Tag Archives: Best Cigar Prices

by Craig Vanderslice | February 16, 2020 · 10:18 am

A Visit to Best Cigar Pub, Blackbird Cigar Co. Cigars and Video and Contest Winner

Yesterday I found myself wandering much further north in PA than I usually find myself. There was a seminar on Bees and Chickens that my wife and I attended, and I snuck off during the second half to do some of my own research. Twenty minutes away from the venue where the seminar was held happened to be the brand new Best Cigar Pub, and Best Cigar Prices headquarters. I figured this would be a good place to visit. Fortunately, the purchasing manager, Chris O’Neill, managed to arrange a tour for me. Katie (Katy? I forgot to clarify), the Finance/HR director, gave me a tour of the entire facility. Why do small companies always saddle the Finance director with HR responsibilities? Like they don’t have enough to worry about? I digress. I had already given myself a tour of the retail humidor, which has a very nice selection and courteous service. Katie showed me the bar, pointed out many of the little things like custom tables with actual tobacco leaves under acrylic, art on the wall done by a local artist, all of the ashtrays made by a local craftsman. She pointed out the excellent menu as well. She then waled me through the Best Cigar Prices operations, all of the offices, warehouse, shipping and all of the stuff I enjoy seeing as a guy who’s spent his professional career in operations. They run a very clean and efficient pick, pack, and ship operation from what I can see. All of the marketing, customer service, web design is all done there in Pennsylvania. I was quite impressed with the operation. I’ll get back to the Pub, which was even more impressive. Upstairs is a lounge with TVs and comfy chairs, wait-staff is attentive and the air handlers replace all the air in the place every three minutes, so it’s not smokey at all. They even have a coat closet in the entry that has an ozone generator so that your coat doesn’t smell smokey. They’ve really thought of everything to make this not just a place to come have a cigar, but a place that smokers and non-smokers alike can enjoy a meal or a beverage together. I enjoyed a 601 Pennsylvania Edition, which is an Espinosa exclusive for BCP. Chris happened to join me and interrupted me while I was taking in the museum portion of the upstairs lounge, which is an educational feature they’ve added. It has the origin story of cigars with a timeline and facts about cigars, infographics about the tobacco plant, how cigars are made, every conceivable detail. Chris tells me they plan to have monitors with video loops of various processes playing included in the wall as well. Best Cigar Pub is a beautiful place, it’s easy enough to find, although not exactly in the middle of anything. I can see it being amazing in the summer with the outdoor patios and putting green and nobody around to really complain! Certainly worth a visit if you are anywhere near north-east PA.

I had heard of Blackbird Cigar Company, but hadn’t seen the cigars any where. When I walked past the booth and they weren’t busy, it seemed like a great time to stop in and see what it they were all about. Imagine my surprise when the owner and founder of the company, Jonas Santana, looked at me and said “I know who you are”. It seems he used to work for another company, and struck out on his own to start Blackbird. I think it was on CigarProp’s youtube channel that I remember hearing about the brand. Anyway, I asked Jonas to share the story of the brand with me on camera. have a look:

Over the course of the past several days I smoked a few of the Blackbird cigars offerings. I would have lined to have smoked them all, but I just couldn’t get to them. They have six cigars in the portfolio, and I can’t run down my smoking experience for six cigars in one post. They very cleverly make the bands on the cigars easy to remove, which is good because they are large bands and doo need to be removed to fully enjoy the cigar! They have two Sumatra wrapped offerings, and, as I’ve been on a Sumatra kick lately, and I smoked the Sumatra Rook with them at the TPE and really enjoyed it, I smoked the Finch this week. This was another excellent Sumatra wrapped cigar. It had the nice, sweet Sumatra wrapper flavor and a well-balanced core of tobacco goodness withinThis has an Indonesian binder, and Dominican and USA fillers. It was solidly medium bodied and a very nice cigar. Next I went with what you’d expect from me, the San Andrés wrapped Crow. It was Valentines Day, and I figured the red band would be appropriate. This cigar had a closed foot, and a dark, oily wrapper. The flavors were earthy and bakers chocolate, perhaps espresso, without sweetness. The internals on this one include a Habano binder and Nicaraguan, Pennsylvanian, and Corojo and Criollo 98 fillers. Very enjoyable. Finally, last night after a long day trip, I unwound with the Unkind, a Brazilian Cubra wrapped cigar. This was also a maduro cigar, and, like the rest, a 5″ x 50 robusto. The binder on this one is from the DR, with Criollo 09, HBA (not sure what this means), Corojo and Pennsylvania. One thing I can say about all of the Blackbird cigars I smoked was that that all were well made and burned right, an important consideration. It’s possible that the PA tobacco was a common flavor component that I picked up though the few cigar I smoked this week. You’ll see if you watch the video that some thought went into the brand, and the same attention went into the quality of materials and manufacture as well. The Unkind had a unique flavor, also an earthy maduro, not really sweet. It was very good though, I enjoyed it completely. I still have the Connecticut Jackdaw and Criollo Cuco yet to smoke, I kind of like those two wrapper varieties more in warmer weather for some reason. I’ll get to them and let you know.

Contest!

OK, so after a lot of money and aggravation, my site is clean. It’s time to pick a winner of the sampler of some of my favorite cigars, Don Juan Calavera, Flor Maya and Marchetti cigars from Danli Hondura Tabaco, and I had to collect entries from two different places. After collecting all of the names, and putting them into a bowl (OK, I put them into a spreadsheet and randomized the list to mix them up and assign them numbers), the random number generator picked Anthony C as the winner. Please email me your coordinates and proof that you are 21 or older so I can get these goodies to you. I have a KMA Talk Radio hat and shirt and a Stage V Clinger cigar holder to add as well (it’s a big shirt, do with it what you will, I take no responsibility. If it fits, great!).

That’s all for today, and way more than I had planned! Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Filed under Contest, Review, Stores, TPE, Trip Report, Video

Tagged as 601, Best Cigar Prices, Best Cigar Pub, Blackbird Cigar Co., cigar, cigar store, cigars, Contest, Crow, Danli Honduras Tabacos, DOn Juan Calavera, Finch, Flor Maya, Marchetti, Rook, Unkind

by CigarCraig | January 25, 2018 · 8:03 pm

News: Best Cigar Prices Cigar Lounge, Store and Blog

Best Cigar Prices announced this week that it is opening a lounge and retail store at their Drums, PA location (looks like I’ll have to take a drive north one of these days!). Best Cigar Prices has been around a long time, I can remember getting their e-mail specials in plain text in the late 90s, under the name New Global Marketing. They’ve come a long way. CigarCraig.com is proud to advertise for Best Cigar Prices, and you can get 20% off orders of $125 or more with the code CraigDeal20. Here is the press release:

DRUMS, PA. (PRWEB) JANUARY 24, 2018

Established in 1997, Best Cigar Prices has come a long way from its starting point of operating out of the trunk of a car in upstate New York. Now based in Drums, PA at its 25,000 sq. ft. headquarters since 2011, the company has made leaps and bounds in becoming the premier cigar source on the web, and the retail space is the next logical step for this fast-growing business.

However, they’re not looking to be “just another cigar shop.” Far from it, according to BCP Director of Merchandising Jeff Brown. “Our vision is to deliver a state-of-the-art cigar lounge experience unlike any in the area,” said Brown. “We want our customers to feel like their every need has been taken into consideration when they step foot into our store, and so far I think we’ve hit that mark.”

In addition to the typical cigar store amenities such as a Spanish Cedar-lined walk-in humidor, large cocktail bar, and comfortable, smoke-friendly indoor and outdoor lounge spaces for patrons to enjoy, Best Cigar Prices’ retail operation will have quite a few accommodations that will set it apart from the pack.

Aside from the business’s high-tech approach to the traditional lounge environment with touch-screen browsing stations, monitors giving shoppers a direct view of orders being processed inside the humidor, and ample wireless charging stations throughout, perhaps the most obvious advantage is the fact that the store is directly connected to the company’s massive humidor warehouse. Customers at the store will have direct access to one of the largest cigar and accessory inventories in the country, with over 7,000 unique items from more than 600 top brands including flavored cigars, cigar humidors, lighters, and cutters from Padron, Rocky Patel, Montecristo, and many more.

Cigar and beverage Pairing Menus will be made available to visitors of the lounge and updated regularly to recommend specific cigars with particular brands or styles of whiskeys, craft beers, and other spirits that complement their unique tasting profiles. “Everyone knows that Romeo y Julieta 1875 is a great, classic cigar, but what is the best drink to go with it?” Brown remarked.

Plans to have a conveyor running from the warehouse to the store will guarantee that cigar-lovers in search of items that are not stocked on store shelves will have their order in under five minutes, complete with a countdown timer that will display real-time order progress.

The store will be fully staffed by educated cigar professionals who specialize in the often-difficult task of making cigar gift recommendations, but will also offer self-serve kiosks for those that know what they want and don’t need help from an associate. Alternately, customers will be able to place orders remotely via phone or online and then pick it up at a designated time, similar to a food “to go” order.

The Best Cigar Prices retail store had its official “soft” opening yesterday, with the official Grand Opening scheduled for September of this year. In the words of company CEO Greg Fox, “Our customers have a deep appreciation for the artisan nature of the products we carry and often form lasting bonds with each other that might not be possible without the unifying factor of a fine cigar. We’re beyond excited to bring this new level of comfort, convenience, and camaraderie to them,” adding, “it’s their support that has allowed us to thrive and this is the least we can do to say ‘thank you’.”

Fox also alluded to other “surprises” that Best Cigar Prices customers can look forward to, including the possibility of a large-scale cigar event held at the new store at some point in the near future.

Also this week on the Best Cigar Prices blog, they published their “Why Do You Smoke Cigars?”article, featuring myself and 10 of my fellow blogger types.

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

CigarCraig

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Tagged as Best Cigar Prices, cigar, Cigar Lounge, cigar store, cigars, New Global Marketing

by CigarCraig | August 24, 2016 · 10:51 pm

Cirque Strongman Cigars and a Poll

Over the last several weeks I had the opportunity to smoke several of the Cirque Strong Man from Best Cigar Prices. This 5″ x 50 robusto is made at Tavicusa, Rocky Patel’s factory in Esteli, Nicaragua. The cigar has a dark Habano wrapper with tobacco from Esteli, Condega and Jalapa in Nicaragua and Honduras. I found the cigar to be aptly named, as it packed a punch. It started strong and the strength continued throughout with heavy cocoa and wood flavors. The examples I smoked had a perfect draw and burned well, requiring few corrections. I found that a 7mm punch worked well with these cigars although examples smoked with a straight cut worked equally well. If you like cigars on the stronger side, on a budget, this is a cigar to try. BCP has a lot of great exclusive cigars, I’m partial to the Six-Zero and many of the Robolo (4½” x 60) sizes, like the EP Carillo.

Poll

I had an idea for something fun to do this upcoming holiday season assuming that the 12 Days of Spectacular Cigar Giveaways can’t happen given the new FDA regulations. I’m certainly open to any manufacturers that want to do something, but I’m not holding my breath for another epic giveaway like I’ve done over the past five years. So I thought maybe I could organize a Secret Santa among my readers, and I would certainly participate. So in the poll below, please cast your vote on whether this would be interesting to you, and if there is enough interest, I’ll put it together. Back in the old Usenet days I used to run a monthly cigar swap, so I’m not new to this. I look forward to your input!

[poll id=”6″]

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

CigarCraig

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Tagged as Best Cigar Prices, cigar, cigars, Cirque

by CigarCraig | January 8, 2016 · 8:28 pm

601 Pennsylvania Edition from Espinoza Cigars and Best Cigar Prices

Since taking most of December off from my regular schedule, I decided that this year I’m going to try something a little different for me, the occasional post dedicated to one cigar. I’ve got a bit of a backlog of review samples, and I wanted to start out with one which hits close to home, in a couple of ways. Best Cigar Prices, a valued sponsor and fellow Pennsylvanians, recently launched a the 601 Pennsylvania Edition, available in Robusto, Toro and Gordo, and was kind enough to allow me to be among the first to smoke it. Here is their information on the cigar:

Blended in honor one of America’s top cigar states (and our home base), the 601 Pennsylvania Edition combines the finest of Nicaraguan tobaccos to bring you a fantastic full-flavored salute to PA. Showcasing a hearty Habano Oscuro wrapper over specially-selected Esteli & Condega leaves, each 601 Pennsylvania Edition cigar includes a single PA Broadleaf in the filler to ensure an authentic taste of Pennsylvania in every stick.

Handcrafted under the careful eye of Erik Espinosa at La Zona Cigars in Esteli, the 601 PA welcomes you in with a wave of peppery spice before introducing it’s dense and layered profile with tones of smoky wood, subtle sweetness, toasted bread, and almond. A bold, complex cigar with medium-full body, these special edition smokes present a wealth of rich character that’s right in line with the cigar excellence that 601 is known for.

I’ve been a fan of the 601 line for many years, and Erik Espinoza’s La Zona factory has been creating some great cigars since their inception. As it says above, the Pennsylvania Edition is an homage to my home state, and the band is modeled after the PA license plate. That reminds me, I handed down my vanity plate to my son recently, I had C-SLICE for 30 years, and I need to find a new one. I wonder if 601 is available? (One time I was travelling through New Jersey and got home to an e-mail from someone on the alt.smokers.cigars USENET group asking if it was me they saw! Maybe a little creepy, as this was in the late 90s, and quite a bit off the topic of this post.) I digress. I smoked two of the Robustos in this line, generously provided by Best Cigar Prices, over the last two evenings and was most impressed. While both examples had a looser draw than I would like, the flavor and strength was very much to my liking. This cigar has a different flavor, there’s a twang in there which is uncommon. There have been quite a few cigars recently utilizing leaf from the next county over from where I live, but this one is quite different from those. The smokiness is the predominant flavor to my palate, and it’s not a cigar that I would smoke on an empty stomach. I can see this aging well, and I, admittedly, smoked these relatively soon after receiving them. It was hard to resist the urge to try them out. I would, and will, buy these cigars to have in the humidor, and I look forward to trying the other sizes. My only real complaint with this cigar was that the band was quite hard to remove, a minor issue.

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

CigarCraig

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Tagged as 601, Best Cigar Prices, cigar, cigars, Espinoza, La Zona

by CigarCraig | December 27, 2015 · 9:51 am

Contest Wrap-up, a Meet-up at JM Cigars, an Event at Mojo and a RoMaCraft Neanderthal

OK, a regular, non-contest post. How do I do this again? It’s been a crazy couple weeks, hasn’t it? Besides the 234 cigars, three ashtrays, two cutters, a lighter, and various other items, including one of a kind art and jewelry, there were some major holidays in there too. Time spent with family is the best part of the holiday for me, but doing this 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways is a load of fun too. My unending thanks to the following companies and individuals who made all this possible, in no particular order: Eric Whitfield, Broc Jackson, Jack at Duran Premium Cigars, David and his crew at 2 Guys Smokeshop, Victoria at General Cigar Co., Fred at Nomad Cigar Co., Victor at Tortuga Cigars, Jason at Best Cigar Prices, Abe and his gang at Smoke Inn, Mel and Ron at MBombay Cigars, Bianca at Gurkha and the folks at Joya de Nicaragua and Drew Estate! As I say every year, I could do this on my own, but it would cost me a fortune! Thanks to all of them and all of you for coming back every day and entering! Next year I have some different plans, but it should still be fun, that is, unless the FDA ruins everything! We’ll remain positive, keep calling your elected officials and letting them know that premium cigars should be exempt from regulation, and keep up your CRA memberships!

One of the things I did last week in, an effort to save on shipping and meet some new friends, was to hand deliver winnings from Days five and six. It turned out that Mike and Andrew were reasonably close by so we met up at JM Cigar in Exton, PA for a smoke. Of course, I spent easily twice what I would have spent on shipping on cigars, but that’s way more productive. While shopping I came across a lone El Rico Habano Maduro Gran Habanaro (double corona) in a box and it look so lonely I had to add it to my cart, so to speak. I haven’t smoked an El Rico in ages, I can remember back in the ’90s when this was one of the strongest cigars on the market, a real powerhouse. It was Ernesto Perez Carillo’s brand that took a back seat to La Gloria Cubana, and I smoked a bunch of them. It’s a minor brand now with General Cigar Co., only available in three sizes and maduro, where the original version was a natural wrapper. I thought the 7½ x 54 size would be a good size for sitting in the lounge, getting to know new friends, kinda cigar. It was good, but not as good as I remember my last one being, which isn’t necessarily a bad thing as I didn’t want a cigar that would distract me from conversation. As it always seems to be, meeting up to deliver a prize beats USPS every time, I felt like I have a few more friends now, and look forward to meeting up with Mike and Andrew again soon. Thank you to them for adding to the spirit of the season!

Thursday I ran down to Cigar Mojo in King of Prussia, PA as they were having a Perdomo event and raffling off a tremendous Perdomo 20th Anniversary humidor. I like the Perdomo 20th a lot, especially in maduro, so I bought a hand full (as if I needed more cigars!) and got one chance in the drawing. The winner was a guy who bought a bunch of boxes of the 20th Anniversarys, so it’s hard to begrudge him the win. It was a beautiful box, but I don’t know where I would have put it, so it worked out in the end. I thoroughly enjoyed a 20th Maduro Churchill while hanging out and talking to our local Perdomo rep, Joe Winder (who is probably the very first cigar company rep I ever met many years ago at a cigar event in Pittsburgh), CRA Ambassador and all-around good guy, Alan Price, who was working at the shop, owners Wade and Trae and various other customers. I didn’t win the humidor, but I did put some great cigars in my humidor and had a relaxing afternoon.

As it was a special occasion, I selected some other great cigars that are worth mentioning. For the second year in a row, I took my Christmas Eve walk with a Padron 1964 Anniversary Maduro Exclusivo, obviously a classic Nicaraguan maduro that’s like desert in cigar form. Absolutely delicious. Christmas day, after the kids and grandkids left, I sparked up a Fuente Hemingway Signature Maduro, again, a spectacular cigar that’s not unreasonably priced. It was rich, burned perfectly and hit the spot. Yesterday Macha and I took a four mile walk with a favorite Nica Rustica Belly, maybe I’m on a bit of a Maduro kick? I must be, because last night I lit up a cigar that caught my eye and I bought while at Mojo, a RoMa Craft Neanderthal HN, with a San Andrés wrapper. Of all the great cigars I’ve smoked over the last couple weeks, this might have been my favorite. This cigar has a couple of distinctions, first, it has a flat head, and a slight taper at the foot, which I didn’t really notice until I looked at the photo, and it still looks like a robusto, as the size is listed at 5″ x 52/58. Now that I look at it, it may taper from head to foot. It could have been shaped like a pretzel for all I care, it tasted fantastic. Not only does it have a beautiful dark and oily San Andrés wrapper, but it has a Connecticut broadleaf binder, and fillers from Pennsylvania, Nicaragua and the Dominican Republic. About half way in to the cigar I got a really interesting and delicious spice, which really intrigued me. This was a $12 cigar and honestly, I don’t think I realized the price point when I bought them, I might not have taken the plunge. I’m glad I did. I’ve heard from people That this was a super strong cigar, and it didn’t hit me that way at all, it was full-bodied and loaded with flavor, but I didn’t feel the nicotine at all. Stellar cigar from Skip and Mike at RoMa! I used a punch in the flat head of the cigar if anyone was curious.

You probably want to know who won the final bonus day contest, the great painting “Wind” by Eric “The Cigartist” Whitfield. It looked like only those who really wanted and appreciated this item entered (or everyone is sick to death of my contests), so I consulted Random.org and got the number 37, which corresponds to KRUK, who I know will give this a good home, despite the relative creepiness of his comment :-). Bryan, please send me your address so I can forward it on to Eric. Thank you all, and don’t despair, there could well be a Happy New Year contest!