Muestra de Saka #NLMTHA and Diamond Crown Black Diamond Cigars and Thoughts on Smoking Laws

I’m headed off to an event up at Famous Smoke Shop this afternoon, so I’m going to make this pretty quick,  although I had a few things I wanted to talk about.  First, I had occasion to smoke Steve Saka‘s latest cigar in his Muestra de Saka line, the #NLMTHA Lancero.  #NLMTHA stands for Now Leave Me The Hell Alone, referring to the fact that he made this lancero pretty much under protest, considering he isn’t a real fan of the format, and people have been pestering him to make a cigar in this shape. Now, I like a Lancero, but I understand Steve’s reluctance. His whole philosophy is to only make cigars he likes himself, so making this cigar must have been painful for him. He’s a perfectionist, so if he was going to make a lancero, it was going to be done right, his way, or the highway.  Naturally,I had to get my hands on a couple to sample myself, just to see what the hubbub was all about. Fortunately, I was able to purchase a couple from BnB Cigars in nearby Chestnut Hill, PA from the comfort of home, since my schedule prevented me from visiting Vince in person. BnB is on my list of preferred outlets if you have a need for boutique cigars and excellent service, by the way. The Lancero is 7″ x 38, and is a Nicaraguan Puro, Anyway, I smoked on this week and I have mixed feelings about it. It started off on the mild side, and changed about half way through to a spicier, stronger smoke. I look forward to revisiting this under different circumstances, as I felt that I wanted to baby it as it seemed to smoke pretty fast, and I wanted to avoid overheating it, so I was conscious to smoke it slowly, and it turned out not being a very relaxing experience, and was a bit distracting. Perhaps I just need to let the other two rest until summer, when it’s warmer. It was a darned tasty cigar, I just felt like I had to work too hard at it, if that makes sense.  I was kinda wishing I had smoked a Mi Querida or Umbagog. Fortunately, I have a couple more, probably my fault anyway, although Steve will be the first to say that it’s OK not to like every cigar he makes.

I figured a good Friday night cigar would be the Diamond Crown Black Diamond in the Emerald size, which is 6″ x 52, which regular readers will know is my favored size. For some reason deeply ingrained there are a range of cigars that I consider “classic”, that I like to have represented in my humidor. These are almost all from Fuente, and include Hemingway, Añejo, Ashton VSG, and Diamond Crown. The Black Diamond was the Newman’s 100th anniversary cigar and is made with tobaccos grown exclusively for them by the Fuente family on their farms in the Dominican Republic, with the exception of the dark brown wrapper which is a Havana seed grown in Connecticut. This cigar was in development for years, and was teased as far back as 2013, but was finally released at the 2016 IPCPR. I’m finally getting around to smoking it thanks to the folks at J.C. Newman. Now this cigar, mis amigos, is right up my alley!  Aside from the fact that it’s a toro, and it’s well made and provides loads of smoke and burned for darned near two hours, the flavor was awesome. It had that chocolatey cocoa flavor I love, with  some spice and earthy notes along the way too.  This is a luxurious cigar that’s well worth trying, and I can’t wait to smoke more. It’s cigars like these that add to my cigar-snobbery and make me spoiled.

Here’s a little bit of an observation, maybe it’s already been out there but I can’t find a cite, nor can I remember hearing anyone bring it up. All the news about places raising the smoking age to 21 seems  like a funny thing, I imagine the anti-smoking groups lobby for it under the “it’s for the children” guise, when, at the same time, we have no problem sending our 18-20 year old “children off to defend our country and kill baddies around the world, quite the hypocrisy. On the other hand, while states are raising tobacco taxes, it could be argued that by raising the smoking age they are cutting into their tax base, eliminating some of their proposed revenue (playing devils advocate, we all know that raising tobacco taxes actually reduces revenue because people find ways around it).  Here’s my theory: Raising the age is about marijuana and law enforcement. Follow my thinking. police see someone underage smoking they can cite them regardless of what they are smoking. They don’t have to determine if they are legal to be smoking tobacco or weed, or worry about the expense of testing for which is which.  I know you can tell the difference by aroma, but would that be admissible in court? Is there a field test to breath into a device to tell?  It solves a lot of legal problems, doesn’t it? Just make it 21 to smoke anything and it’s all OK.  I don’t know, Maybe I’m just rambling.

It occurs to me that it was 22 years ago today that I found myself in Las Vegas at Caesars Palace meeting up with a bunch of people I had only communicated with via posts on USENET at the International Cigar Exposition (or something like that). I remember meeting Steve Saka for the first time right by Cleopatra’s Barge and helping him carry some boxes or something. it was three days of smoking and hanging out and making friends with people I still know today. It snowed like hell in PA.  That’s all for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig