Dr Plumb Cortina Dark Briar Pipe

• Overall Length: 123mm
• Overall Height: 40mm
• Bowl Height: 40mm
• Bowl Diameter: 38mm
• Bore: 18mm
• Weight: 37g
• Filter: Metal Condensing
• Gift Boxed

Dr Plumb Cortina Dark Briar Pipe

The Cortina Dark is essentially Dr Plumb doing what Dr Plumb has been doing for a century: making an attractive briar pipe that you needn't treat like a museum exhibit.

The marque dates back to 1925, when GBD's Parisian sales manager J.B. Rubinovich developed an affordable range initially aimed particularly at the Canadian market. He named it after his secretary, Leslie W. Plumb, whose reputed ability to doctor the figures supplied the other half of the name. Early Dr Plumb pipes were produced in Saint-Claude, France, including at the Ruchon & Verguet and Ropp factories.

The Cortina Dark is a handsome traditional Bent Billiard, with a substantial rounded bowl, gently rising shank and lightly curved black fishtail mouthpiece. It's an easy shape on the eye and one that's been around long enough to have thoroughly earned its place in the pipe rack.

Here the smooth briar has been given a deep chestnut-brown stain, considerably richer than the Cortina Light. It brings out the darker figuring in the wood particularly well; the example photographed has some lovely grain sweeping around the bowl and continuing along the shank.

The Cortina also retains the metal filter system associated with Dr Plumb pipes. Indeed, the marque was historically promoted around its aluminium tube arrangement, intended to help cool and dry the smoke.

It's worth remembering what Dr Plumb was originally created to be. This wasn't conceived as GBD's grandest pipe, laden with silverwork and destined for a velvet-lined cabinet. It was intended as a dependable, affordable smoking pipe.

The Cortina Dark still makes a good case for that philosophy today: real briar, a familiar shape, an attractive smooth finish and a design intended for regular use.

And if it picks up the odd mark over the years, all the better. A pipe ought to have some evidence that its owner actually smokes it.