Frequently Asked Questions

A lot of pipe collectors have asked me various questions about the morta pipes and how they compare to pipes of other materials, so I've assembled this FAQ in hopes of providing some useful information on the subject. Bear in mind that my experience with the material is limited and is singular to me, so my perceptions and impressions may not prove true for everyone.

What is morta?

Morta is semi-fossilized wood. It is created when large trees are felled or overturned by geologic activity and become buried in an oxygen-limited fashion, usually in peat or clay. The wood is unable to rot normally so it begins the long process of fossilizing into stone. Morta is a generic term used to describe any semi-fossilized wood of this style, but all the morta I use is from a local oak forest that covered the Briere area some 3,000+ years ago. Morta is found in various locations across the globe, usually in marshlands or moors, and varies widely in its durability, age, and potential usefulness for pipemaking.

Do you take special orders for morta pipes?

We do for the Classic series, yes, as they are simple and fairly standardized in style and easy to reproduce. However, I do not take special orders for the Signature high grades. Large pieces of morta are sufficiently rare that, at best, I make 3 or 4 a year - very rare, and very expensive, and more, very random in the shape of the available blocks. I've tried doing some orders for bigger pipes but it just doesn't work with morta because the large pieces vary so much, and basically have to be shaped into what the blocks will accept and not what pre-determined shapes one might like. Thus, each Signature grade morta is unique.

Why are so many morta pipes small?

The reason most of the pipes are smaller is because the wood is prone to split during drying, and it's hard to get large pieces that are perfect. It wants to split along the radial grain lines inward as it dries - after lying submerged in peat for 4,000 years or more, the material is inflexible and doesn't handle the stress of drying very well. Small blocks are fairly common but larger pieces suitable for typical briar-sized pipes are extremely rare and accordingly much more expensive.

Why are the morta pipes so expensive?

Morta is expensive because it's not harvested by a professional mill that has year-round access to the stock with warehouses of burls and legions of workers. It's a one-man operation and can only be done once a year. When the water levels are low in early Fall, one must prowl the marsh and find each log under the surface, then mark them and return with shovels, diggers, and a crane to extricate the wood. It's a long process that takes a couple of weeks, plus the costs of storing and drying the wood myself over the course of years. Outside of this short Autumn window of opportunity, morta is unreachable throughout the rest of the year. Between equipment rentals, storage, time lost, etc, the wood ends up with a per-block cost that puts the most expensive briar to shame. To my knowledge, Austrian pipemaker Joseph Prammer and myself are the only pipemakers in the world who create morta pipes, though I have heard that Peterson used Irish morta many decades ago. Other morta exists but it can be too soft and too splintery for pipemaking.

Are your morta pipes similar in craftsmanship, engineering, or style to the Patrice Sébilo mortas?

No, not at all. My mortas will look, smoke, and be crafted drastically differently from the pipes that Patrice was making. Patrice used filters and condensing devices on 95% of his production due to serving the French market, and even the pipes with no metal condensers in place have been drilled to accommodate them with large open wells below the mortise. Also, Patrice has traditionally used molded vulcanite stems on the vast majority of his production. I use molded stems on the Classic series but the higher grade mortas all get handcut acrylic or cumberland stems, and I drill and engineer them in the same way that the Talbert briars are designed.

Can a morta pipe burn out?

Yes, if heated up sufficiently, morta will burn through just as briar does. This takes a very high temperature however, and in general it is more durable than briar. It would be very painful to one's tongue to try and burn out a morta pipe! The wood does have soft spots just like briar which are vulnerable, except that in morta they tend to be isolated areas which have not petrified at the same rate for some reason. I use bowl coatings in morta just as I do in briar, and the coatings perform the same in protecting the bowl walls from damage during the break-in process of the pipe.

What do these morta pipes smoke like?

I think they're excellent smokers, though obviously everyone will have different opinions on this. It will largely depend on one's willingness to try a new experience, and if the smoker insists on expecting a briar-like or "better than briar" experience then he will likely be disappointed. They are unique and have an unusual flavor and behavior. Like meerschaum or clay, they are mostly mineral and are very difficult to burn out though they will eventually succumb if scorched badly enough. The overall smoking experience is quite different from meerschaum, briar, or clay - musty and smoky flavored and without the harshness of porous clay. Also, like meerschaum, the flavor of the material comes through more as the pipe is smoked hotter. The material is harder and tougher than briar and is much more resistant to burn-out. It's hotter to the touch, however, and seems somewhat clay-like in that respect - more heat radiates out through the bowl. They are extremely resilient pipes and can be smoked night after night without getting soggy and rank as briar does. Also, for some reason the wood seems to build cake like mad, and the pipes will develop a healthy thick cake after only a month or two of regular smoking.

In flavor, they are unique - they LOVE Latakia-based blends and English tobaccos in general. A morta pipe will make the most generic and dull English blend display depth, sweetness and nuance previously unguessed-at. In my opinion, even the classic English oil-cured briars don't perform as well with enhancing the flavor of something like Dunhill's 965. The flip side of this is that the material has a flattening effect on the more delicate tobaccos and it does not perform as well as briar with Virginia/Perique blends. Subtle flavors (Escudo for example) tend to get lost in morta and the smoke can be flat.

What do other people say about the morta smoking experience?

Here are some comments by other pipe collectors on their experiences with morta:

Dave Field - "Well Trever, I think there's a real future for this morta material, based on the one bowl I smoked (just finished it 10 minutes ago). Where to begin? Let's see. The taste, to me, was neutral- but good neutral (unlike meerschaum which I also consider to be neutral, but bad neutral). How can there be two neutral tastes? I don't know, but my palate says so. Also, I don't know whether it's the material, your workmanship, both, or neither, but I smoked the bowl all the way down without relighting- something I rarely am able to do. And I'm going to smoke the pipe again right after dinner- I feel it's just that good that I've got a real hankering for it. And if you can sandblast the stuff in the way that the shank of the pipe you gave me is sandblasted- well, I see only an upside, and a real big upside. Thanks for giving the pipe to me." After having the pipe for a while and smoking it more often, he added this - "Jan tried your Morta pipe two nights ago (she's got a very sensitive palate) and again tonight. First (two nights ago) with McClelland Virginia and tonight with Ashton Celebrated Sovereign (a very nice English mixture). I was able to try a couple of puffs with the Sovereign, the first time I tried an English mixture in the Morta. It was the sweetest English I've ever had, and Jan had the same comment. You may not know what you have here as far as what this material does to tobacco."

Jeff Folloder - "David Field described the experience as being neutral. Not neutral, as in meerschaum neutral (which to me isn't), but neutral period. I think I know where David was going with this. I noticed a lack of "warmth" in the smoke that I was familiar with in briar. I'm not talking about actual heat, but of the richness type of warmth. Briar, at least a seasoned briar, imparts a warmth that helps create a full and rich experience. Morta smoking is a "bright" experience. It seemed to me that the mid-range and higher frequencies were more pronounced. Wanting to know if this was just a "projecting" experience, I loaded up the Morta and a briar with a similar shaped and sized bowl with the same tobac and smoked them side by side (pressed Balkan Sobranie). Pressing this tobac causes some profound changes. Mr. Lindner, whose palate I respect immensely, noted with me that the pressed stuff was lacking in the oriental highlights that he had come to love and we agreed that it had become a very enjoyable melange that had only a tenuous relationship with what it had been. Well, the orientals are back in the Morta! I got all the richness that I was after in pressing and didn't lose the high notes. Talking with Trever about this phenomenon confirmed that the Morta possesses a certain clarity that really lets the high notes of tobacco sing. We were both afraid to try actual Bright tobacs in Morta, although I'll give it a shot anyway. As to the Morta itself... this stuff radiates heat! The bowl gets hotter than briar, but actually seems to draw the heat out through the visible grain. On this particular pipe there is pronounced grain on the sides, but not the front. The pipe was definitely much warmer on the sides than the front."

Chris Keene - "I understand that morta has a more pronounced affect on flavor during the initial few bowls of a new pipe. I can't speak to that. But then, it may not be too important if it's a transitory experience. For me, the Cairo comes through loud and clear. The flavor of the blend seems more direct than a briar smoke. I can't really say that there is a taste imparted, as much as there is a different quality to the smoke itself. It is crisp-more detailed, if you will-where smoke from a briar might be softer, but less revealing."
"And in conversation with my brother, Paul, who also acquired a morta at TAPS (a bamboo, also blasted), he compares the smoke-again in a "similar, but better" vein-to a clay. I'm beginning to think that I should transition this pipe to another type of tobacco. I suspect that it would do a great job of bringing out some of the more subtle flavors and notes of straight Virginias." (Note - you see how "universal" my experiences are!)
"One additional note. Trever mentioned that morta will heat and cool differently than briar. Indeed, when puffing too hard, it does heat up-but not overly so. Interestingly, it seems to go "warm all over" and then cool very quickly. It appears to easily dissipate whatever heat it is subjected to. There were no hot spots; at no time did it approach "too hot to hold." I wonder if a morta pipe can burn out. I wonder if morta burns at all. As a matter of fact, I think this would be a great material for those of us who tend to "rim char." I'm not sure if it chars, but even if it does you can't see it!"

Exactly how old is this stuff? I've seen quotes saying it is anywhere from 2,000 to 7,000 years old!

A popular French magazine did an article on Patrice's pipes several years ago and somehow the dates they published got doubled - 3,000 years became 6,000, etc. The fact is that the individual logs vary considerably. The ocean came in over the Briere park region in a series of land upheavals ranging from 3,000 BC to around 1,000 BC, and gradually submerged the marshland area from the South up. Morta can be found throughout the park but there's no way to tell the exact age of any given log without individual carbon dating, so the best that can be done is to guess based on the area of the park where the log was found.