Tag Archives: colorado

Liga Privada H99, Villiger San D’Oro and Nica Rustica Adobe Cigars

Monday was Memorial Day and that called for some special smokes. I pulled out the Liga Privada H99 that Joe Gro of Drew Estate gave me back in January at the TPE show. I’m not sure why I had been waiting to smoke this, but I figured a nice afternoon off was a great time to light it up.  According to the Drew Estate Website:  “Maintaining the core tenants of the Liga firebrand, the H99 features a Corojo capa from the heart of the Connecticut River Valley, where we grow the mighty leaf that graces Liga Privada with a San Andres Otapan Negro Último Corte capote over a core blend of well-aged Nicaraguan and Honduran tripa leaf.”  I like how this is written, it’s an obvious nod to the original creator of the Liga Privada line, who else uses terms like “capa”, “capote”, and “tripa” instead of wrapper, binder and filler? 😀.  This cigar burned very nicely, and was less like a Liga Privada cigar than I expected. I suppose it was more on the T52 end, obviously, it wasn’t as heavy as it’s broadleaf counterparts. I found it has a bit of spice, some salty, savoriness, and a hint of sweetness. It was very good, certainly worthy of the occasion.  As I often do, I finished the holiday weekend off with an old favorite, this time it was a Fuente Hemingway Classic, as aptly named as a cigar could be. 

 

I slacked off this week and didn’t write a midweek post. Pure laziness on my part, I have no excuse.  I did smoke some cigars I really like though, a Stolen Throne Three Kingdoms, an Undercrown 10, and a new Perla Del Mar Maduro (more on that another time). Another one I revisited was the Villiger San’Doro toro. I found a three pack in the humidor and decided to smoke one and had forgotten how much I liked this cigar. This one is the Colorado, with a ruddy brown Ecuador wrapper, and Nicaraguan binder and filler. I’m not sure how old this three pack is, but I think it’s newer, which means these were made at Joya de Nicaragua.  I probably have an old one around that was made at Placencia if I dive into the humidor a little deeper. I really enjoyed the flavor of this cigar, it had a cane sugar sweetness that I like a lot, but it was intermittent, so it didn’t get boring. I know Villiger premium cigars don’t get a ton of traction, but they tend to be pretty good, as far as I’m concerned. 

 

Yesterday I stopped in to the Wooden Indian where they were having a Drew Estate event featuring the new Nica Rustica Adobe, which they had in limited supply.  I picked up five toros and smoked one there in the Liga Privada Lounge, while catching up with Dave, Dan and their excellent staff, as well as Ray from Drew Estate and Matty Rock, famous for being Matty Rock. I had my choice of the three vitolas the Adobe is available in, and stuck with the Toro, even though I haven’t had the robusto yet, but I didn’t really like the gordo I tried inthe Freestyle pack. I’ve smoked a ton of Nica Rusticas, I really like them. We even went to the Belly launch event in Kentucky back in 2015. This was the third Adobe I’ve smoked and it’s growing on me, I’m liking the smoothness and balance. It has a bit of a creaminess, the Habano wrapper instead of Broadleaf makes a big difference. When this was the Freestyle live mystery cigar I had no idea this was what it was going to be, although I know one person in particular nailed it. you can’t beat the price, both versions are going to have a place in my humidor I think.

 

That’s all for today! It’s been a beautiful weekend, and I need to get out and get some things done, maybe smoke some more cigars!  Don’t forget to check out www.battleshipbeef.com and come out to the Battleship, Beef and Bourbon for the Ship Red Meat Lovers Club event. It should prove to be an orgiastic feast of the senses! Until the next time,

 

CigarCraig 

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All Saints Saint Francis Colorado and Black Label Intergalactic Cigars

As I’m preparing to head out to the TPE this week, I was rummaging around for something new to smoke and coming up with nuthin. sure I have a couple things I haven’t smoked before that are about two years old, but they hardly qualify as new. I have a lot of cigars I love to smoke, a lot of cigars that I’m just kinda holding on to for my retirement stash, but I need to sprinkle in some new stuff to write about, right? So I stopped by Son’s again, because they are close by, have a great selection of the newest releases, and take great care of me. A few weeks ago Mickey Pegg mentioned to me someplace that he had to get me his new Saint Francis Colorado, so I picked up a few of those in the toro size to sample. Of course, the original Saint Francis placed high on my pseudo-list of 2021, if I were to put a number to it it would be a solid number two. That doesn’t sound right, but I’m going with it, it’s something we all aspire to. The All Saints Saint Francis Colorado toro is a 6½” x  52, which isn’t uncommon for Toros made at Rocky Patel’s factory. This cigar has an Ecuador Habano wrapper, obviously not fermented to an oscuro like the original, and the Nicaraguan fillers were tweaked, so it’s a slightly different blend that the former. I thought it had a sweet cream flavor, and it was very good. Maybe milder than the Oscuro, which packs a punch, and perhaps better suited for earlier in the day, which is when I smoked it. While my palate prefers the Oscuro, it was still an excellent cigar which I would go to over a great many other cigars. I suppose I’ll see Mickey at the TPE and tell him what I think!

 

A couple weeks back I posted the press release about the Black Works Studio Intergalactic, so I picked up a couple of those in the Corona Larga size.  I love a Sumatra wrapper, and I enjoy the Black Works cigars generally. Seemed like a safe bet. To recap, this has a Dark Sumatra wrapper, Ecuador Habano binder and Nicaraguan fillers, and comes in the Corona Larga and Robusto sizes. I picked the Corona Larga on a whim, it looked good. This cigar had a great burn and draw. The flavors included some spice, sweetness and earth, all very nice. Another really good cigar from Black Works Studio. I don’t see BLTC on the exhibitor list for the TPE, they were there in 2020. I guess I won’t visit them there!  

 

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

 

CigarCraig

  

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The 2014 Rocky Mountain Cigar Festival

Last weekend we flew out to Denver, Colorado to go to the Rocky Mountain Cigar Festival.  Friday evening we drove up to a cigar store called Havana Manor where they were having a My Father Cigars and Tatuaje event. It still amazes me that I can walk into a cigar store 2000 miles from home and know a bunch of people. It was a who’s who of the cigar industry there and we had the pleasure of catching up with friends, and if I tried to list names I’d miss someone.  I picked up some L’Atelier cigars and smoked a LAT54 which was delicious. It was a nice time and we met some great folks in addition to those we knew already, and we’d see everyone at the event the next day. The store was expansive, they had two walk-in humidors in the retail area up front, and several large lounge areas in the back. It was a really impressive store.  After a day of travel, we called it a night and headed back to the hotel.

 

 

I’ve been hearing great things about this festival for a few years, and we made the decision earlier this year to make the trek to Colorado from Pennsylvania to attend the Rocky Mountain Cigar Festival.  We were invited by Joe Liggett, of Smoker Friendly, who sponsored the event. Joe did an amazing job of organizing this event. There were about 2000 attendees, falling into three categories, General Admission, VIP and Executive VIP.General admission attendees took hope over 40 cigars, and the more costly levels received many more super premium cigars. There somewhere along the lines of 40 cigar companies, a bunch of beer and liquor companies and all kinds of other interesting vendors.  We saw one vendor, Twisted Custom Cutz, with ashtrays made from wine and spirit bottles cut length-wise which were really cool. The event ran from 1:00 (noon for the VIP ticket holders) until 7:00 which left plenty of time to visit all the vendors and enjoy the festival. It looked like it was really going to storm at one point, but after a few drops it passed without incident, the band played on, the cigars were smoked and the food, which was really good, was eaten.  We took a bunch of pictures, which are in the slideshow below, and videos which I will post over the coming weeks.  I’ve included a video here with Joe Liggett which we shot as the event was getting set up and I put on Facebook right away.  I highly recommend this event, it’s easily one of the best in the country.

 

Click on one picture to open a slideshow.

httpv://youtu.be/8QA2xcUWVaI

 

As I said, it’s a really fun event, the area is beautiful, the weather was great, and there were a lot of great vendors there.  After the event, Drew Estate hosted a herf and gave out hats and more cigars. I enjoyed a Joya de Nicaragua Antaño Dark Corojo El Martillo and had a nice time talking to Willie Herrera, who’s assumed the roll of head blender at Drew Estate recently.  I had run into his predecessor, Nick Melillo, earlier in the day.  There were so many great cigar makers, and I made some new friends and visited with some old ones.  I don’t think that cigars tasted any different in Colorado, I smoked a Villiger Cuellar Connecticut Kremé to start the day which was really good, a geat Joya Red and a Nimmy D Toro. I was careful not to over do it being unaccustomed to the altitude. I kept hydrated, but the difference in the air from home was noticeable. Thanks again to Joe and Smoker Friendly for inviting us to attend this wonderful event! As I said, stay tuned for videos from some of the vendors at the event.

 

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

 

CigarCraig

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IPCPR 2012 – Villiger Cigars North America

Villiger’s small, machine made cigars have been a favorite of mine for many years.  The little “Export” cigars that come in boxes of five are perfect quickies and are very convenient.  Unwrapping the paper and finding a perfect little box pressed cigar is like unwrapping a chocolate bar!  Given my love for these, I was pleasantly surprised last year when Anne Dinkens at Villiger (then Villiger Stokkebye, now Villiger Cigars North America) contacted me to try some of their premium cigars.  They also were very generous in taking part in my 12 Days of Contests last December.  I was looking forward to visiting them at the IPCPR show this year, and made an appointment to speak with Roy MacLaren, the new president of the company.  Roy was generous with his time and information and I recorded an interview with him where he explains his background, as well as their new offerings.  The video appears below.

 

 

I had the opportunity to sample the two new cigars, the Talanga and the Colorado over the last could days (in truth, I’m smoking the Colorado while typing this!)  The Talanga is a tasty smoke, with a light colored Connecticut seed wrapper from Jalapa.  The cigar burned perfectly and had an equally perfect draw.  I found it to be well balanced and satisfying with interesting flavors that distinguished it from so many other cigars.   The Colorado has the same outstanding construction, but has a little less sweetness and a little more savoriness.  The Habano wrapper may have something to do with this, but it also has a double binder, one leaf of which is from the Nicaraguan island of Ometepe.  Both of these cigars have some of the Ometepe leaf in the blend, perhaps that’s what gives them that little something extra special that got my attention.  The Colorado is a very rich smoke, decadent and delicious!  Both samples were the Double Robusto size, which measure 5½” x 54, which is a nice size.

 

One thing that amused me while I was waiting to speak with Roy was talking with a couple of the European executives in the booth.  As we were talking about how tasty the Export series were to me, one of the gentlemen was saying that Havana tobacco has a distinctive flavor and was kind of doing a “wink wink, nudge nudge” sort of thing.  Now, do I believe that Villiger Exports, or any of their machine made products in the USA contain Cuban tobacco?  I don’t see how that could be done legally, but I guess is a few leaves of Havana fell into the mix, who would know?  There is something a little special about those little Exports, and I have some of the maduros that came out a few years ago to try that I haven’t gotten around to sampling yet.  Another item of note was that they added a secondary band to their La Capitana line where the original band didn’t have the name on it.  You can see my take on that cigar here.  Many thanks to Anne, Roy and the folks at Villiger for their hospitality and support.

 

That’s it for now, when you see the Villiger Talanga or Colorado in the stores, give them a try!  Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Weekend Cigar: Xikar HC Habana Colorado – Sunday December 12, 2010

As the holiday season is in full swing, the opportunities to have a cigar become few and far between. Between the weather and the season it’s been busy in a non-cigar way.   Friday evening provided an opportunity for my son and I to attend a Xikar event at Old Havana Cigar Co. outside of West Chester, PA.  I had not tried the HC cigars prior and it seemed like a good time.  I picked up one of each of the robustos, a Connecticut, a Criollo and a Habana Colorado.  For purchasing three, I got one free, so I went with the Habana Colorado and smoked it there.  We all know that I’m not exactly a free spender when it comes to cigars, so it will surprise nobody to hear me say that I think the $8.25 price tag for these is too high, even with the free cigar I had some buyers remorse.  That’s not to say that the Habano Colorado wasn’t a fine cigar, it was, I just didn’t find it $8.25 good.  There are a lot of cigars that are just as good for less. Anyway, the cigar burned very well and lasted well over an hour, and was smooth and flavorful, and on the stronger side of medium.  I am looking forward to smoking the others in the near future, as they are well made and nicely blended cigars, but I don’t think I would purchase them again.  As far as the shop goes, the lounge is spacious and comfortable and the humidor was very well stocked.  It’s a little out of my way so I don’t get to this shop often, and only really ever go there when there’s an event that interests me.  I prefer JM Cigars in Exton,  PA as far as price, selection and friendliness, I just wish Jeff would have more manufacture events.

Don’t forget to enter the current contest, win some Joya de Nicaragua cigars and stuff.   Deadline for entry is close of business Saturday, December 18 (midnight).  Also, the folks at Thompson have some deals going on that they asked me to pass on, see http://www.thompsoncigarcoupons.com/ for more information.

Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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