CigarCraig's Blog

The IPCPR show always seems to have it’s share of celebrities, Arnold Schwarzenegger was spotted at the show on the first day (not by me!) as well as Mike Ditka, and previous years have seen the likes of Ron White and Dennis Rodman walking the floor.  Shorty Rossi, the star of Animal Planet’s Pit Boss, has also been a fixture at the show for a few years. I met up with him this time and he took a few minutes to tell me about some of his new cigar offerings being distributed through Meier and Dutch, which is the wholesale arm of Cigars International.  I had the opportunity to smoke a couple of them this week, here’s what I thought:

The Acid line isn’t one I gravitate to, I can usually smell them a mile away, and except for a late night Kuba Kuba Maduro in Nicaragua a few years ago, I haven’t really had too much to say about the line.  I’ve been to the factory, I’m confident that they use the finest materials, and I know they are rolled very well. So I was a little hesitant to choose the Acid Shorty Friday evening for my walk, after a long week I usually select a “sure thing” from the humidor.  This is a 4″x 60 cigar with a very sweet cap, candy sweet, diabetic coma inducing sweet.  It also had an herbal aroma off the foot.  It turned out that this was a very nice cigar.  It didn’t have the cloying incense, aroma-therapy kind of flavor I expected.  It was medium bodied with a nice, sweet tobacco flavor.  I enjoyed this cigar once the sweet cap was gone.  I’d smoke this again.

Also from the Drew Estate factory is the Natural Shorty. This is a 4″x 50, a little more manageable than the 60 ring, and the perfect size for a rainy Saturday afternoon walk.  Again, the sweet gum on the head was overwhelming.  This is “short and sweet” taken to the extreme.  I’ve smoke a few of the Naturals, but none recently, and I remember them using some fairly unique tobaccos, Turkish, maybe some Perique or something from Louisiana or something. This is one that I wished was longer, because it was a nice smoke, again, once the sweet cap was gone.  Unique, for certain. Again, I’d smoke this again, but I’d probably try to wipe some of the sugar off first…it’s just too much for me.

Shorty Rossi made his first entry into the cigar world with Cigar International‘s Diesel Shorty.  I didn’t have any of those, although I like the Diesel line in general.  He does have a line called San Bajito, and Niko of Meier and Dutch (and also a regular on the Over a Cigar show on Blogtalk Radio) was kind enough to provide me with a 4½” x 60 robusto.  I enjoyed this cigar after dinner on the patio.  This cigar is made in Nicaragua, and was a really nice, smooth, flavorful smoke.  I got a nice sweet tobacco flavor at one point, no sweet cap on this one, just nice, sweet tobacco.  I want to smoke more of these, especially after a few months time-out in the humidor.  Shorty did a nice job blending this cigar.

Have a look at the video, Shorty give us some insight into how he ended up in the cigar industry as well how he got into the dog rescue business.

One of the things I appreciate about all Shorty’s cigars is that a portion of the proceeds go toward his Pit Bull rescue. The dog pictured above, the one I walk every night, is actually my youngest son’s dog.  She is a Pit Bull/LAb mix that we got from our local SPCA.  She’s a sweet dog whose enthusiasm can be mis-interpreted as aggression, but she really just loves everyone. We think she may have been given up because, we were to find out, she has seizures, and is now on medication to control them.  So I believe in Shorty’s Pit Bull mission, and wish him continued success.  His dog, Hercules, was there throughout the show and provided some comic relief at one point when he cleared the booth with a gaseous emission. I wish I had the video recording for that!

Until the next time,

CigarCraig