Birthday Cigars, a Contest Winner and Random Sunday Nonsense

I’ve been a slug this week.  We’ve had a busy week here with our youngest going to the National Outdoor Leadership School for 3 weeks, my birthday, along with my wife planning my party on Saturday, as well as it being a holiday weekend.  Autumn bums me out a little too, so the specter of summer ending is tough for me.  I’ve been just grabbing smokes without concern for writing about them and just enjoying them.  I’m old. You kids get the hell off my lawn!  Anyway, I’ll get back on track this week.

Thursday was my birthday, and I wanted to smoke something special. I couldn’t really decide what I wanted to smoke, so I went with one of the cigars I blended at Cigar Safari last May.  This is the third one of these I’ve smoked, and it’s an enjoyable smoke for me.  I used a San Andreas maduro wrapper over a Cameroon binder, along with fillers from Brazil and Nicaragua.  Obviously a cigar of your own blending is special, and there’s only seven of these left on the planet, so they are quite rare.  I enjoyed the heck out of the cigar, although if I were to do it again I would’t have selected the 6″ x 54 size. The 5×44 size I made two years ago was nice, I shouldn’t have gone quite so much larger.  I still love them and they are a special cigar to me.  It was a great way to celebrate my 50th birthday.

Saturday we went up to Cigars International in Hamburg, PA to have some cigars with some friends for a few hours.  I tried the newish La Gloria Cubana Serie R Black for the first time. The La Gloria Serie R Esteli is a brick and mortar only,  while the Black is just for online and catalog sales.  Buying this in a brick and mortar location of a major catalog merchant blurs the lines a little bit, but at least it gave me the chance to try this without springing for a five pack and shipping. It was a fine cigar.  I think the Esteli version is a richer cigar, a little deeper in flavor than the black.  Granted, this was smoked off the sales floor and hasn’t had the advantage of aging, but the Esteli samples haven’t really either.  Of course, I’m a La Gloria Cubana fan, and pretty much enjoy everything from the line.  I picked up some more of the Rabitos de Cocina and Serie Ns while there.I also smoked a Don Pepin Garcia Original Lancero, a gift from Graham of Over a Cigar podcast and The Cigar Lounger magazine.  This is a fantastic smoke.  I love the Lancero shape, it’s a perfect format for a social situation.  It needs to be smoked slowly, and a good one can be a distraction from conversation.  We had a great time at the Hamburg CI, managed to be the last people out of there sometime after 11.  I had friends from high school, as well as friends from the cigar world there and everyone had a great time.  Thanks to everyone who made it out.

Wednesday I offered a contest featuring The Bacon Jams from my friend Bruce at www.TheBaconJams.com.  I’m going to send a taster with the three flavors to the winner, and a couple cigars could fall into the box too, it’s happened before.  This seemed appropriate since yesterday was International Bacon Day.  I don’t know about you, but every day is a good day for bacon, and this Bacon Jam makes it easy to enjoy it’s bacony goodness.  The odds are better than most of my contests, and I have to say I’m a little disappointed in the response. I consulted Random.org, and the random number generator gave me the number 2.  So I am the winner….no that’s not right….jjo is the winner!  Please  send me your address and I’ll get this out as soon as I meet up with Bruce for a cigar or two this week.

Until the next time,

CigarCraig