G.L. Pease

G.L. Pease is the American boutique pipe tobacco brand founded by blending master Gregory L. Pease at the start of 2000 in California. The brand's founding purpose is to keep alive the classic English blend style that was fading with industrialization; this approach is summed up in the slogan "Preindustrial Tobaccos for the Contemporary Pipe Smoker."

With a model that pairs small-scale design thinking with large-scale manufacturing, G.L. Pease is considered one of the pioneers of the boutique blending movement that rose in the 2000s.

From Drucquer & Sons to His Own Brand

Pease learned the trade at Drucquer & Sons, a shop legendary in pipe circles in Berkeley, California. A regular there during his university years, he later began working at the shop and personally prepared its famous house blends. As the account goes, Drucquer & Sons was an established business with a reach wide enough to receive order letters from Admiral Byrd's polar team and director Cecil B. DeMille; Pease is considered a carrier of that tradition.

Before his own brand, he founded "Friedman & Pease" in 1998 with his friend Irwin Friedman as a first venture. This partnership, which lasted about eighteen months, became the forerunner of G.L. Pease Tobaccos, which he founded on his own at the start of 2000.