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by CigarCraig | April 15, 2018 · 11:41 am

A Couple of BSB No. 1 by Bernie Parent Cigars, an Aladino and a Vertias 3 Blend

It’s been a weird week. Readers who follow me on Facebook will already know that I’m currently exploring new employment opportunities. It’s time to get away from what I’ve been doing for the last 20 years and find something I like doing (that pays the bills, no easy feat, I think!). I appreciate everyone’s support, and I don’t put this out there for a pity party, but one never knows what opportunity might arise from making my availability public. Hopefully allows me to provide more content here for the time being. The casual observer will notice no change in my daily routine. Which brings me to Wednesday’s cigar. Since the Flyers were opening their Stanley Cup playoff series with the Penguins (I hate those guys), I decided an appropriate cigar was in order. As I had already had a very bad day, I thought a pick-me-up would be the broadleaf wrapped BSB No.1 40th Anniversary Bernie Parent by Rocky Patel Conn Smythe (mental note, I should review one of this series for a future Prime Living article as the name alone will account for much of the 300 word limit!). This cigar came from a special box released in 2015, celebrating the 40th anniversary of Bernie Parent winning the Stanley Cup, The Vezina Trophy (best goaltender) and the Conn Smythe Trophy (league MVP) two years in a row, something that has yet to be repeated. The box contains four cigars each of the three blends and an autographed puck. I bought a box at full price when they were released in 2015, which Bernie autographed and is still intact, and caught a deal on another box later that I’ve smoked/shared. The Conn Smythe has a Broadleaf wrapper and is a delicious toro, perhaps my favorite in the series, loads of dark chocolate and espresso. The cigar was just about the only bright spot of the day as the Flyers suffered a humiliating loss.

Thursday I got some yard work done, laid some groundwork for some income replacement, and took a walk with a JRE Aladino Maduro in a box pressed toro size. I recently heard the guys on The Cigar Authority rave about this, so I ordered a couple each of the toro and lancero. I generally let cigars rest, but I knew these were only in transit for a couple of days and the weather has been moderate so I felt confident firing one up. The Toro is a 6″ x 50 with a nice box press, and has a Mexican San Andrés wrapper and Honduran Corojo binder with Honduran fillers. I’ve been distracted lately, but this was a tasty smoke, and I look forward to smoking more of them, especially the lancero. It was medium bodied, burned great, and nice flavors of cocoa and wood. This is from the Eiroa family, Justo and Julio specifically, and the Aladino line is an homage to the Corojo blends of days past. Personally, I think I enjoy the JRE cigars more than Christian Eiroa’s CLE line, although I haven’t sampled all of both companies offerings, this opinion is based on limited samplings. I have purchased every Eiroa cigar I’ve ever smoked, save for one CLE sample from their first trade show. Christian is one of those old usenet guys I’ve known for 20 years too.

Friday was a chance for the Flyers to redeem themselves, and they did with an exciting 5-2 win, which included at least one Academy Award worthy embellishment, proving my opinion that Penguins don’t fly, they dive. I decided to try the BSB approach again (for those not in the know, BSB is an acronym for Broad Street Bullies, the Flyer’s nickname in the ’70s) and No. 1 is Bernie Parent‘s retired number. Interesting factoid: Bernie retired due to an eye injury, which led to massive improvements to today’s goalie masks. Anyway, I went with the Vezina, which is a Habano wrapped toro. Both the Vezina and the Conn Smythe are presented in a round format, while the Lord Stanley is box pressed. Maybe I’ll smoke a Lord Stanley today for game 3. Anyway, I think the Vezina was a tasty cigar too, although in a different way than the Conn Smythe. I think it’s more on the savory end of the spectrum, with more earth and wood notes. If you can find these stashed away anywhere I recommend trying them, especially if you are a hockey fan. I can’t say that I think they are a good value at the original price of around $13 each, but at half that they are great.

Finally, yesterday I rummaged through the humidor with what’s left of last year’s IPCPR samples, and came out of it with a Veritas 3 Blends, which is a barber pole wrapped cigar with Sun-Grown Ecuadorian Habano, Habano Maduro and Connecticut wrappers, San Andrés binder and fillers from Jalapa, Ometepe, Condega & Esteli Nicaragua. you’d think this cigar would have a lot going on given that blend of eight tobaccos. Maybe it had too much going on for my pedestrian palate to appreciate? I found it had a drying effect on my palate, and, as with many cigars wrapped in this style, it’s didn’t burn well. It sure was a pretty cigar, and it wasn’t offensive or really bad in any way, just not my cuppa tea, unfortunately. I like all cigars, there’s some I love, and I almost always smoke a cigar to the (sometimes) bitter end, and I did with this one too, although the crooked burn made me leave more behind than usual. Earlier in the week I had a Cornelius and Anthony Señor Esugars and a Nica Rustica, two “comfort food” cigars of mine, and all the other cigars I smoked during the week were pretty darned good, with this one being the least yummy of the bunch to me.

That’s all for now, I’m going to go out and make some money now, and fire up a cigar for the Flyers game later. Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as Aladino, Bernie Parent, BSB No.1, cigar, cigars, Conn Smythe, Flyers, IPCPR, JRE, rocky patel, Veritas, Vezina

by CigarCraig | January 18, 2015 · 10:14 am

Finishing Up the La Aurora Preferido Coronas and Bernie Parent at Goose’s

Thursday evening I smoked the Ecuador (Sumatra) La Aurora Preferidos corona. While this was an exceptional cigar, it had a hint of bitterness that put it in fourth place flavor-wise among the ones I’ve smoked thus far in comparison. That’s not to say it wasn’t better than many cigars out there, it just didn’t hit my palate as favorably as the others. The construction was perfect and no oozing tar! I’ve got the Maduro (Brazil) and the Broadleaf coming up, I hope I didn’t set the bar too high and set myself up for disappointment.

Friday night I took a break from the La Aurora’s to visit Goose’s Tobacco Outlet and Cafe in Limerick, PA. Goose was hosting an event in his Montecristo Lounge featuring Bernie Parent and his BSB No.1 Cigars by Rocky Patel. You may recall I had the good fortune to have been present at the launch of this line back in December of 2012 (here, and RIP Luca who hosted that event) and have had the pleasure of smoking cigars with Bernie on numerous occasions. I’m not saying we’re buddies or anything, but he pretends to know me when we meet. Rocky Patel account exec Mark Weisenberger was also on hand, taking grief from Bernie for being a Rangers fan. One of the coolest things about this event was that the great Bernie Parent, with his ’74 and ’75 Flyers Stanley Cup rings, the goalie who “Only the Lord Saves More” than, was hanging out, smoking cigars, answering questions and telling stories. I picked up one each of the three 40th Anniversary cigars, which come in a numbered box with an autographed puck, and four each of the Broadleaf wrapped Conn Smythe, the Habano wrapped Vezina, and the box pressed, Sumatra Lord Stanley, all in the toro size, and all named after trophies Bernie has won (all three back to back, which has never been repeated, not even by Wayne Gretzky). I smoked the Conn Smythe as I was in the mood for a nice, sweet broadleaf and the cigar was exceptional. Sweet, cocoa and black coffee flavors and it burned well, although perhaps a bit on the moist side. I ended up buying the box at my wife’s suggestion, which allowed me to enter to win special luxury box tickets to the Flyers/Rangers game with Bernie and Mark. I fully intend to win this, by the way! Goose’s put on a great event, I came home with a ton of great cigars and a lighter wallet, and some great memories. Photos from the event below.

Yesterday I wrapped up the La Aurora Preferidos Corona project, smoking the Maduro in the afternoon, then the Broadleaf later in the evening. The Maduro is a Brazilian wrapper which corresponds to the Ruby in the Preferidos line. I found this to be a nice, smooth cocoa maduro with no rough edges. I did get the bit of tar build up that I got with the Corojo, but I clipped it off and everything was dandy after that. I did have a couple occasions where I had to relight it, but that wasn’t the fault of the cigar, I had a couple distractions while smoking that led me to ignore it long enough for it to go out. Like it’s brethren, another great corona.

After dinner, and before the Flyers game, I tackled the final, and most anticipated, La Aurora Preferidos corona, the Broadleaf, or Diamond. I find it curious that they chose to name these differently from the line of perfectos. Instead of putting Diamond, Ruby, et cetera, on the bands, they used the actual wrapper name. Nothing that bothers me too much, and perhaps they wanted to distinguish the coronas from perfectos. I kinda like it from a cigar nerd stand point. The broadleaf was very different from any of the rest of the examples in the line. The wrapper gave this cigar a very pungent, almost cloying flavor, and I was torn between loving it and being annoyed by it. I ended up loving it. It was also very different from the BSB Broadleaf from the night before. It had a palate coating quality much like licorice, not the flavor, but the texture. Very interesting and entertaining cigar to smoke, and I enjoyed the heck out of it.

Summing up the experience of smoking the six La Aurora Preferidos Coronas, and thanks to Jason Wood and Gabriel Piñeres for getting these to me, if I were asked to put these in order of preference, I’d have to go, from top to bottom, Broadleaf, Connecticut, Cameroon, Maduro, Corojo and Ecuador, and that doesn’t mean the ones on the bottom of the list aren’t great, it’s just a combination of how they hit my palate and based solely on one sample of each. The experience was great, the size, 5½ x 42, was very nice, especially in the colder weather (which, no doubt, lead to the couple of tar issues I had). I believe these can be purchased via mail order, in addition to in the northeast region, I’ve seen that at Atlantic Cigars, with whom I have no affiliation, for around $43. Not a bad deal.