I took a much needed vacation day on Friday to go hang out with Willie Herrera and Chris Stone of Drew Estate Cigars. Cigar Mojo was the scene of the event, as Chris and Willie were making stops throughout the area. In True Mojo style, Trae provided pizza, and offered a Buy 5 and one is free special on Drew Estate and Joya de Nicaragua cigars. Sadly, they had sold out of the new Norteño, which was the whole reason I took the day off! Trae was kind enough to find a Norteño in the Coronita size, which is a nice little pressed 4″ x 46. This is right up my alley with the San Andrès wrapper. It was full of dark, rich flavors, this is a winner and I can’t wait to get some more of these and sample the range of sizes. Hopefully Cigar Mojo gets them back in again soon! It’s always fun hanging out at Mojo especially with Willie and Chris. There’s a reason this new shop placed highly in the recent “Philly Hot List” poll.
The Smokin Goose is a multi-vendor event put on by Goose’s Tobacco Outlet and Cafe in Limerick, PA. This was their first event of this kind and was held at the historic Sunnybrook Ballroom in Pottstown, PA. The event featured twenty or so premium cigar brands, including a couple reasonably local small brands. It was held in a pavilion outside of the ballroom building, which, of course, is smoke free and the weather was a beautiful 80 degree day. Late September can be hit or miss in this part of the world, it can be cold and windy, or a great day like yesterday was. Attendees received a goodie bag with a bunch of cigars, a Xikar travel humidor and assorted swag. There was food available all day in the pavilion, and the admission price included a meal at the restaurant too. I didn’t see people leaving the event to eat at the restaurant, which was across the parking lot, but as we were leaving it occurred to me that people were waiting until the event wrapped up (with the raffle prize announcements, as usual) and went to eat after. Makes sense so people didn’t miss any of the festivities. For an inaugural event, it seemed to go well. The 75 or so attendees seemed to have smiles on their faces. Operation: Cigars for Warriors was there and was the beneficiary of the proceeds of the raffles. I am going to have to pay a visit to Goose’s shop sometime in the near future, because I think I won one of the silent auctions. It was a good event, John and Joanne Giese and their team did a nice job putting all together, I’m sure it was worth all the stress and anxiety that goes into putting something like this together. All the vendors and manufacturers who were there are to be commended as well. I’ll be interested to see next year’s version of The Smokin Goose! I enjoyed making some new friends and catching up with some old ones. I appreciate being included.
Some of the brands represented there were La Sirena, Villiger, My Father, Altadis, Alec Bradley, Blanco Cigars, Gurkha, CLE/Asylum, Dominican Big Leager, Jenneff and Evil Genius Cigars from the Lehigh Vallley area in PA, Jason Alexander, John Hay, and Al Capone, as well as The Cigartist, Eric Whitfield. Also, thanks to Joe K for introducing himself! Once again, it was a great way to spend an afternoon, and I’m certain all the attendees got more than their money’s worth.
That’s it for now, I’ve got some catching up to do after goofing off for the last couple days! Until the next time,
CigarCraig
Tuesday my youngest son and I went down to 
Tuesday evening we found ourselves, once again, at 
old friend Mike Perry to thank for introducing us several years ago. As always, I picked up a few cigars that I haven’t tried before (and one I had), this time it was some of the new La Antiguedad from 
After I finished that tasty treat, Victor turned me on to his newest creation, the Tortuga 215 Reserva El Coyote Negro. This lovely belicoso is a tweaked version of the regular 215 Reserva with a beautiful dark Brazilian Mata Fina wrapper. I instantly regretted no smoking this cigar on a clean palate, a situation I will certainly remedy once these become commercially available. This had many things in common with the rest of Victor’s cigars, it was perfectly constructed, one of my favorite things is when you tap off the ash of a cigar and it’s burning perfectly flat. This speaks volumes to the care that goes into selecting tobaccos which happen to burn at exactly the same rate, no easy feat. This cigar competes favorable with cigars such as the Padrón 1964, it’s well balanced and very refined in flavor. That’s not to say it tastes like a Padrón at all,but was certainly on a par in terms of it’s overall performance. At about the half way point I got a curious exotic spice flavor that made me take notice, and that sensation went as quickly as it came. What a pleasant surprise, although I wasn’t surprised that this was as good as it was. I enjoy the heck out of the Tortuga line, and I was certain this amped up, maduro wrapped version would be right up my alley.
