CigarCraig's Blog

by CigarCraig | November 12, 2014 · 9:36 pm

Gurkha, Rocky Patel, Blanco’s Primos, Straight Jacket and Contest Winners!

First a little rant, then we;ll get on to some cigars and contest winners. This week it was reported that the city of Philadelphia proposed a tax on cigars and “other tobacco products” to help fund the schools. They apparently a

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lready levied a tax on cigarettes recently for the same reason and now they are going after the rest. What they don’t understand is that this tax will either close, or drive out many cigar shops (Holts has a large presence in Philadelphia), taking business and payroll taxes out of the city, and even if there are cigar stores left, people will make a short trip to the surrounding suburbs to shop. The city will not only fail to collect the taxes they want for the schools, but they will lose the other taxes. Once again, short sighted government actions hurt many and benefit nobody. This was reported on The Cigar Authority where you can read the full text of the proposal.

Sunday, after breaking my back once again doing yard work at the new house, I took a nice, long walk with a Gurkha Xtreme XO, the 6″ x 60 size. Obviously this is a new cigar in Gurkha’s core line, as there is no blend information on their website. I saw Bianca, Gurkha’s Marketing Manager, three times over the last few months, and she gave me this cigar on one of those occasions. I actually can’t recall which. It had been in my humidor for a few months so I figured it was time to dig it out. As with all the cigars I smoked this week, I used the Screwpop punch which gave me an acceptable draw. I expected a powerhouse cigar, based on the name. The cold draw and aroma off the wrapper was like freshly tanned leather. It wasn’t anywhere near as strong as I expected, it was solidly medium and had a consistent leathery flavor all the way through. It was a really nice cigar, but I had hoped it was a bit stronger.

Monday I grabbed a Rocky Patel Platinum which I got back at Cigar Mojo‘s Anniversary/Halloween event. This box pressed robusto was a very nice cigar. This had a Connecticut Broadleaf wrapper with a San Andrés binder and fillers from Esteli and Condega. I knew there was some reason I liked this cigar! The combination of Broadleaf and San Andrés gave it a nice, sweet and earthy flavor. I was quite happy with this cigar, and it burned very nice. I have to keep an eye out for more of these, it was the free cigar with a purchase of four RP cigars, so I have no concept of what the Platimum costs. I will say that it was well worth what I paid for it!

Tuesday evening I had my mind set on smoking something strong, dark and familiar, but at the last minute I came across a cigar that David Blanco gave me when I saw him at The Smokin’ Goose festival in September. The Primos Estate Selection Habano Criollo Rosado in the toro size, 6″ x 52, has a ruddy Habano Rosado wrapper grown in Nicaragua, with fillers from Nicaragua, Honduras and Peru. I tend to enjoy cigar with Peruvian tobacco in the blend, and I enjoyed this cigar. It’s getting to be the time of year where I gravitate toward bolder cigars, and this one had some more delicate, subtle flavors that were nearly lost on me, but they were there and I enjoyed the sweetness and medium bodied tobacco flavor. I think this would be a great morning or early afternoon smoke.

Tonight I finally broke into the Asylum Straight Jacket box that I won in the silent auction benefiting Operation: Cigars for Warriors at the Smokin’ Goose fest. I took a run out to Goose’s Tobacco a couple weeks ago and settled up, between the new house and the car/deer mergence a few weeks back, it was hard to get out there. These are a limited edition cigar made in Honduras at the Fabrica Unidas’ El Aladino factory with Nicaraguan tobacco. These are supposed to be the strongest Asylum cigar yet, and I’d tend to agree. This is exactly what I’ve been craving. It’s smoke is dense and full of heavy, creamy flavor. I have enjoyed everything I’ve smoked from Tom Lazuka’s crazy Asylum line, but this one is the pick of the litter for sure! Even the burn was perfect with that nice, flat burn t

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hat I love.

Contest!

We had a pretty good turnout for the two Screwpop 2.0 Cigar Punches (and whatever cigars fall into the box…you’ll have to trust me). This will be the last contest for a month, at which time I’ll launch into the forth annual 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways. I’ve already gotten some spectacular prizes in the pipeline, soon I’ll have to put the temporary prize coolerdor into service again as the goodies roll in. Get ready, it’s going to be pretty darned cool. Anyway, we had 37 entries and Random.org chose number 12 and 35, so the winners are Jeff Ketcham and Tim! Please e-mail me your addresses so I can get these cool new tools out to you. Thanks to everyone and stay tuned for the big show in a few weeks!

That’s it for now! Until the next time,

CigarCraig

5 Comments

Filed under Contest, Editorial, Review

Tagged as Asylum, Blanco, cigar, cigars, Contest, Gurkha, Primos, rocky patel, ScrewPop

by CigarCraig | November 9, 2014 · 9:32 am

An Arandoza, a CAO Flathead and a new Sindicato Cigar, and a CONTEST!

OK, lots going on today, so let’s get some cigars out of the way! My palate’s a little flat still, I blame the change in weather. It’s gotten cold all the sudden, and I tend to gravitate to heavier maduros this time of year anyway, and I’ve been slow in following my own advice. One reason is it’ll be boring writing about the same couple cigars twice a week, and it’ll be equally boring smoking the same couple cigars! I’ll adjust, it’s like that first day it drops in the 40s and you bundle up with gloves, and by January you’re in a t-shirt when it gets that warm. So I smoked some cigars, came across a neat cigar related item or two, and there’s a contest too!

Thursday I decided to dig in to the box of Arandoza White Label Robustos that I apparently won in the most recent Cigar Federation Project Mañana Raffle. I really like the cigars from Arandoza, which are made at Erik Espinosa’s La Zona Factory. This is a nice, refined Nicaraguan cigar with good balance and flavor. I really look forward to smoking more of these, there is just about nothing I don’t enjoy about this cigar, from the smoking to the presentation, it’s first class all the way. I suppose it’s possible one of these falls into the contest box when it mails out. Stranger things have happened. Thank you to Arandoza Cigars and Cigar Federation for supporting a worthy cause.

To give my palate a proper test, I decided my Friday evening smoke should be a favorite cigar that I’ve smoked a bunch of over the past year or so. I really like the CAO Flathead line, with the only possible gripe I have being that the only real neat and tidy way to cut these is with a punch, which actually works out nicely for today’s post. I used the first edition of the Screwpop Punch on the Flathead (if you don’t know, the head is flat, so it’s really hard to use anything but a punch on these). I smoked the 556 Camshaft size of the Flathead, with is basically a toro, but I can recommend any size (including the 770) to anyone who enjoys bold, heavy bodied maduro cigars. These are about the perfect autumn cigar for me. Another benefit is that they don’t roll off the table when you set them down! Good stuff from Ricky Rodriguez and his team at CAO.

Yesterday, after spending time at the new house clearing brush and ancient overgrown hedges for a fence to contain Macha (and keep the 16 year old Cocker Spaniel from wandering off), I came home to a cool package in the mail. This package contained the redesigned Screwpop 2.0 Cigar Punch. When I tried the original punch almost two years ago, I made some suggestions to Brett at the company on some ways I thought it could be improved. One suggestion was to reverse the design so that the punch came off of the clip/opener end so that it could remain clipped to something, and the other was to make it self clearing, as the original version tended to keep the cap cuts in the body of the unit. It seems my suggestions were taken to heart, and here we have the new version of the punch. Of course, I had to try it out. I received some samples of the new Sindicato maduro last week, and these looked really good. The samples were all of a larger size, so I went up the middle with the 6×60 Magnum size. This wasn’t the best test for the Screwpop 2.0 becuase the folks at Casa Fernandez, who make this cigar, use a bit of a pigtail cap. Not to be deterred, I gave it a punch. The 2.0 is a slightly larger bore than the 1.0, which is good, since it doesn’t render my old trusty punch obsolete. The cigar has my favorite San Andres Morrón wrapper, and has a nice, rich cocoa flavor. The 60 ring gauge was very comfortable given the box press, so it felt a bit smaller. It burned very well and I can’t wait to smoke the Churchill and Toro sizes. It smoked very well and was a fine way to wrap up a tiring, but productive day.

And now for something completely different

I received a note from one of my readers, Josh, in Salt Lake City, pointing me to his Etsy store. He’s been making some really cool lamps from cigar boxes. These have a really nice kind of steampunk feel to them and are very high end. Take a look at his site when you get a chance! https://www.etsy.com/shop/saltcitylampworks

Contest

Since Brett at Screwpop Tool, LLC was kind enough to send me more than one Cigar Punch 2.0, I figured it only made sense to have a contest and give one away! Strike that, I’ll give TWO away! Be aware, I can’t just send out a punch without including something to try it out on, so, invariably, some cigars will fall into the shipping boxes when they go out. I can’t help it, it just always seems to happen. So to recap, the Screwpop 2.0 Cigar Punch no only bores a nice hole in your cigar and cleans itself out, but you can also use it to take the cap off your favorite bottled beverage. It’s got a handy and fashionable gated clip so you can wear it with pride or clip it to your key ring. These are black anodized aluminum and look really sharp. Leave a comment to enter and I’ll select two winners at random on Wednesday. If you’ve won in the last six months you aren’t eligible, sorry.

That’s it for now, time to head over to the new house an clean up the mess we made yesterday! Until the next time,

CigarCraig

37 Comments

Filed under Contest, News, Review

Tagged as Arandoza, CAO, cigar, Cigar Federation, cigars, Contest, Flathead, Lamp, Project Mañana, punch, ScrewPop, Sindicato

by CigarCraig | November 5, 2014 · 9:42 pm

A Don Pepin Garcia, Alan Price, Eiroa Maduro and a Matilde Cigar

As we’ve been working on the new house, we figured since we have a great enclosed cigar porch, we should have an annual cigar party. We just need to figure out when to have this party, so we’ll take suggestions. Whoever comes up with the best date to have this event will get free admission (airfare, lodging not included). We kind of thought Columbus Day would be a good time. It gives us plenty of time to prepare, and the only really important thing Columbus did was to introduce tobacco to the west. Getting lost and stumbling upon some islands isn’t really a great accomplishment. Give us your thoughts!

Sunday I pulled out a Don Pepin Garcia Series JJ Robusto from a Five Pack I bought at JR Cigars in Whippany, NJ back in June of 2012. These have been hit or miss with me, and I only have one left so I must have smoked a couple over the years, or gifted one her or there. This one, like the first one I smoked, was a little tighter on the draw than I’d like. It had a nice flavor, medium to mild with a little sweetness and maybe a little earthy and woody. I just wish that it had produced more of that tasty smoke, it’s production was a bit thin. Was this cigar really rolled in Miami? I was actually surprised to find this five pack in JRs, I wouldn’t be surprised now, but I was surprised then. Many who have followed others in the blogosphere will understand why I chose that particula

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r cigar.

Monday I chose a cigar I bought last week at Cigar Mojo. A few months ago Alan Price, part time tobacconist at Mojo, Cigar Rights Ambassador and all around good guy, went to the Rocky Patel factory in Honduras. He ended up taking delivery (earlier that day) of one hundred cigars that he had blended on that trip. This cigar had a Sumatra Oscuro wrapper, Viso Honduras binder and fillers of Ligero Jamastran, Viso Jalapa &

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Ligero Jalapa. I admit that I rushed to smoke this, as it really needed some humidor time after it’s long journey. The blend certainly has a lot of potential, and I’m glad I bought two so I will have one to smoke in a few weeks or so after it’s had time to acclimate. It was a beautiful cigar with a rich and oily wrapper. It’s always fun for me to smoke a cigar that a friend blended, one gets a glimpse into the other person’s tastes. The cigar was very smooth and tasty, but it’ll really shine in a few weeks I hope. Alan says there’s only about eight left, so this is a rare cigar, I guess.

Tuesday I smoked the Eiroa Maduro in the robusto size. A few weeks ago I was in one of my local shops, JM Cigars, and Jeff, the proprietor had a CLE event earlier in the day (I had stopped in earlier too, before the event, and missed it). He gave me one of the leftover giveaway cigars. I suppose, for want of a better comparison, this is Christian Eiroa’s incarnation of the Camacho Triple Maduro, as all of the tobacco used is cured maduro. The cigar was rich and loaded with cocoa/espresso and burned reasonably well. I liked it well enough, but the $10 price tag will probably prevent me from smoking too many of these. I appreciate Jeff giving me the opportunity to try this cigar though, it’s much appreciated.

Tonight I decided to retry a cigar I bought a pair of back in July when I was at the Casa de Montecristo store in the Chicago area. I bought a few Matilde Renacer robustos and smoked one on the drive home from Chicago and it was a big problem, it burned poorly and was really not a great experience while driving. There was a leaf in the blend that wouldn’t burn, and it left a core in the middle. Like I said, not a good driving cigar. This one burned much better after a few months in the humidor and was a nice, medium bodied smoke. I found it on the mild side, with a nice, yet rather unremarkable flavor. Maybe I’m still a little off from the cold I had a couple weeks ago, or I’m just making choices that don’t align with my palate. I’ll keep trying though!

News

I received an e-mail today from George Rodriguez of Rodrigo Cigars with a contest I thought I’d pass on. What stood out to me was that I met Eric Whitfield, the CIGARtist, a few weeks ago and his work is amazing. We actually talked about buying one of his pieces for our new house. Anyway, check out George’s contest and take a shot at winning this unique and functional work of art (and some great cigars)

To celebrate the release of the long awaited Corona Project my buddy Eric Whitfield, aka the CIGARtist painted this beautiful one of kind travel humidor.

I’m giving it away to one lucky ”Amigo” and I’m gonna fill it with a selection of savory Rodrigo Cigars, including the new Corona Project!

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY HERE

And make sure you visit our buddy Eric aka the CIGARtist and check out his beautiful cigar themed art!

Your amigo…-George

PS Just think how cool you’re gonna feel when you roll up to your next herf with this bad boy 😉

ENTER THE GIVEAWAY HERE

That reminds me, I need to start working on the 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways. It’s not as easy as it looks mooching all the great cigar and stuff for the giveaways!

That’s it for now, until the next time,

CigarCraig

3 Comments

Filed under Contest, Review

Tagged as cigar, cigars, CIGARtist, Contest, Don Pepin Garcia, Eiroa, Matilde, rodrigo

by CigarCraig | November 2, 2014 · 9:34 am

A Cigar-Mojo/Rocky Patel Event, a Perdomo and a New A.J. Fernandez Cigar

Thursday evening was the first anniversary party at Cigar Mojo in King of Prussia, PA and they combined it with a Rocky Patel event with a Halloween costume contest. Mark Weisenburger (pictured, from his Facebook page) was present pimping the Rocky Patel line so I picked up a couple of the Vintage 2003 Cameroon robustos and lit one up. They were also featuring Alan Price’s cigar that he blended at Rocky Patel’s factory. Alan works part time at Mojo and is our area Cigar Rights of America Ambassador. I picked up a couple of these as well, it’ll be interesting to see how he did blending this cigar. Interestingly, it’s about the same size as the last cigar I blended at Drew Estate last year, a chunky toro in the 6″ x 54 range. Anyway, there was a big crowd for a Thursday evening, and regulars Bruce and Arline won the costume contest. I’m sure the party went into the night, but I excused myself when I was done with my cigar to go home and watch the Flyers losing effort. Congrats to Wade and Trae at Mojo for an excellent first year. They are doing a great job in selection and service. It’s a great place to hang out.

Friday was Halloween, and we don’t have any kids come to our house trick or treating. It’s a matter of where we currently live, not any commentary on who we are or anything. There is a neighborhood around the corner where I always take Macha for a walk and there are a handful of kids who mostly have met Macha and love seeing her. I grabbed a Perdomo 20th Anniversary Maduro Corona Grande for the evening walk, and Macha had fun seeing the kids (she loves kids, they taste good!). The Corona Grande is a 6½” x 48 that was the creation of Nick Perdomo III. For me it’s the best size of the bunch, for both the representation of the blend and the comfort of smoking it. It’s a smooth, rich maduro with a hint of espresso bitterness, which I like. I know, I should have smoked a Tatuaje Monster, or a Gurkha Ghost, or even an Asylum Ogre or something cliche, but I was in the mood for the Perdomo, so that’s what I smoked!

Saturday we spent the morning gutting the family room in the new house. We had taken out the carpet and padding to have the asbestos tile removed, so what better time to take the paneling off! Of course, it was just paneling over a thin vapor barrier and cinder block and brick, so we have some insulating and dry-walling to do. Best to get it done before having carpet installed! It’ll be a great space once it’s done, and directly adjacent to the screened in cigar porch! After getting that done I took a quick spin over to Goose’s Tobacco in Limerick, PA to pick up and pay for the box of Asylum Straight Jacket Robustos I won in the Operation: Cigars for Warriors silent auction at the Smokin Goose festival last month. Always happy to support OP:CFW, thank you to Goose’s and Asylum Cigars for their contribution to that fine organization. When I got home I took a walk with A.J. Fernandez’s newest offering, the New World in a box pressed belicoso size called the Almirante. The New World is the first cigar that A.J. made together with his father, Ismeal, and is a Nicaragua Puro, with tobaccos from all over the country, including Ometepe. This medium bodied cigar burned perfectly and had really nice sweet spicy flavor. Considering I paid somewhere under $6 each for these at JM Cigars in Exton, PA, this is an absolute must try.

That’s all for now. We’ve got to visit Home Depot or Lowe’s and look into some room finishing options and come up with a plan. Then I’ll be digging into the humidor once again looking for something fun to smoke. Until the next time,

CigarCraig

1 Comment

Filed under Events, Review

Tagged as aj fernandez, cigar, Cigar Mojo, cigar store, cigars, Goose's, Perdomo, rocky patel

by CigarCraig | October 29, 2014 · 10:18 pm

A Quick Trip to New York City with Some Cigars and a Party

We had an exciting couple of days cigar-wise this week! After fighting with the cold that prevented me from enjoying much of anything for a few days, my wife and I took off Monday morning for the Big Apple, New York City. Of course, there are a lot of great cigar spots in the city. We took a walk toward one of my usual spots, De La Concha. Unfortunately, the shop is closed for renovations and will reopen sometime in the first quarter of 2015 as Davidoff of Geneva 6th Avenue. They had a temporary store across the street in a nonsmoking building so stopping in for a smoke wasn’t an option.

After wandering around some more, and checking in to our hotel on Times Square, we walked a few blocks down 42nd Street to the Nat Sherman Townhouse. Juan greeted us and showed me around, pointing out their cigarette selection, pipes, accessories and finally the humidor. Their humidor is nearly half filled with Nat Sherman cigars, and rounded out with an impressive selection from Padrons to Liga Privada. I noted some La Sirenas and Quesadas and many other great cigars you’d expect. I selected a Nat Sherman Epoca in the Breva corona size and sat down in a comfy leather chair. The shop is a gorgeous space, open to the second floor where the offices are. It’s beautiful. The staff is amazingly attentive and knowledgeable as well. The Epoca was a treat. It billowed sweet smoke and had a very unique exotic spice about mid way through. I rather regret only buying the one cigar to smoke, but I’ll try to find some in PA where pricing should be a little easier to take. It was an exceptional cigar. As we were getting ready to leave Michael Herklots stopped to say hello.

Monday evening we had the pleasure of attending a party at The Liberty Warehouse in Brooklyn to celebrate our friends Mitchell and Karyn Orchant’s birthdays, specifically Mitchell’s 50th. Mitchell and Karyn share the same birthday, however Karyn is much younger than her husband. The venue is amazing, overlooking the Statue of Liberty, and was lavishly decorated. There was loads of great food and a bar, and the entertainment for the evening was the Stan Rubin Orchestra, a 13 piece band playing all the big band classics. It was a beautiful evening so it wasn’t unpleasant to be outside, where there was seating and fire pits. There were loads of Mitchell’s US friends there, including many I knew from the cigar industry and the old Usenet days. Cigars were plentiful and welcome inside. I started with a Ramon Allones Specially Selected, and closed the evening with new Inka Secret Blend for the US market. This cigar was a 6″x 60 Peruvian puro. I’ve smoked the C-Gars Ltd. UK blends before and really liked them, and this version was also very good. I will revisit these in a couple of weeks, but this is a cigar to watch out for, and as soon as I know where these will be available I’ll let you know. I’m a sucker for cigars with Peruvian tobacco in the blend. It was wonderful to catch up with old friends. Mitchell really knows how to throw a party, it was quite a soiree. Thank you, again, to Mitchell and Karyn for a wonderful evening!

Tuesday we wandered around Manhattan and made our way to Martinez Cigars on 29th Street. This is a very small storefront where they are actively making the cigars. There were three men rolling, one pair and a gentleman that does his own bunching and wrapping. They have aging room in the basement where they age the cigars for six months after they are rolled. I bought a few of t

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he cigars, and smoked a Flatiron No. 6 robusto. This cigar was terrifically constructed. It had some very interesting flavors that I’d characterize as “old

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school”, not unlike the Epoca from Nat Sherman. The burn was straight and even and it produced loads of smoke. If you find yourself in the city, stop in and have a smoke and watch the rollers practicing their art. We wandered back toward Times Square, where I believe you aren’t allowed to smoke, and got some dirty looks. Oh well, I was outside. If they were worried about the children seeing smoking, perhaps they should consider the paradox of Disney and Sesame Street characters wandering around along with patriotic women wearing nothing but a bikini bottom and body paint. Anyway, great cigars, great couple of days!