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Even before you reach the corner of Southwest 9th and Alder, you can smell the stogie smoke wafting into the street from the 30-seat lounge at Rich’s Cigar Store. Walk deeper into the store and you’re wrapped in the luxurious scent of endless jars of pipe tobacco and Oregon’s largest walk-in humidor. The store is appropriately ensconced in dark wood and leather with hundreds of pipes displayed under golden light.
Like most Portlanders, Rich’s Cigar Store has bounced around a lot. It first opened downtown in 1894, at 6th and Washington, and by 1920 had two additional locations. Despite a backlash against tobacco use in the 1990s and 2000s, by 2007, Rich’s once again had three locations as in its heyday, one in the Pearl and one inside Portland International Airport (the PDX location closed in 2025).
Some businesses have a reputation for hiring brusque employees who ain’t got no time for your foolishness. Think late-night diners, nail salons, cabbies…and Rich’s Cigar Store. Every fourth Yelp review is someone complaining about the employees. I didn’t get an official comment on that subject, but I imagine they’d tell you to shove your Tik right up your Tok.
Bill Shindler holds the title of chief tobacconist at Rich’s; he’s a master blender working there for over 30 years. He lives in a world of scents and flavors with vast knowledge of the (original) weed. Talking to him about tobacco is like chatting with Miles Davis about jazz. You’re never going to match his knowledge, you’re likely to say something wrong—and he won’t worry about your feelings while setting you right. (It should be noted here that when we talked, Shindler made it clear he does not speak for the store; his responses are limited to tobacco in general and not business operations. Rich’s management did not respond to requests for a formal interview for this story.)
Tobacco blending is a complex art that has to account for both the intrinsic flavors and different curing methods (air, fire, sun, flue) of tobacco varieties from around the world; a skilled tobaccanist must also balance different tobaccos’ varied burn rates and introduce additional flavorings. A complex blend might use more than a half-dozen different ingredients to reach its final flavor profile and take a year or more to perfect when starting from scratch. When the blend is done, the tobacco at Rich’s rests in the jar for 45 days so the flavors can meld before going onto the sales floor.
I’m a longtime pipe smoker and plunged into the world of perique tobacco earlier this year. Grown only in St. James Parish outside New Orleans, it’s produced with an intensive process of fermenting the leaves in whiskey barrels for a year under great pressure from screw jacks that gives it an utterly distinct flavor. Perique is like truffles or saffron—a flavor so potent that typically only a small amount is used. By the 1990s, it had gone nearly extinct, with just one family farm still growing it.
With its Mississippi River origins, most perique blends are named something evoking water. Lately, I’d been smoking Cornell & Diehl’s Bayou Nights. Rich’s makes four perique-heavy house blends called Multnomah Falls, Mist Upon the Water, Sasha, and Sasha Plus, which, as Shindler explained during my recent visit, has the most perique of them all. He produced a jar of pure perique from his blending stash and offered it to me and my nose. The fermentation had a startling, dense pungency somewhere between an old yard-aged apple and molasses.
According to some trend forecasters, pipe smoking is gaining popularity, especially in the 25-to-40 demographic, with claims that it’s both an outgrowth of and a counterreaction to vaping. Analysts have pegged the global compound annual growth rate in pipe smoking as high as 2.3%. In January, The New York Times predicted pipes would have a moment in 2026: “Everyone’s hungry for a little gasp of Dickensian glamour, for someone to drop the word ‘dapper’ in a conversation crammed with acronyms and algorithms.”
I asked Shindler if he could recommend some pipe blends that might be a good transition for a cigarette smoker, maybe something mild to bridge the gap. He scoffed: “If you’re introducing someone to Thai food, would you recommend they start with white rice?” Instead, he’ll take the time to offer samples for them to sniff, ask about their likes and dislikes, and narrow down a choice.
Aromatic tobacco is what many people think of when hearing “pipe tobacco”—it has added flavorings such as vanilla, rum, chocolate and the like. I asked him about the oft-repeated accusation that aromatics cause more “tongue bite” (the scalded feeling that can linger for days) because of the sugars, and he got angry, like a master blender should. He explained that tongue bite is really caused by poor smoking habits, puffing too much, bad packing, or tobacco that is too moist. (In other words, don’t blame the weed for the deed!)
In the end, I bought some Sasha Plus, and it is outstanding. Of course, he also offered me a free bowlful to try before buying. The moral of Rich’s Cigar Store is: Trust your tobacconist and don’t walk in with thin skin.
GO: Rich’s Cigar Store; 820 SW Alder St., 503-228-1700; 922 NW Flanders St., 503-595-5556; richscigarstore.com. Alder: 10 am–6 pm Monday–Saturday. Flanders: 1:30–4 pm Monday, Wednesday and Friday.
