Brick House, La Galera and Te Amo Cigars

I hope everyone had a safe and enjoyable Independence Day! I celebrated by smoking a couple anniversary themed cigars, and going out to dinner with my wife and granddaughters. We celebrated our 37th wedding anniversary, I know, Independence Day, we had our reasons! After work Friday, even with the Thursday off it had been a busy week, I decided to unwind with an old favorite, the Brick House Mighty Mighty Maduro from J.C. Newman. I’m sure this cigar has been mentioned before once or twice in this site, but I had some thoughts while smoking it. This is a 6¼” x 60 cigar with a Brazilian Arapiraca wrapper over Nicaraguan fillers and binder. I thought to myself while smoking this that when there comes a time when I ‘ve smoked through my collection of singles, and at a place where I’m smoking a rotation of cigars, this would be a great cigar to include in that rotation. It’s a really good cigar which fits my flavor preference and it’s not hard on the wallet. I might opt for the toro, but even in this size it makes me happy. It’s certainly a cigar I can smoke often. I’m a fan of the line.

Yesterday I found myself driving through Whitehall, PA and stopped in New Tobacco Village and had a smoke with Lina and John. I bought a bunch of “new to me” cigars and sat down and smoked a La Galera Anemoi Notus, the 5″ x 56 Robusto Gordo in the line. I didn’t include a link to their site because it seems like it’s compromised somehow, I got information from CigarCountry.com, which, if memory serves, has some association with Jochy Blanco, who makes the cigars. I could be wrong. The info was credible, so I’m going with it.The Anemoi has a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper, Dominican Jacagua Corojo binder and Criollo 98 and Piloto Cubano fillers. For a Broadleaf wrapped cigar, it smoked more like a Habano, with a citrus tang to start. It never really developed the sweetness I expect from Broadleaf. It was a good smoke, made better by the company. New Tobacco Village is a really nice little shop with a very broad selection. They have a new exclusive, the Devil in Disguise, which I wrote about a couple weeks ago.

I picked up a new Te Amo in the Magnum (6″ x 60) size, which I’ve been itching to try. When I started smoking cigars back in the mid-90s, Te Amo was one of the first brands I enjoyed. It was partly because my father-in-law recommended the brand to me, and I would occasionally have cigars with him, that I got into the brand. I think it was one of my first few box purchases. I even smoked the Te Amo Segundos, which were even more inexpensive. Naturally, I gravitated to the maduro toros, and I think Te Amo was responsible for the 6″ x 50 size being called a toro. So I was anxious to try this new expression of the Te Amo, the original San Andrés Valley cigar. It’s made by the Turrent family, who is responsible for most, if not all, of the San Andrés tobacco. This line features San Andrés Habano wrapper and fillers, with a San Andrés Negro binder. I thoroughly enjoyed the cigar, although it only slightly reminded me of the Te Amos of old. It has some rich soil notes with some spice and coffee with cream. I’ll be very interested in sampling a maduro when and if it comes out. This line had such a bad reputation amongst aficionados, it will be interesting to see if it’s revival has legs, and it will be equally interesting to see if it’s accepted by the old Te Amo smokers. Of course, it costs about four times what they cost in the 90’s!