s and 70s. Good quality tobacco, with a very slight topping (sweet flavoring). This is one that will likely age really well.
Aromatics
Thanksgiving Day - They release this in limited amounts starting on November 1st every year. They press it in house into cakes and it’s sold in 4 oz blocks. It’s burley and Viriginias with flavoring added with fruit juices.
Yuletide - Released only at Christmas, it changes slightly each year. This is a good example of a “non-goopy” aromatic.
Missouri Meerschaum - This company is the oldest producer of corn cob pipes in the world. You’ll find a huge selection of cobs ranging from basic models under $10 to limited editions with Italian acrylic stems and different bowls shapes and styles in the $50 range. In addition, they have recently opened a briar section of their site and are carrying lines of briar pipes from different makers intended to be more budget friendly than a lot of the artisan pipes. These range from around $45 into the $200s.
Pipes and Cigars - This is the online store owned by the Scandinavian Tobacco Group (STG). You can find some really great deals here on tobaccos (almost always those made by STG), and they are known for randomly dropping small batch tobacco releases months after they have sold out everywhere else. They are a tobacco company, and that’s their focus. So the pipes on the site tend toward basket pipe quality. This site has a bit of a reputation in the pipe community for very spotty customer service. The inventory system they use is apparently quite old, and not really accurate. So it isn’t unusual, especially in a sale event when lots of people might be buying the same thing, to place an order for something that isn’t actually available. Sometimes you’ll be notified, and sometimes you won’t. Sometimes your order will just be cancelled and your card refunded, and sometimes the order will just sit while they wait for a restock, however long that takes. So some people avoid the site altogether, and others just go into each order knowing its a bit of a crapshoot but feel the price is worth it.
Smoking Pipes - The biggest online retailer of pipes, tobaccos, and accessories; huge selection, good prices, fast shipping. Their pipe selection covers the gambit from factory to high-end artisan, and tons of estate pipes. The parent company, Laudisi, also owns Cornell & Diehl (C & D), one of the larger American pipe tobacco manufacturers, so they have the biggest selection of C & D blends, and often the biggest allotment of their small batch/limited release blends. Laudisi also owns Peterson and Savinelli pipes, so there are hundreds of pipes from each of those brands on the site.
Tobacco Pipes - Owned by the Sutliff Tobacco company, they will usually have some of the lowest tobacco prices online, and fast shipping. Closed as part of Scandinavian Tobacco Group’s takeover of Mac Baren and Sutliff in March of 2025. The site now redirects to Pipes and Cigars.
Watch City Cigar & Pipe, Framingham, Mass - Again, they sell some pipes and accessories, and do some really good house blends. They’re worth keeping an eye on also for some of the harder to find tinned tobaccos from the US and Europe.
Non-aromatics
Glass Slipper - An English without the Latakia, so you really get the Orientals in this one. Quite good.
Persian Slipper - This is the blend Glass Slipper started out as, with the Latakia.
Rhythm & Blues - Red Virginias with stoved Virginias, so you get a deeper, smokier flavor. It should age well.
Rouxgaroux - A VaPer they release only once or twice per year. It has a bit of a cult following.
Waltham Broken Cake - A real burley blend, you get notes of cocoa and nuts.
Aromatics
Elf Dandruff - Their annual Christmas blend. It changes each year depending on what they have found. Because it’s small batch, they use any older or rare tobaccos that they come across in small quantities.
Vermont Freehand - Owned by Steve Norse, this shop has become one of (if not the) largest suppliers of materials and tools for artisan pipe makers. Even if you’re never going to make a pipe, it’s an interesting site to peruse just to see the types (and cost) of materials that go into a pipe.