Some Toscano Cigars and a Viva la Vida

My wife decided she wanted a picnic table to go with a couple of benches we had made years ago, so I bought some lumber and started building one. In an effort to reduce the profanity count during this project, I decided to break into a pack of Toscano cigar I purchased in Rome when I was there in May of 2018. I bought a pack of the Garibaldis and a pack of Extra Vecchio, not remembering having seen them in the states. The Garibaldi were introduced here earlier this year (or late last year) and I guess the Extra Vecchio have been here, at least that what Michael Cappellini, the brand ambassador for Toscano cigars in the US tells me. My wife brought me a pack of Toscano Antico from Italy in 2000, and I’ve been enjoying one now and then ever since. I especially like the Modigliani, although it’s quite expensive. The five packs in Rome were much less expensive than here, I think I paid seven or eight euros each, they push $20 here. $20 is still a deal for five cigars, especially since they are rugged, taste great, burn a long time, and you don’t need to keep them in your humidor. I smoked the Extra Vecchio yesterday over the course of about four hours, relit it several times of course, but it tasted great the whole time. These are heavy on the fire cured tobacco, so if you like that, you’ll really like these. It’s also quite OK to cut these in half for a shorter smoke or to share! The Garibaldi is quite tasty too, as well as the Antico. I had a random oddball Toscano that I don’t know what it was, but it was unusually mild and I wasn’t overly fond of it. Toscanos are great cigars to keep one from swearing at projects!

Last night I was looking for something interesting to smoke and I remembered I had picked up a Viva La Vida Diademas Finas some time ago. I haven’t smoked anything from the Artesano Del Tobacco Company yet, but I’ve heard plenty about them. I remember meeting Billy Fakih when I visited Cigar Inn in NYC several years ago, now he and his brother Gus have launched this brand, made by AJ Fernandez in Esteli. I picked this up at a newer local shop that is largely a warehouse operation that ships cigars to China and has a shop and lounge in the front. It’s an odd sort of arrangement, I haven’t stopped back. Apparently I chose the top end of the Viva La Vida line in this limited edition figurado. It’s a 6½”x52 cigar beautifully rolled. It has a Habano Oscuro wrapper and Nicaraguan binder and fillers. I let this rest because the first cigar I smoked that I had bought at this shop was quite over humidified, I played it right and this cigar burned perfectly, just lighting the “nipple” it drew perfectly and evenly throughout. The flavor was good, although I’d have to say it was unremarkable, there was nothing that really distinguished it from another really good cigar. It had very good tasting, well fermented tobacco, but nothing that really wow’d me, or made me excited. I wasn’t disappointed in any way, I was just ambivalent. Obviously, the art of rolling this cigar is without question, and I have no regrets, I just wish there was a flavor sensation that caught my attention.