Category Archives: Events

by CigarCraig | September 23, 2018 · 11:12 am

Two Events at BnB Cigars: Southern Draw and Cornelius and Anthony Cigars

I had a relatively busy week this week, making the drive into Philly two days in a row to visit Vince at BnB International Cigars in the Chestnut Hill section of Philadelphia on Wednesday and Thursday. On Wednesday, Robert Holt of Southern Draw Cigars was making an appearance there, and I hadn’t seen him since the 2017 IPCPR show. I had a bone to pick with Robert, as I had stopped receiving his media e-mails over the last year and was trying to figure out which thing it was I did that might have offended him, I thought we had left off on pretty good terms. As it turns out, he had replaced a lost phone or something and had missed getting my address back in his database, and had been wondering why he hadn’t heard from me! We got it sorted out like gentlemen, it’s all good now, keep an ear out for the next episode of the CigarCraig Podcast this week featuring Robert.

Anyway, I had a great time at BnB hanging out with Vince and Frank, and had a chance, finally to smoke their Flor de Cesar, which is their own cigar made at James Brown’s Fabrica Oveja Negra in Esteli. Vince told me they were going for something different from other cigars in the Black Works portfolio, and I’d have to agree, the Flor de Cesar was a very nice cigar with a sweet spice, almost floral side to it which was very nice. These have a Brazilian Mata Fina wrapper that Vince tells me is the same as a wrapper that RomaCraft uses on the Wanderlust (right?), but a lower priming, which they bought all of for this cigar. It has a Honduran binder and fillers from Nicaragua, Dominican Republic and Brazil. I thought it was well-balanced and medium bodied and a pleasure to smoke. I have a Toro on deck to sample, which I look forward to, but the Robusto was of exceptional quality, and is reasonably priced. BnB Inernational has an online store where these can be purchased, which is not to be confused with the BnB Tobacco which has been a long time advertiser on CigarCraig.com.

Since it was a Southern Draw Cigars Event I lit up a Jacobs Ladder Lancero out of the white Ignite jar. They had both the white and black jars on the counter, and one had a white band and one had a dark band, but they were the same cigars. Give the upcoming podcast episode a listen for information on the Ignite project, it’s a charity cigar, and Southern Draw is all about giving back, which is admirable, and I’ve seen a lot of cigar companies with good intentions end up failing, and Robert is doing the exact opposite. my only criticism is that if you don’t know what this is, the bands really don’t identify it, no where on either band does it say “Southern Draw” at all. I suppose I should have asked Robert about this at the time, I didn’t really even notice until I got home and put cigars away. If you know, you know, but if you don’t, you’re in for a rough research project. I can see a conversation in a cigar store something like “I had this great cigar, it has a band that said “Top Rung”, do you have that, I want to buy a box. it had a white and copper band with some Latin on it too.” Like when I worked in a record store and people would come in and say “I heard this song on the radio, it went something like la la la love la la…. do you have that one?” Anyway, I’m a big fan of the Southern Draw Jacobs Ladder, as a matter of fact, last winter it was wicked cold and I was walking Macha and I was wearing mittens and smoking my last Jacobs Ladder Toro. I was almost home and realized I no longer had the cigar in my hand. I panicked and turned around and retraced my steps to find my cigar on the street, fortunately undamaged, so I could finish it. I love the larger ring gauge in this blend, but the lancero version is spectacular as well. Robert loves that format, so his lanceros always seem to be on point. Smoked slow, the dark, bitter espresso flavors are right there, over smoked and it will be too harsh, but a nice, slow pace and this lancero is good to the last drop.

Thursday brought a Cornelius and Anthony event back at BnB. I decided to brave rush hour traffic and spent a good half an hour longer than usual on the Schuylkill Expressway and head back to see my friends Todd Vance and Miguel Montanez, along with Vince and Brian. Bnb is a great little shop packed to the rafters with great cigars, I recommend visiting if you find yourself in the Philadelphia area. Anyway, I grabbed myself a Cornelius and Anthony The Gent Toro and repaired to the rocking chairs on the sidewalk in front of the store with Todd to enjoy the cigar. The Gent is quickly moving up my list of favorite Cornelius and Anthony cigars, I’ve now smoked the Robusto, Gordo and Toro, and, as per usual, the Toro stands out as my favorite, although it’s a very fine line in this blend, they have all been quite good. The price is really good on these too, it may be the lowest priced cigar in the Cornelius and Anthony line, and it’s the only box pressed cigar. This is a cigar that may become a household name around here. I know my amigo CigarProp Kevin dug this one, as well as the Cornelius, and who can blame him on that, what’s not to like? Hunt down CigarProp on Youtube and check out Kevins videos, by the way. Speaking of Cornelius, I smoked a Lonsdale earlier in the week which was spectacular! It’s right up there with the Toro as my favorite of the brand. I dream of one day seeing a classic Churchill in the Cornelius blend, I think the 7″ x 47 would be drool-worthy. Spoiler alert: I’m going to go through the humidor and pick out some cigars for a contest coming up this week, definitely stay tuned.

Robert gifted me a 300 (trescientos, gotta remember that!) Manos Corona Gorda at the event which I eagerly smoked Friday afternoon. This cigar has Ecuadorian Habano wrapper, a binder from Cameroon, and a blend of Nicaraguan and Dominican fillers and is the “natural” version, with the 300 Hands being the Maduro version having a Nicaraguan wrapper and Indonesian binder. These two cigars are meant to spotlight the number of people involved in making a premium cigar, and is another project that gives back to those people through charitable donations by Southern Draw. Again, check out the upcoming podcast episode where we talk about this in detail. This is a very reasonably priced cigar, considering the quality of construction, flavor and the fact that some of your dollars are going to help people. There is a lot of nice, clean tobacco flavor in this cigar, the Cameroon binder adds that neat nutty little sweetness that I like, and the cigar just tastes good. this is a winner and I can’t wait to try the 300 Hands.

I smoked a bunch of other cigars this week, a Cornelius and Anthony Venganza, a Wiseman Maduro, a Protocol Lancero, a Providencia El Santo and a Punch Diablo, which were all excellent, and have either been covered here before, or I have future plans to write about. All of them were yummy, not a bad cigar in the bunch, I’m enjoying a good stretch of cigars, at least, I could use some luck in some other areas! Again, watch for an upcoming podcast and contest! So, that’s all for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as BNB Cigars, cigar, cigars, Cornelius and Anthony, Southern Draw

by CigarCraig | September 16, 2018 · 10:06 am

Wooden Indian Drew Estate Charity Pig Roast and Some Nomad Cigar Acquisition Questions

Yesterday I attended the 8th annual Wooden Indian Drew Estate Charity event, and I think it was the most successful so far, at least it was the one I personally enjoyed the most. The setting is the Wooden Indian Tobacconist in Havertown, PA, in the shop, in a tent on the front lawn of the shop, and on the driveway along the side of the building (which, conveniently, maybe, is next door to the local fire department…how often do we see cigar stores near firehouses? hmm…). Dave and his staff always do a great job with this event. I’m not quite sure how $20 pre-event registration which includes a $20 store credit toward Drew Estate purchase the day of the event and the pig roast works out, but I bought in and re-supplied some favorites that I like to have around. Pedro Gomez, the Factory Spokesperson for Drew Estate, and my longtime friend, was there, and I like to catch up with him when he’s around. You may remember that I talked to him on the Barnsmoker episode of the CigarCraig Podcast, if not, go back and give it a listen! The Pig was delicious, the fellowship with the attendees was excellent, and the cigars, of course, were great. I started with a MUWAT Swamp Thang Toro, because I like that cigar, hadn’t had one in a while and had a hankerin’ for one! It’s almost become a tradition for me to smoke a Nica Rustica El Brujito with Pedro when I see him because we have a mutual connection to that cigar, so I had one of those as well. The main event at this, er, event, was the auction of unique and interesting Drew Estate goodies, including several pieces of original artwork by Jessi Flores of Subculture Studios. There were several serious bidders in the crowd, and a couple bidding by proxy on the phone (who had deep pockets and won the majority of the big-ticket items). In an interesting turn of events, an item came up that had been auctioned off at this same event in 2012, and is documented on my site here, and would be hanging on my own wall if not for the persistence of the person who had to have the piece, and ended up selling it later. It took a circuitous route, but through the generosity of the gentlemen who ended up with it, it generated several hundred more dollars for charity. I’m told that over $11,000 was raised for Operation: Cigars for Warriors at this event, which is quite impressive. The event was well attended, although many of the people I have seen at the event in the past were absent, however there seem to have been a ton of events happening around the northeast yesterday, Buffalo, New York, New Hampshire, all had some big events going on. I would recommend keeping an eye open for 2019’s Wooden Indian Annual Charity Pig Roast, considering what I saw yesterday, I can’t imagine it won’t be even more spectacular. Once again, kudos’ to Dave Mayer and his staff, Ray, Alex and Pedro from Drew Estate, and all the supporting cast members who made this all possible, and to those who attended and supported the excellent cause!

Editorial

This week it was announced that Ezra Zion Cigars acquired Nomad Cigar Company from Fred Rewey (for an undisclosed amount of bacon, but that not important to my editorial on this). This was reported on Cigar Coop, Halfwheel and Cigar Federation (which is owned by the owners of Ezra Zion Cigars, by the way), and I would probably have published a news item if Gmail hadn’t sorted the e-mail into a lesser viewed folder for me, I would have been late to the party anyway. This transaction left me with some questions, so I figured I’d throw them out here and see if it generates any discussion. To understand what I find interesting about this we have to go back a few years. I first met Chris and Kyle at the 2012 IPCPR show when they had a booth debuting both Cigar Federation and Ezra Zion Cigars together, at the time neither was selling cigars direct to consumer, Cigar Federation was a start-up cigar community and blog site, Ezra Zion was a new cigar line. I developed a good relationship with these guys, one I hope, continues to this day. Eventually, Ezra Zion came to be one of the brands distributed by the House of Emilio, distribution company which had its roots with Gary Griffith and Delaware Cigars, and LJ Zucca Co., which had as many as nine boutique brands under its umbrella at one point. for a few years, maybe 2014, 2015, the House of Emilio was huge, they had a national sales force, Nate McEntire (now with Miami Cigar & Co) was once leading it, and Kyle and Chris of Ezra Zion were heading it at one point too (which may seem like a bit of a conflict of interest, when the sales force s reporting to one of several brand owners?). Over a relatively short period of time, Gary Griffith retires (deservedly so, some say he was close to 900 years old!), several brands either take their distribution elsewhere, or, in the case of Ezra Zion, direct to consumer. I may have the timeline a little off, but somewhere in here House of Emilio changes the name to Boutiques United (which Dave Garafalo, I assume, challenged), then Boutiques Unified. The last couple of years Boutiques Unified has represented the Emilio brand, Black Label Trading Co/Black Works Studio, and Nomad. Running Parallel to the above timeline, Chris and Kyle sold Cigar Federation, which eventually became the online storefront for Delaware Cigars, which I mentioned above was owned by LJ Zucca, and associated closely with what’s now Boutiques Unified. Last year Chris and Kyle bought back Cigar Federation, so now they own the online storefront for, what we’ll call for simplicity’s sake, the company they used to be the sales managers for, but left. Now, they have bought one of the last brands in the Boutiques Unified stable and intend to distribute it themselves. My question/confusion in this is does this leave BU (I’m tired if typing Boutiques Unified) as basically the sales organization for Black Label/Black Works? Granted, Oveja Negra is a hot factory, and seems to be worthy of its own representation, is it big enough? Is the Emilio brand have enough legs any more? I honestly don’t know if the AF1 and AF2 are in production any more or not, the new Grimalkin is exceptional, but is made at Oveja Negra. Where does Ezra Zion and Nomad fit in, not to mention all the Cigar Federation cigars, are they still a thing? I’ll admit I lost track of a lot of the small batch crazy stuff EZ did after they left wider distribution (I live in an area that had pretty good BU representation). I have to assume that things are good between the EZ guys and the Delaware Cigars guys and there’s no animosity, right? I find it all very interesting, I’m probably the only one, and I apologize for boring you all with this rambling nonsense, I’m just trying to make sense of all this. I certainly get why Fred sold Nomad so he could concentrate on his social media joke telling, obviously cigars were getting in the way of the quality in that department!

**note: I just saw an email from a retailer saying they were discontinuing the Nomad line because the only reason they kept it on was the relationship they had with Fred, the sales weren’t enough to sustain it in their shop. – edit 9/17 **

That’s way more than enough for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Filed under Editorial, Events, Review

Tagged as Boutiques Unified, cigar, cigars, drew estate, Emilio, Ezra Zion, Nomad, Operation: Cigars For Warriors, wooden indian

by CigarCraig | September 5, 2018 · 9:36 am

Wooden Indian Tobacconist’s 8th Annual Drew Estate Charity Pig Roast

Yesterday I happened to be in Havertown, PA dropping something off at my daughter’s house and stopped by one of my favorite cigar shops, the Wooden Indian Tobacco Shop, and figured it might be a good idea to do a quick video to help them promote an event they have coming up on September 15, 2018. It’s their 8th annual Drew Estate Charity event, and these events are a very big deal. I’ve been to a bunch of these events, and a Drew Estate event in 2009 was my introduction to store owner Dave Mayer, the store (in the old location), and Marvin Samel of Drew Estate, as well as Liga Privada cigars. In the past, the Wooden Indian’s events have raised more money for Drew Estate Charities than any other events in the country, this year all fundraising is going to Operation: Cigars For Warriors. There are amazing prizes offered, often there are original works of art by Jessi Flores and his Subcultures Studios team, rare and unusual Drew Estate cigars, and other goodies, including the two Liga Privada branded wineadors you see in the video below. People come to this event from far and wide, and I’ve seen people bid on auction items by phone, it’s that big a deal. Check out the short video with Wooden Indian General Manager Dan Wood (I don’t think the store was named after him). You’ll want to watch the Wooden Indian’s Facebook and Instagram feeds over the next week as the tease various raffle prizes and specials ahead of the event.

In the past I’ve reported on this event after the fact, what good does that do? If you have the ability to make it to this event, it’s not to be missed, I’ve been to most of them and it’s an amazing time. I’ll likely be stopping by, I hope to see some of you there, and if you can’t make it to the event and you fond yourself in the greater Philadelphia area, this is a shop and lounge you need to visit, the selection is outstanding, the service is top-notch and the lounge is the best around. Even if my daughter didn’t live a mile away I’d find a reason to visit frequently! Special Thanks to John for being the cameraman!

That’s all for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Filed under Events, News, Stores, Video

Tagged as cigar, cigars, drew estate, Operation: Cigars For Warriors, wooden indian

by CigarCraig | July 29, 2018 · 12:50 pm

A La Flor Dominicana Event and La Palina Numbers Series

Wednesday I went to a La Flor Dominicana event at my local CigarCigars shop in Frazer, PA, which featured Litto Gomez, along with our area rep, Kyle Shackleton. It was a casual meet and greet without the usual presentation which Kyle does a great job with, but Litto just hung out with the crowd, and the turn out was quite good for a Wednesday afternoon. This shop is odd, in that it has early hours, opening at 6am and closing at 7pm, and often has events early on weekday afternoons, and they seem to do well with his schedule, and this event was very well attended and they sold a lot of LFD product. There were many people there who I’ve seen at surrounding CigarCigars stores, including several of the store managers and employees. Litto doesn’t make a lot of store appearances, it was special to have him visit our little corner of the world. This shop is only about 2 miles from my house, so it was super-convenient! I spoke to him briefly at the end of the event for an upcoming CigarCraig Podcast episode, so watch for that later this week.Â While I was there I smoked a LFD Ligero Natural L-400.Â This is a 6″ x 54 toro that I really enjoyed for the first half of the event.Â It’s not the power-house that the Double Ligero is, but it’s no light-weight either. It has an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper that is flawless, as was the burn and draw, and it was a pleasure to smoke. I picked up another to smoke when I could really pay attention to it. I followed that with the LFD TAA cigar, wich was the freebie with the “buy 4, get one” promo, which I’ve had before and is a perfectly good cigar. I also picked up the TAA maduro, and ended up with one of the old event only cigars which I remember to be an incredible cigar. Like I said, it was a well attended event, the company was great, the selection was great, food from my favorite local Italian restaurant was great, if it hadn’t rained cats and dogs it would have been perfect! Fortunately the event was inside!

Of course, I was inspired to keep the La Flor Dominicana think going Thursday for my evening walk with a LFD Double Ligero Chisel Maduro that I had picked up at the last event I attended. These are amazing cigars. They have actually patented the shape of this cigar, so any other cigar you see with this shape is in violation of the trademark! I use the technique Litto himself taught me several years ago when I asked him how he preferred to cut these, and he said to just give it a squeeze to pop the cap and peel the cap away, works like a charm. None of the silly punching one side or both or anything, just a squeeze and you’re ready to go. Maybe once in a while a bite sideways to open it up a little, but otherwise it’s all good. It’s also my finding that this method really slows the smoking time down considerably, with no loss of satisfaction. I routinely get a good 2Â½ hours from a 6″ x 54 figurado, making it an exceptional value if you have the time to commit. Great heavy flavors of espresso and spice.Â This has been a favorite of mine for many years.

Friday evening we went to the BB&T Pavilion in Camden, NJ (across the river from Philadelphia) to see David Byrne of Talking Heads fame. It was part of a local college radio station festival, and I wasn’t awfully impressed with the first four acts, and even less impressed with the heavy rains we sat through during those acts (a down side of lawn seats, free tickets, can’t complain). The upside is that smoking is allowed in the lawn seating area! I smoked a lovely La Palina Number Series 01 before the torrential rains, which was pretty a darned nice cigar.Â Like the LFD L-400, this also has an Ecuador Sumatra wrapper, but it has a binder from Costa Rica and Honduran and Nicaraguan fillers, and is made in Placsencia’s Honduran El Paraiso factory.Â The example I smoked was a 5Â½” x 50 robusto, which is a nice size, and only a few people sat down nearby, realized I was smoking a cigar, then moved away. It’s not like people weren’t smoking other stuff…anyway, this cigar has a little of the sourdough bread flavor that I know at least one of my readers digs, and I’ve grown a bit of an affinity for, with some earthiness, quite an enjoyable smoke. Of course, being able to enjoy a cigar and listen to live music isn’t a bad thing. Fortunately, we brought umbrellas and tarps, so we rode the storm out, and it was worth the wait, because David Byrne put on a spectacular show, very unique and entertaining. If you ever liked a Talking Heads song and you get a chance to see one of his shows, I highly recommend it. Heck, look it up on YouTube for a taste.

Between sets, after the rain, I smoked one of those little Undercrown Coronets from the tins, and while it was good, it really underscored to me why I don’t care for little cigars. This is a personal thing, and maybe it’s because I’m a reformed cigarette smoker, but I didn’t need that cigar. I felt like it was something I smoked to pass the time, and when I smoke a cigar, I smoke it to relax and I really want to spend an hour or so with he cigar. Like I said, these are fine ifÂ you need a fix, I’m not casting aspersions, it just reminds me of when I needed a cigarette at prescribed times and got antsy if I couldn’t do it. I can separate that now, but I got an uncomfortable feeling smoking that little cigar. Perhaps it’s just my current life situation and not wanting stress to push me down any roads I don’t want to go back down…

Anyway, of course, I had to smoke the La Palina Number Series No. 02 Last night. This one has a Costa Rican Maduro wrapper over a Honduran binder and Nicaraguan and Honduran fillers, also made at El Paraiso in Honduras. The Robusto in this one is (unfortunately, in my opinion) a half n inch shorter at 5″ x 52, not sure what went into that decision. For me, that half an inch might represent another twenty minutes of smoking time! When I smoked these two cigars before, I came to the same conclusion, and that was that while I likes the No. 01 well enough, the No. 02 was the cigar that was right in my wheelhouse! This guy has semi sweet chocolate, dark roast coffee, an all around tasty treat. People don’t like the bands and packaging on these, they don’t bother me. Sure, I like the traditional look of the Family series and the Black, Red, Bronze, etc. Labels series, butÂ I actually prefer these over the Classic series bands which I find to be just blah. I think La Palina has something for every taste, whether it’s flavor or aesthetic.

That’s enough for today, off to work on a could projects around the house, have a podcast to put together and cigars to smoke!Â Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as BB&T Pavilion, Chisel, cigar, CigarCigars, cigars, David Byrne, Double Ligero, La Flor Dominicana, La Palina, Ligero

by CigarCraig | June 24, 2018 · 12:15 pm

The Drew Estate Pennsylvania Barn Smoker and One Other Cigar

Yesterday, Saturday, June 23, I had the privilege of attending the first ever Pennsylvania version of Drew Estate’s Barnsmoker Series. Last year I attended the Connecticut version and found it very educational, and, oddly, I saw many of the same people at this one. I went with a couple of friends who hadn’t been to an event like this before, one who is a cigar enthusiast, and one who is a cigar lover but not an an enthusiast so much (but is an Acid Kuba Kuba fan), but is a foodie and beer and spirits guy. I was interested to see their reaction to this event. Before I get to my perception of that, let me lay out the event from my perspective. A farm in Strasburg PA, just east of Lancaster, was the setting. Strasburg is a nice little Lancaster county borough famous for the Strasburg Railroad, a tourist fixture since I was a little kid, which we all know was a very long time ago. Another notable factoid about this area is that the movie Witness was primarily filmed not far from this area. Bonus for me was that it’s about an hour from my house. The farm was typical for the area, nothing unusual from many farms in the area, except for the huge tent and 500 cigar maniacs.

Compared to my experience at the Connecticut event, check-in lacked any lines whatsoever, it was very smooth. I’m not sure if that was the smaller crowd or what. They did advertise that parking opened at 9, and the event started “promptly” at 10. There was no traffic, no lines, very orderly and almost had me worried as we arrived around 9:40. Check-in consisted of having your ticket scanned and receiving your official Barnsmoker tupperware tub with DE stickers, a poker chip, matches, a cutter, a small vial of tobacco seeds, a cap and the voucher allowing you to buy the cigar sampler for $10. The next stop was the cigar table, staffed by Famous Smoke Shop employees, where you traded the voucher and a $10 bill for the following cigars: • Liga Privada A • Liga Privada Velvet Rat • Kentucky Fire Cured Just a Friend • Pappy Van Winkle Barrel Fermented Limitada • Larutan NDB • Experimental Pennsylvania Broadleaf blend Corona x 2 • Undercrown Sun Grown Toro • Undercrown Shade Toro • Undercrown Maduro Toro • Undercrown Shade Coronets Tin • Undercrown Maduro Coronets Tin. Obviously, paired with the $90 ticket price for the event, this isn’t a bad deal if you like cigars. Incidentally, when I got home I saw someone selling two of their Barnsmoker packages on Facebook for $100 each and had people lined up to buy them. John Drew Brands (www.johndrewbrands.com), MB Roland (www.mbroland.com), Buffalo Trace (www.buffalotrace.com), and Southern Comfort were there providing samples as well.

As with most events like this, it was nearly 11:00 before the festivities got rolling, and Fabian Ziegler was the MC and introduced Jonathan Drew who addressed the attendees. He introduced members of the Welk family, owners of the farm and growers of some of the best PA broadleaf wrapper. The group was then split in three and went to the tree stations of the educational portion of the event. The group I was in started in the curing barn. JD was the speaker here, and spoke about the process of hanging the leaf in the barn after it was taken from the field in the fall. After the leaf is dried in the rafters of the barn is where things are done differently in PA, as they hang it in a damp basement for a while while rotating it through the baling process over the winter to keep it from drying out. it’s a very manual process. From the barn we went to a station with Willie Herrera and the master brewer from Yuengling brewery where they discussed the differences and similarities between blending cigars and beer. There were samples of Yuengling beer here, but no cigar samples, so I wasn’t as interested as I could have been. Obviously with beer there’s more instant gratification than there is with cigars, however patience seems to be a common theme. This station was under a very small tent, and this happened to be the one time it rained during the day, pictures I tried to take didn’t come out due to the lighting, and I never did get a chance to talk to Willie during the event, despite my best efforts. The final station was the field, where Pedro Gomez and Don Welk went through the 7 month growing cycle from hydroponically starting the seedlings to harvesting the full grown plants, as well as the family history and and the Pennsylvania history of tobacco farming. Clearly there are differences between growing tobacco in PA versus Nicaragua, but it’s still a very manual process and there is a lot of risk. Like I saw in Connecticut, one hail storm and a whole year is lost. although in Pennsylvania there are enough tobacco growers that they do have crop insurance (I believe black tobacco is lumped in with burley tobacco for insurance purposes, someone please correct this if I’m wrong). The Time went by way too quickly on this part of the event, it was very enlightening, I’m always eager to learn more about what goes into the cigars I love.

Lunch was served and once again it was delicious barbecue, with the requisite starches to go with it. Food was plentiful, I had various meats with some slaw and mac and cheese, and I heard the ribs were excellent. I smoked one of the “PA Test Blend” cigars that were supplied because, well, I felt like I had to, and it was good, and I look forward to seeing what this will become. I’ll just say that it started off quite full and mellowed, but didn’t feel quite finished yet, like it was missing something. Maybe not balanced, I don’t know. If it ends up being half the cigar the FSG is, it’ll be great (if it’s half the price, even better! 🙂 ). I actually started the day with a very old Tabak Especiale Negra Robusto I brought with me, as I’m not a regular morning smoker, and held off on lighting up as I was taking pictures and trying to pay attention to the presentations without distractions. I really enjoyed the Tabak, as I have for many years as a morning cigar, duh, it’s tastes like coffee. Drew Estate puts on world class events, I can’t imagine they make money off of these things, especially when Operation: Cigars for Warriors ends up with $16k in donations with a large part of that being corporate matching (saying that with the utmost respect for all involved, kudos!). I think a Barnsmoker is a must do event if you love cigars, especially if you are unable to make it to a factory tour off shore, or even if you are, it’s a fun, although often too short, day. My friend Mike, a cigar guy, always enjoys events with an educational component and commented that he’d attend again. My friend Jim, the foodie, found the culture interesting, seemed happy enough with the food and drink and was interested, but seemed like more of a one and done type of attendedee, which is fine, I don’t think he was disappointed. Not everyone is the type of consumer who has to do things over and over, some people experience things once and move on to the next thing, I’m that way to some extent. Much like cigars themselves, there’s something for everyone. Thanks to everyone at Drew Estate, especially Joe, Sam, JD and Pedro for their kindness!

One other cigar that I wanted to mention this week that I smoked was the new Ramone Allones from AJ Fernandez. I went to a nearby shop on a fact-finding mission and these had just come in, so I figured I’d give the robusto a try. First observation is that these are pricey, $11 for an AJ robusto is a bit of a shock. the presentation in the 10 count lacquer box and cedar sleeve is nice, but I was taken aback. So that raised my expectation a bit. General Cigar handed trademark for this over to AJF after they gave a try at re-imagining it a few years ago under the Foundry brand along with the Bolivar. I thought the packaging on both was pretty bad, but I liked the Bolivar a lot although I thought the Ramone Allones was ~~yucky~~ not a good match to my palate. I thought the first half of this new version was pretty darned tasty, rich, dark Habano Oscuro wrapper had some nice cocoa flavor. When it got to the second half I started to get some ammonia notes, unacceptable in any cigar in my opinion, let alone one carrying a premium price tag. This was independently corroborated later in the day in a conversation with a cigar company rep who had the same opinion. My advice to retailers, for what it’s worth, is to put these away for a couple of months before putting them on the shelf for sale, probably not what people want to hear, but I didn’t find the cigar to be ready yet, there are a lot of $5.50 cigars I would rather have bought two of, quite honestly, or the Habanos “Specially Selected probably isn’t that far off of $11. It’ll be a great cigar when it’s ready. Everyone knows it’s not my way to badmouth a cigar.