Well, we'll get to that in a minute. All of us at the Tobacco Barn would like to thank all the customers who bought a Cottom's Choice pipe and in particular, those who participated in our Cottom's Choice Coloring Contest tonight!

In addition to entries here in the store, we also had a mail-in entry from a customer of ours in Japan. Unfortunately, we were unable to use his pictures in the main voting but he won a special award from the judges for having the pipe furthest away from the store.

Our entrants awaited anxiously for the results of Tom Cottom's inspection of the pipes. After discounting the pipes presented by two employees (the judge himself included) he moved on to those presented for consideration by our customers.

After careful consideration, he chose to award the top prize of the 2007 Cottom's Choice Coloring Contest to Steve Kerrigan of Silverado. Top honors were awarded to his smooth pipe for the overall job of coloring his pipe. As with some meerschaum, the majority of his bowl is starting out a slight purple shade, turning brown the closer it got to the rim. He got extra points for not having an darkly colored stem (a sure sign usually of a "hot" smoker) like some of the entries. Steve credits his coloring to just smoking it a lot with our Treasure Chest and Anniversary blends. An informal poll of other contestants was inconclusive if light aromatics did a better job than English or Virginia blends.

Steve opted to take a gift card as his  prize rather than selecting either smooth #49 or the rustic #50. The pipes were placed back into the pool of available pipes for purchase only to have the last remaining rusticated pipe get snapped up by one of the other customers who had been lusting after it in the case for the last few months.

Special thanks to all who participated and we look forward to seeing if we can convince Tom to design another annual pipe for 2008. Let's hope so as this was fun as people vied to claim the title of best colored Cottom's Choice pipe for 2007!