Category Archives: Events

by | May 26, 2021 · 9:05 pm

A Night Under The Stars with La Flor Dominicana Cigars and Tobacco Plaza

Last night we went up to Roslyn, NY on Long Island to the Swan Club for a cigar dinner put on by Tobacco Plaza in Great Neck.  The evening featured a meal cooked by Jonathan Carney, VP of sales of La Flor Dominicana, and one of the guys behind the Hacking Gourmet Series, who sponsored the event.  I suppose it’s valid to question how someone from Southeast PA ends up at a cigar dinner in Long Island. Well, of course, I’ve known Jon Carney for a long time, and he was kind enough to invite us when I was on the Smokin’ Tabacco show a few months ago. I also know Danny Ditknowitch, co-owner of Tobacco Plaza, as he is also a partner in the La Sirena brand, which has been a great supporter over the last several years, and remains one of my favorite brands. Another reason my wife and I went was that in person cigar events have been few and far between, and it was nice to get out, so it was worth the 3+ hour drive with the rush hour traffic around New Your City (unfortunate planning on my part). This was a very cool event, combining Mr. Carney’s Gourmet Smoke Sessions events with a cigar dinner. The event site, the Swan Club, was a beautiful spot, located on a harbor off of Hampstead Bay. There were 100 or so people there, I didn’t count, but Danny said that they were all customers of Tobacco Plaza. Everyone received La Flor Dominicana cigars and a lighter, and one of the cigars was an event only cigar called the Long Island Iced Tea, which had an iced tea glass in tobacco leaf applied to it. It’s hard to photograph, due to the curve of the cigar. I smoked one, and I found it to be very mild, perhaps I was expecting something different. It seemed to have more flavor on the retrohale. Perhaps I’ll let a second one rest a while and try again.

 

The food was amazing. I appreciated the fact that the menu was fairly simple as I’m not an adventurous eater (that’s a euphemism, I’m a picky eater). There were two Penne pastas, I had the one with the scallops, it was good, and the shrimp were also good. I skipped the chicken, although my wife enjoyed hers, and we both agreed that the filet mignon was amazing. There was also an open bar, which matters not to those of us who don’t drink. The coffee was good though, and I needed some of that for the ride home! I finished the night with a tasty LFD Double Ligero No 600. This cigar got me to the highway, but there’s challenges to driving a manual car in the dark, while trying to navigate unfamiliar roads and merge New York City traffic.  It ends up being more trouble than it’s worth. Fortunately it was about finished when I dropped it in the mobile Stinky ashcan. It was a good night, we met some nice folks, smoked some good cigars and had some great food. It was nice catching up with Jon and Danny too. I didn’t even miss wearing a mask, and I’ve been to events where the staff wore masks over the last 20-some years, so that didn’t phase me! Many thanks to Jon for the invite.

 

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

 

CigarCraig

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by | April 11, 2021 · 10:49 am

Baracoa Cigars The Voyage Release Event at Son’s Cigars & Lounge

I’m fortunate that Son’s Cigars & Lounge is opening just a few miles away from me in Exton, PA, and was the location of the launch of Baracoa Cigar Company‘s re-release of The Voyage. This is my backyard, I’ve lived in this area my whole life, so I’m happy to have this lounge coming to the area. It’s not open yet, the buildout isn’t even complete, but they held the event there anyway and 30 or so people were there. A few words about the lounge, it’s going to be awesome. The humidor is going to be huge, with 2000 facings, many of which will be boutiques. The lounge will be equally impressive. I’m told it will be modelled after it’s parent, literally, Mom’s in Scarsdale, NY, as Mitul Shah is a co-owner. The store is conveniently located smack dab between two cigar stores when have been in the area for many years (I state with my tongue firmly planted in my cheek). It’ll be a destination. They are hoping for a May opening, and are shooting for two events a month, the former seems optimistic looking at the skeleton of metal studs, but things can progress quickly I suppose. I look forward to covering the opening. On a side note, two of the longest running cigar blogs in the industry were represented there, as Walt White of Stogie Review made an appearance (yours truly was the other 😁  ). 

 

I had not had the pleasure of meeting Danny Vasquez prior to yesterday’s event. He launched Baracoa Cigars and The Voyage a few years back, having the cigars made at La Aurora ( and I think he’ll agree with the way I worded that), and kind of shut it down when the FDA deeming regs came down. He took a job with RoMaCraft for a few years and then decided to relaunch his brand, taking a more hands on approach with the blending with Henderson Ventura in the DR. I picked up a sampler of the cigars, three sizes, a corona, Robusto and Toro, I assume the three sizes available, although I was negligent in verifying the details. While I was there, I smoked the Corona, 5″ x 46, and Robusto Extra, 5¼” x 52, (the Toro was really tempting!, maybe today) and found them to be outstanding. There was a cleanness to the smoke, with a bit of a citric tang, more in the Corona than the Robusto, I thought. I thought they were really very good cigars, not at all heavy on the palate, but bright, if that makes sense. I’m excited to try the Toro. I’m pleased to have met Danny finally, having heard him on various podcasts and such. He did a nice job with this cigar. 

 

Many thanks to Mitul, Vince and Brian for the hospitality. It was nice to see some old friends again, and meet some new ones. In person events have become so few and far between, I think this has been the third, maybe fourth, one I’ve been to in a year. I do recommend trying The Voyage if you can get your hands on it, great cigars!

 

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

 

CigarCraig

 

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by | March 28, 2021 · 10:06 am

Altadis Know Your Wrapper Series Event at Goose’s Montecristo Lounge

Friday evening I attended an event, sort of. Goose’s Montecristo Lounge in Limerick, PA hosted the Altadis USA Know Your Wrapper Series event, both in their lounge and virtually. They probably had 15 or so people there in the lounge, which is spacious, no worries there, and a few of us attending virtually, including myself, Tom Stroud, the Altadis USA territory Manager and his wife, John Remer, who host the Facebook Group and show Johnny Smokes Uncut, and a few others.  In this event, each attendee purchased a box which contained seven corona size cigars that were puros of seven different wrapper varieties. The event was led by Travis Pappenheim, the National Education Manager at Altadis USA. He guided us through the tasting of the first couple of the puritos, presenting information on the growing regions and some of the cigars that used the various wrappers. This event was interactive, as Travis, even though he was located in south Florida, was taking questions from the lounge at Gooses, as well as interacting with the rest of the guests.

 

A few geeky thoughts on the puros:  The first one was the USA Connecticut: It had some natural sweetness on the lips at first, but I thought it was fairly sour with some bitterness. It smoothed out after a while. The Cameroon was surprising, as a wrapper only it is very distinctive, when the entire cigar is Cameroon it runs over itself and that sweet, nutty Camerooniness I love is overwhelming and exhausting. The Ecuador Connecticut is smoother and creamier than the than the USA version. In my mind, it worked better as a cigar. I don’t care much for Criollo, and a 100% criollo cigar doesn’t thrill me, the saving grace was that it was the fourth cigar in a little over an hour. Travis gave some great advice, which was to smoke the Sumatra on a fresh palate, and since that is one of, if not my favorite, wrapper varitals, I smoked this one last night. Once again, it tasted like Sumatra should taste, but too much of a good thing. HAlf way in, I switched to the Broadleaf, another favorite wrapper. This was the only one in the selection that wasn’t a puro, because, Travis said, getting the Broadleaf puro to burnright wasn’t happening. Not surprisingly, this was the best smoking experience of the bunch as a cigar, as far as balance and flavor went, with sweet cocoa and coffee notes that I love. I saved the Habano for another time, maybe today, as I was worn out.

 

As a cigar geek, I found this to be a really entertaining experience, as I always do. I’ve done these sorts of things before and I always learn something, and it reinforces things I knew, and reminds me of things I forgot. My main takeaway is that there’s a reason that these are wrapper leaves and there aren’t puros made from the various leaves. First, they’d be really expensive cigars, and mostly, they aren’t balanced and just don’t really taste good. There was one (the US Connecticut) that Travis mentioned a surprise at the halfway point and suspect he had the leaf tips thee or something and I got a cinnamon sensation somewhere thereabouts, but that was about the only thing close to complexity I got. I also have had indigestion and a sour stomach for the last two days, and it might have something to do with the tobaccos, not sure. I haven’t eaten anything strange. I wouldn’t trade the experience though,  Travis did a great job presenting and Goose was a wonderful host as always. I would have enjoyed being there in person, he has a great lounge, but between the time and “the times”, joining over Zoom was ideal. Thank you John for having me!

 

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

 

CigarCraig

https://www.altadisusa.com/

 

 

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by | November 15, 2020 · 10:04 am

All Saints Dedicación Cigars

Thursday evening I went to Cigar Mojo in King of Prussia, PA where they were having a cigar event revolving around the Masters. There was chipping and putting involved in a tournament with brackets and everything. The winner received a bottle of booze and a box of cigars. This was all sponsored by All Saints Cigars, and Mickey Pegg was there for the event. The cost of the event was $25 which included two cigars and food, but I decided instead to buy a bunch more cigars and pass on the food., I showed up two hours late anyway and had no intention of participating in the event really anyway, apart from smoking the featured cigars and meeting Mickey finally. It’s been months that we’ve been trying to connect. Of course, the several months that I was unemployed and had tons of time on my hands would have been ideal, but but there is this pandemic going on limiting contact and stores being open and all. Now that I am gainfully employed, my time is limited, and we still have the limitations of the pandemic. Fortunately, Cigar Mojo has a large outdoor area, and a large enough lounge and is responsible about occupancy and masks and cleanliness. I felt like it was a good opportunity to venture out. I bought a selection of All Saints Dedicación cigars, along with a couple other new cigars and went and met Mickey.

 

I smoked the 6” x 60 “Huge” while there. The Dedicación has a San Andrés wrapper, which does not appear to be fermented to a Maduro to me, and Nicaraguan binder and filler. I also bought some of the 6 1/2 x 52 Commandant and Mickey hooked me up with a 5 1/2 x 50 Berkey. the later of the two being box pressed. I’m not going to break each one down individually, the Huge was smoked at an event while I was talking and distracted, but it was a really nice smoke. I smoked the Commandant on Friday. It smoked well and had flavors similar to the Huge, which were earthy for the most part. I found the Berkey to be the best of the three. It had a spice and sweetness that the other two didn’t seem to have. I also felt like the larger two burned faster than I would like, I think the smoking time on the smaller Berkey was darned near the same as the larger two. If I recall, Mickey said that the 6” x 60 would be the outlier flavor wise, I suppose I’ll give them all some humidor time and revisit them at a future date. I certainly won’t hesitate to buy more of this brand though, either front mark, the Dedicación of Solamente, both are excellent. Both are made at Rocky Patel’s Nicaraguan factory, but they are blended by Mickey Pegg. I wrote about his backstory in my Solamente post on September 30.

 

Reader’s Poll!

 

Instead of me selecting a cigar of the year this year, I thought I’d do something different. Let’s have a CigarCraig’s 2020 Reader’s Poll! E-mail me at craig@cigarcraig.com with your choice for the 2020 cigar of the year. I’ll compile the results and post them on December 31. Please be as specific as possible. It’ll be fun!

 

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

CigarCraig

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by | August 5, 2020 · 2:06 pm

Goose’s Montecristo Greater Philadelphia Golf Outing

Monday I attended Goose’s Montecristo Greater Philadelphia Golf Outing at the Brookside Country Club in Pottstown, PA. I’m not a golfer, but, geeze, I haven’t even been to a cigar shop in five months, let alone a cigar event (except for stoppin into Best Cigar Pub for lunch, I guess that counts). SO I tagged along with a foursome who was content to take my shots for me in the scramble format. I provided moral support, as well as some cigars along the way, and everyone seemed happy with the arrangement. In the end, I wasn’t a liability to the group, so it all worked out. The day started with lunch of Chicken sandwiches. I joined Tom the Altadis rep, who was there to support the Montecristo part of the event, for lunch, along with Ryan of Island Lifestyle Cigars/Frontier Cigars/Tommy Bahama Accessories. The 60 attendees of the Golf event received a Large Humidor bag containing a Montecristo Colibri cutter, a triple jet Montecristo Vertigo lighter (jumbo size! too big for the pocket, smaller than a table lighter, somewhere in between, a really nice lighter!), a Montecristo cap and two cigars. The cigars were pretty special, one being a Montecristo Pilotico Pepe Mendez No. 2, and a Montecristo Cincuenta No. 2, which is a very limited cigar, which was only sold in humidors of 100 cigars which retailed for $10,000 (if you took out the value of the humidor, each cigar would be $100, however, the humidors were made by Elie Bleu, which can easily account for $2500 of that price tag. It’s still a pricey cigar!).

 

 

I opted to start the day off with a Henry Clay Warhawk. I had picked this cigar up at a visit to Goose’s some time ago, and it is an Altadis product, so I figured it was OK. I am pretty picky when it comes to Connecticut shade wrapped cigars, and this is one I like quite a bit. I suppose it’s because it has some depth and body to go along with the creaminess. I hit the links with Ryan of Island Lifestyle Cigars, Matt, a former Reading Royals Hockey player and owner of a CBD company, and Charlie, who owns a local Awards company. As I said, I was along for the ride, fortunately the three of them were cool with me being dead weight. One of the advantages, it would turn out, was that if one of them wasn’t particularly pleased with a shot, they could take my shot and try to improve upon thiers. It was a best ball, scramble format, so I got to contribute in some small way by retrieving balls here and there, and I did provide some commentary and levity where I could. At one point I did provide a round of cigars which went over well, I figured I’d contribute in my own way! I think we ended up somewhere around 5 or 6 under par for the round, Charlie was a big hitter, and everyone seemed to make their individual contributions throughout the 18 holes. I smoked one of Ryan’s Island Lifestyle Connecticut Robustos along the way. I said I was picky about Connecticut cigars, and this one is damned good. It’s made by the Olivas in Nicaragua and was really nice, and it smoked for a much longer time than I figured a robusto would smoke too. I lit it it on the “back 9” (we started on 10, ended on 9 which was right next to the clubhouse!). A good time was had by all. There’s a vide I did on Facebook live on my persona page of the first hole (link here).

 

 

Dinner followed when all 15 foursomes got done, which was a Caesar salad followed by a nice prime rib with potatoes and green beans almondine. Prizes were awarded to the top two finishers, who were something silly like 10 or 12 under par, and if they were keeping score like we were, I suppose that’s entirely possible!  We were there to have a good time, and mission accomplished, I’d say! Even though I didn’t touch a club, I enjoyed the day a great deal. The company was great, it was a beautiful day, and we smoked some great cigars. I finished the day with a Montecristo Espada Guard, as I figured I should smoke at least one Montecristo at a Montecristo sponsored event! I brought what I had along with my, and by that point in the day, my palate wasn’t in a position to appreciate either of the cigars included in the goodie bag. Goose definitely puts on a great event, the Brookside folks were accommodating and did a great job feeding everyone, and their staff was outstanding from where I sat. I’ve been to plenty of cigar events where the servers wore masks, but they usually are because they are trying to filter the smoke and smell, and hide their derision. This obviously wasn’t the case here, the servers were cheerful and happy to be there. I hope to attend the next one. I should know better than to drink red Gatorade though, anything red is a migraine trigger, along with the storm that came yesterday, it did me in! 

 

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

 

CigarCraig

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