by | December 14, 2013 · 6:18 am

CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways 2013 Day 3: 2 Guys Smokeshop

Yesterday was awesome!  Great momentum carrying over from day one, the turnout was pretty impressive.  There were a couple comments that made me think that there was still a little confusion about how things work though.  It’s early yet, we have time to get in a groove, ten days to go! So yesterday I had 126 entries to select from and the winner was comment number 75, so Jesus C, please e-mail me your mailing address! Thanks to the great folks at Iconic Leaf for the box of Recluse cigars, I’m sure Jesus will enjoy them. Thanks again to everyone who entered! More great cigars to come…

 

Day 3

Today we have something very special, something I haven’t smoked yet.  David Garofalo from 2 Guys Smokeshop (and The Cigar Authority) has provided this set of Atabey cigars.  These cigars are made in Costa Rica by a gentleman named Nelson Alphonso, who is responsible for the design of all of the special packaging that Habanos S.A. uses, the ceramic Jars especially.  The Atabey line is super premium.  The filler leaves are color sorted so that not only are the wrapper shades consistent, but the binder and filler are all the same shade too.  This five pack is packaged in Humitubes® which not only have a humidifier, but a punch cutter built in too! You’ll be able to use these tubes for years to come, long after the cigars are gone.  Those who’ve smoked these say they are the best cigar that they’ve ever smoked.

 

Atabey Tube Collection

 

 

There you have it!  Leave a comment to enter and good luck!  I’ll be envious of the winner of this one, for sure! Many thanks to Dave at 2 Guys for providing today’s special present! Don’t forget to tune in to The Cigar Authority show Saturdays from Noon to Two at TheCigarAuthority.com! Maybe Dave and Mr. Jonathan will mention the contest on the show?

 

Rules

Here’s how you enter: leave a comment.  That’s it, plain and simple.  Tweets don’t count, but feel free to spread the word, only comments on this page count as an entry.  Each day there will be a different prize and the winner will be drawn from that day’s comments. The winner will be announced on the next day’s post. The contest is open to everyone, even if you’ve won one of my contests in the past six months, but once you’ve won, you are ineligible to win again in this series of contests. All prizes will be mailed as soon as I get a chance to go to the post office, or whenever the sponsor decides to ship, whichever is the case, so don’t make me chase down your address!  If you are the winner, please e-mail your contact information to craig@cigarcraig.com as soon as possible! That’s it, leave a comment to enter and good luck. Check back tomorrow to see if you won and enter tomorrow’s contest!

 

Until Tomorrow,

CC_Logo_xmas_s

 

 

CigarCraig

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by | December 13, 2013 · 6:43 am

CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways 2013 Day 2: Iconic Leaf/Recluse Cigars

You know, I was expecting a large turn out for yesterday’s contest, and, once again, Gurkha Nation exceeds my expectations!  336 entries, and almost 1500 page views yesterday alone. A new CigarCraig.com record!  It was a stunning turnout and really made determining t

he winner difficult! A couple requests for the future: please don’t ‘reply’ to comments but leave a new comment as it interrupts the timeline. Also, there’s no need to proactively send me your address just in case you won.  I want you to come back the next day to see if you won!  Anyway, after hours of deliberation, the winning number was 177, which matches up with Angela Torres! Congrats!  Send me your shipping info so I can get this out to you!  I really enjoy reading all the comments, by the way, thank you all!  Let’s see what goodies are offered in today’s giveaway…

 

Day 2

I’m very excited about today’s present.  I’ve been a fan of Recluse Cigars from Iconic Leaf Cigar Co. from their beginning.  I’ve had the pleasure of talking to JR Dominguez and Scott Weeks at the last two IPCPR shows and these guys make cigars the right way.  Every cigar is constructed using the entubado method, and they ferment their tobacco differently from most, using at least eight fermentation cycles.  They have generously provided a box of Recluse Draconian Robustos for today’s present.  The Draconian is the second release from Iconic Leaf. This is a box pressed robusto with a Ecuadorian Maduro wrapper and a mix off fillers including a Brazilian hybrid leaf and an exclusive Ligero. I’ve smoked the “Sidewinder” in the Draconian line and it’s an exceptional cigar!  These will be an awesome addition to someone’s humidor!

 

Recluse Draconian Robusto

Thanks to Scott at Iconic Leaf for providing today’s present!  You know what to do next!

Rules

Here’s how you enter: leave a comment.  That’s it, plain and simple.  Tweets don’t count, but feel free to spread the word, only comments on this page count as an entry.  Each day there will be a different prize and the winner will be drawn from th

at day’s comments. The winner will be announced on the next day’s post. The contest is open to everyone, even if you’ve won one of my contests in the past six months, but once you’ve won, you are ineligible to win again in this series of contests. All prizes will be mailed as soon as I get a chance to go to the post office, or whenever the sponsor decides to ship, whichever is the case, so don’t make me chase down your address!  Please e-mail your contact information to craig@cigarcraig.com as soon as possible!

That’s it, leave a comment to enter and good luck. Check back tomorrow to see if you won and enter tomorrow’s contest!

 

Until Tomorrow,

CigarCraig

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by | December 12, 2013 · 6:14 am

CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways 2013 Day 1: Gurkha Cigars

Welcome to day one what has become an annual event, the third year of CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways! It becomes a challenge to try to top the previous year, but I’m not going to worry about that, it is what it is.  Our VERY generous sponsors send what they want, and that’s what the presents are. So far now one has complained, and they all have my gratitude! As always, please visit each company’s site linked in the description so they know we are paying attention. Â&nb

sp;Honestly, I could probably jack it up to 24 days, but 12 is taxing enough!

 

We are going to get things started with a nice prize pack from Gurkha!  We have an enormous Gurkha banner (I unfolded it to take a picture, and had to have help to fold it back up. it’s huge), a Gurkha Rogue T-shirt (XL), a cool double guillotine cutter an

d a pocket knife my 19 year old son referred to as “bad-ass”.  All that and a box of the new Rogue Tyrant from Gurkha’s East India Trading Company to top it off!  

 

Gurkha Rogue Prizepack

 

Many thanks to Bianca at Gurkha for putting this 12 Days of Cigar Giveaways present together! It gets us off to a great start!

 

Rules

Here’s how you enter: leave a comment.  That’s it, plain and simple.  Tweets don’t count, but feel free to spread the word, only comments on this page count as an entry.  Each day there will be a different prize and the winner will be drawn from that day’s comments. The winner will be announced on the next day’s post. The contest is open to everyone, even if you’ve won one of my contests in the past six months, but once you’ve won, you are ineligible to win again in this series of contests. All prizes will be mailed as soon as I get a chance to go to the post office, or whenever the sponsor decides to ship, whichever is the case, so don’t make me chase down your address!  Please e-mail your contact information to craig@cigarcraig.com as soon as possible!

That’s it, leave a comment to enter and good luck. Check back tomorrow to see if you won and enter tomorrow’s contest!

 

Until Tomorrow,

CC_Logo_xmas_s

 

CigarCraig

 

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by | December 8, 2013 · 9:48 am

Cigar Mojo Event, More Leaf by Oscar Cigars and the 12 Days of Spectacular Cigar Giveaways!

Photo courtesy of Chris Vuotto

Thursday evening I found myself back at Cigar Mojo in King of Prussia,  PA for their inaugural event with Drew Estate. Drew sales rep Chri

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s Stone was there with my dear friend  Pedro Gomez, the DE Factor

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y Ambassador and Cigar Safari ring leader.  Trae and Wade had a full house and a load of great Drew Estate and Joya de Nicaragua product on hand. My brother-in-law Jeff came along with me and we spent the evening schmoozing and making some new friends. We smoked some Nica Rusticas and some MUWAT Baitfishes that were great!   Considering this event happened at the same time as he Big Smoke in NYC, it was a great crowd. I know there are a bunch of folks who would probably have been there if they weren’t in New York. I personally preferred the smaller crowd here to the mayhem that I imagine Big Smoke to be.  Once again, if you are in the Philadelphia area, seek out Cigar Mojo.  It’s a great new shop with a good selection and a really nice lounge.  Are massage chairs and pedicures in their future?  🙂

 

LeafbyOscar_HabanoI’ve been working my way through Island Jim Robinson’s Leaf by Oscar sampler and smoked the Habano Friday evening. This one has an Ecuador Habano wrapper over binder and filler from Honduras.  This is a sweet smoke!  I very much enjoyed the well balanced flavor of this cigar.  As I said, it had a delicious sweetness and smoked very well.  Saturday I went with the LeafbyOscar_SumatraSumatra wrapped version, which uses a Ecuador Sumatra wrapper over the same Honduran filler. This was also a really tasty smoke, but didn’t excite me quite as much as the Habano.  It also burned well.  So far, I have to put the Habano first on my list, followed by the Maduro, then the Sumatra, which is surprising, because I usually prefer Maduros, but a great Habano wra

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pper always makes my taste buds dance.  I’ll try to get to the Connecticut later today. I’ll leave an update in the comments when I smoke it.  I can see picking up the Habano again for sure and they are all good in their LeafbyOscarSamplerown ways.  It’s almost a shame the hide the really pretty wrappers un

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der the tobacco leaf outer wrapping. Thanks to George Rodriguez for passing these along for me to try! These are showing up all over the place, but are available on their site here. Now….what am I going to do with the tobacco leaves that these come packaged in?

 

CC_Logo_xmas_sContest!

The next post you see here will be on Thursday, Dec 12, which will be Day One of this year’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways!  It will be the first time in a long time that I’ve skipped a Wednesday post but I think you’ll all be OK with it considering what’s to follow. For those who are new to this, here’s how it works: for 12 consecutive days I get up really early and post that day’s contest, along with the previous day’s winner (except for day 1, that would be silly). Your responsibility is to leave a comment which is your entry.  One comment only please, and I can tell if multiple comments come from the same place! Please feel free to share on Twitter, Facebook, Google+, or whatever, but only comments left on that day’s post are counted (unless otherwise noted). Once you’ve won, you’re done, but we start out on the first day with everyone eligible. I use the random number generator at Random.org to select the winner and all decisions are final. Please be aware that I take great pains to ensure accuracy! So good luck. This is my way of saying “thanks” to my loyal readers and promoting some great cigar companies. Please try to visit the links to the vendors in each day’s post too, I want them to know that they aren’t giving away hundreds of dollars worth of stuff for nothing!  It’s the winner’s responsibility to contact me with their shipping information and I’ll do my best to get your present to you before Christmas! I’m looking forward to getting this going!

 

That’s it for today, until the next time (when things go CRAZY!),

 

CigarCraig

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by | December 4, 2013 · 8:09 pm

A UF-13 in Atlantic City, Leaf by Oscar, and a Tatuaje at Cigar Mojo with Victor Vitale

LigaPrivada_Serie Unico_UF13From the “I’m not as young as I used to be” file, I’ve been paying for having some fun on Sunday. Sunday my wife and I decided to pay a visit to Atlantic City for some fun. We played some slot machines and I enjoyed the heck out of a Drew Estate Liga Privada Serie Unico UF-13 Dark while playing. It’s nice to smoke a great cigar indoors once in a while! There was even a nice little cigar shop in Resorts International that had a decent selection. By the way, one way to feel young is to go to the buffet at 5:30. We were well below the median age there. We ended up leaving AC at 5 am so I could get to work more or less on time, which made for a long day.

 

 

Monday evening, with my butt dragging, I fired up a cigar from “Island Jim” of Leaf and Bean in Pittsburgh. This cigar is called “Leaf by Oscar” and has been getting a lot of buzz lately. These are presented wrapped in a tobacco leaf as opposed to tissue or cello. They have a unique look on the shelf. George Rodriguez of Rodrigo cigars (who is partnered with Jim) sent me one of each wrapper and I (of course) selected the maduro first. My apologies for not taking a better photo of this cigar. Under that outer leaf is a beautiful dark wrapper. It’s the LeafbyOscarSamplercolor of semi-sweet chocolate (ironically, I think semi-sweet chocolate is contributing to my migraines lately…). The wrapper is Nicaraguan maduro and the guts are Honduran. This cigar was very tasty and burned perfectly, as straight and even as any cigar I’ve ever smoked, with a nice, flat ember. It started off with a nice spice and mellowed to a rich, chocolaty experience. I enjoyed the heck out of this and had planned to move on to one of the others Tuesday.

 

Tatuaje_TraeHowever, Tuesday I left work and drove down to Cigar Mojo in King of Prussia, PA to meet Victor Vitale of Legacy Brands for a smoke. In the month or so since I first visited this shop Trae and Wade have done a great job stocking the humidor and getting some displays and furniture in. It’s becoming a very nice shop with a great selection. The lounge is comfortable and the clientele seems to be friendly. They already have a good number of lounge members. I picked out a cigar I hadn’t tried before, the Tatuaje Havana VI Artistas torpedo and chatted with Trae until Victor arrived. I don’t smoke a lot of Tatuajes for some reason. Maybe because I’m afraid I’ll find yet another cigar that I love, but is priced higher than I like. This Havana VI is a little more reasonably priced, about $7 here for the classic torpedo size. I found that the ash dropped easily, much to the proprietor’s dismay. It had a nice flavor and burned well. I’ll smoke it again after some humidor time (I always Tortuga 215_Cedrobuy two). I had a great visit with Victor, and smoked another of his new Tortuga Reserva Cedros which was really, really good. I have it on good authority that the Reserva Cedro line will be out soon in three sizes, if you can find some, give them a try. They aren’t a typical Nicaraguan puro. It’s a refined smoke that exudes quality. I’d say that even if Victor wasn’t a friend, and I’m glad he’s back in Philly so we get to see him a little more often! I’ll probably be back at Cigar Mojo soon, it’s not really close to home, but it’s a nice place, and Trae and his Dad, Wade are doing it right. Good stock, nice atmosphere.

 

I just started evaluating a device from Elertus that wirelessly monitors my humidor. I placed the Smart Sensor in my Adorini humidor in the living room for now, but I’ll try it out in the coolers eventually. This is a neat device. It monitors temperature and humidity, and sends alerts to my cell phone and e-mail if conditions change outside the limits I set. It also senses movement and alerts me (someone moved my humidor while I was at work today!). This would be a reasonable investment for a store owner who wants to know if his walk in humidor needed attention. It’s got features I don’t really have use for, like door sensors, light sensors, and it will even alert you if the WiFi loses connection. You can monitor the status on the website, or on iOS or Android apps. It’s pretty spiffy. I’ll report later on how it works over the course of a few weeks in a few different humidors.

 

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

 

CigarCraig

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