Monthly Archives: February 2010

This Week’s Cigars: CAO, La Aurora – Friday Feb 26, 2010

More snow this week in PA, so my cigar consumption had been fairly light.  I started out with a CAO Gold robusto which had a good draw, a nice amount of smoke, but really didn’t have a flavor I’m overly fond of.  It was sort of grassy, and didn’t really hit the spot for me.  I enjoy a great many of the CAO lines, I’m hoping this one was an anomaly.  As I mentioned in a previous post, I recently received a bunch of various CAO cigars as a gift from my wife, and I have a few various singles floating around.

The next cigar I had was a La Aurora Barrel aged robusto, which I got at the 2008 IPCPR tradeshow, so it was at least a year and a half old.  This looked like it should be a tasty cigar, it had a very dark and rustic wrapper that just wouldn’t burn.  I tried relighting it over and over to no avail.   It had some nice flavors on the odd occasion that I got some flavor, it refused to give me enough smoke to make a good judgment. I was very disappointed with this as I had high hopes for it.

I have a soft spot for the La Aurora brand for personal reasons but have been let down frequently.  As a matter of fact, the first box of cigars I ever purchased was a box of La Aurora Bristol Especiales back in 1996 for around $35.  While the cigars tasted good, they had very fragile Cameroon wrappers and exploded more times than not.

In that spirit, tonight’s cigar was a LA Aurora 1495 Corona, again from the 2008 IPCPR show.  The 1495 was an even burning, medium bodied, tasty treat.  At 5.2″ x 42, it gave me a very pleasant 45 minutes of cigar happiness.  I still have a couple assorted La Auroras in the humidor, including an old Bristol Especiale, and one of the beautiful Perferidos.  I’ll likely smoke them sometime in the coming months.

That’s it for now, have a great weekend!

CigarCraig

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Sunday Cigar – Liga Privada “Dirty Rat” – Feb 21, 2010

It’s been a while since the weather was decent here, it was sunny and in the 40s today.  I was gifted a Liga Privada “Dirty Rat” by Steve Saka in Reno back in November and was hanging on to it until circumstances were appropriate for the proper enjoyment of this limited edition cigar.  My wife and  I received a package which included some more of these so I figured today was the day to fire one up.  The story on these, as I remember Steve telling it, is that they were playing with the Liga Privada blend in a corona size.  Because of the blend, the only way to get anywhere close was to include partial leaves, hand cut, of certain tobaccos.  This made the possibility of this particular cigar going into production relatively remote due to the considerable labor involved in making these.  It’s a shame, because the “Dirty Rat” is an awesome cigar.  The wrapper is a beautiful and oily, Connecticut broadleaf with a filler blend of five tobaccos packed into the 5″ x 44 pigtailed corona.  Here’s were I come up short in cigar reviewing, describing the flavor.  Whatever the flavors are I like them. They are heavy and satisfying, with some spice that progresses to just a delicious and savory tobacco flavor.  I love the Liga Privada No.9 and the T52, but this little flavor bomb is a special treat.  Thanks to Steve for giving me the rare opportunity to sample this cigar from your private stash.

In my inbox this week I received the following from Cigar Rights of America:

Cigar Rights Club, Pennsylvania Challenge Club Membership Goal: 500!

Cigar Rights of America is growing, and working to become the voice of cigar enthusiasts across this country in the local, state and federal battles that threaten one of life’s great pleasures, and a moment so fundamental to the “pursuit of happiness” – a cigar among friends.

There is a great adage in politics – there is power in numbers. Now, more than ever, we need cigar voters to stand up and be counted. We have issues to confront, votes to monitor, minds to change, and people to thank…all at once. That’s why we need your friends that also have the passion for a great cigar to join the cause.

Pennsylvania is pivotal to the growth of CRA. So we are issuing a special challenge. We want Pennsylvania to have 500 members of CRA going into the next election season. After we reach that benchmark, we’ll issue another…and another, until we know that we have the voting block of cigar enthusiasts necessary to protect your ability to enjoy great cigars, with as little government regulation and taxation as possible. It’s all about that, “pursuit of happiness.”

I’m surprised that there aren’t 500 members in PA, but if you aren’t a member please consider joining, even if you aren’t in Pennsylvania.  It’s a worthwhile organization and it’s only $35 per year.  They do a lot to preserve our right to enjoy fine cigars.

That’s all I got for now, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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A New Look and a New Home for the CigarCraig.com Blog!

As you may have noticed, I’ve made some changes to the CigarCraig.com blog.  I’m still using the WordPress platform, but instead of using the free WordPress.com blog, I’m running the WordPress software on the CigarCraig.com servers.  This gives me some more flexibility regarding embedding videos, as I did on my last post (starring our cat Max making the contest winner selection), as well as embedding some widget based content in the right column.  Just like any website, this one is a work in progress.  I’m toying with the idea of making this blog the front page of the site and building the additional pages around it.  I’m on the fence as to whether to use the Worpress templates to maintain a consistent theme, or to continue writing my own HTML for the additional pages.  I’ve already put up  “about” and  “links” pages to see hoe it looks, please let me know what you think.  The lazy bastard in me leans toward using the template,  but I kind of like the format of the main site.  I will have to have a cigar and ponder all the ramifications of these decisions.  The old blog, cigarcraig.wordpress.com,  will remain in place for posterity (there is a widget that links to the content housed there).

Something I recently found out about the cigarcraig.wordpress.com blog is that, by default, WordPress has a “feature” called mShots, which pops up a screenshot of any links in your blog.  This can be turned off in the appearance section of the WordPress dashboard under Extras. I never even noticed this until it was pointed out to me by a reader who said it disuaded him from reading my posts.  I wanted to mention this to others using WordPress.com so they know that this is occurring, it came as a surprise to me!  The wordpress.org software doesn’t appear to have this “feature”. Many thanks to Ted for pointing this out to me.

To keep this on topic, I enjoyed a Romeo y Julieta Habana Reserve Toro last night.  It was smooth and creamy and burned perfectly. Altadis’ website categorizes it as “a medium to full body smoke”, but I find these on the mild side.  Maybe I’m just a little jaded.  I would recommend these to someone who likes milder cigars as a step up, but, to me at least, these are medium at best.  Not that this is a bad thing, I would hate for someone to avoid these based on the manufacturers characterization of these as a medium to full body smoke.

Don’t forget to follow me on Twitter (@cigarcraig) if you’re so inclined, and keep an eye out in the next few weeks for the March contest.  I’ve received some amazing stuff to give away!  You don’t want to miss out on the chance to win.

Until the next cigar,

CigarCraig


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Saturday’s Cigar Adventure – February 13, 2010

Welcome to the new home of the CigarCraig.com Blog!

Last night I took a trip up to Bethlehem, PA to the Cigars International Super Store where they were having an event featuring Sam Leccia. My friend Kyle, a former co-worker who used to join me for cigars at lunch on Fridays back in the mid-1990s came along with me. Sam is famous for his Nub and Cain cigars and was there doing some amazing cigar wrapping demonstration.   I was amazed that he was cutting little pieces of various shades of leaf with his chaveta, and carefully applying them to the cigar.  He then proceeded to make a pipe,but not just a cigar with a right angle bend in it, but with a bowl! It was amazing.  Much to my surprise and delight, Sam presented me with one of these special cigars I’d watched him create!  This cigar will occupy a special place in my humidor! Thank you Sam!

I picked up a couple of the Cain F, as well as a Habano and a Maduro and proceeded to light the Cain Maduro while watching Sam work his magic. The Cain Maduro 550 I smoked was a powerhouse!  The San Andreas wrapper was quite tasty and if I hadn’t taken my time it may have gotten the better of me!  It turned out to be a very nice evening.

I’ve decided to take the plunge into the world of Twitter.  I can be found at http://www.twitter.com/cigarcraig.  I have this blog set up to auto-tweet when a new article is posted, so follow me and I’ll try to tweet some interesting things from time to time.

It’s Valentines Day as I write this and my beautiful bride of 22 years surprised me with a 3 pack of CAO samplers!

Now on to the moment you’ve all been waiting for: the selection of the winner of the Drew Estate Cutter!  As a side note, I am looking forward to receiving a package from John Brooke, the new PR/Media guy at Drew Estate, with some goodies from Steve Saka for future give-aways!  There will be some SWEET stuff in the coming months!  Major Thank-Yous to the folks at Drew Estate for their support!  This month’s featured feline is Max.  While Max didn’t exactly lay down on the winner, I think he was pretty clear who the winner was.

httpv://www.youtube.com/watch?v=qxSGPKLJWhk

So “Patriot Geek”, please e-mail me with your contact info so I can get your prize out to you!  Congrats!

That’s it for now.  Please let me know how you like the new page and how I can improve upon it!

Until the next cigar,

CigarCraig

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