Tag Archives: esencia

by CigarCraig | September 12, 2012 · 8:54 pm

IPCPR 2012 – E Cigars by Brothers of the Leaf, LLC

We are slowly unpacking and moving things but I think I know where all my cigars and accouterments are. I know there’s a humidor in the living room and one in the bedroom, and a couple coolerdors in the basement. My son has his humidor in his room. I do need to find a traveldor for this weekend’s Delaware Cigar Festival, although I may not take a lot of cigars with me. The festival is organized by Gary Griffith of Emilio Cigars fame, and the various vendors have cigars for sale for around $3 each with the proceeds going to charity. This is a great way to pick up some great smokes for bargain prices and feel good about where the money is going. It’s not like I need more cigars…I’ll have to exercise some restraint as I don’t want to come home and have to play cigar Tetris in the humidors! Still, if I can get a few Ortega Series D maduros for $3, I will have to do it.

The move has reduced my leisure time a little bit, but last night I sat down with a E from Esencia. The Esencia line is excellent, but it’s limited in distribution. The E series will come in at a lower price point and will be available to any retailer who wants to carry them. Marc and Mike of BOTL, LLC gave me a couple of Corona Gordas when I saw them at the IPCPR show, and I fired one up. It’s a beautiful cigar, certainly no shortcuts were taken with this cigar. It has a rich, ruddy wrapper and the burn and draw were as close to perfect as I’ve had recently. Flavor-wise it was solidly medium and pretty darned yummy. It is a sweet and creamy smoke. This is a cigar that one can smoke in just about any circumstance. As an aside, It’s been getting dark annoyingly early and I realized how much being able to see my cigar as it’s burning adds to the experience. I turned on the light because I felt like something was missing. I guess I’m a little bit of a cigar voyeur, but being able to watch a great cigar burn is almost as important to me as the flavor!

I spoke with Marc at the show and he was excited about this new cigar, as well as their new Palio lighter and a stainless steel (and hopefully titanium) Palio cutter that’s really pretty. These guys are passionate about their products and it shows in the quality, and they are super-nice guys as well. I appreciate them taking the time to talk to me at the show.

That’s about it for now. Stay tuned for a recap of the Delaware Cigar Festival in Sunday’s regular post and enjoy your week!

CigarCraig

5 Comments

Filed under IPCPR, Review, Video

Tagged as BOTL LLC, cigar, cigars, Emilio, esencia, IPCPR, palio

by CigarCraig | December 24, 2011 · 9:22 am

CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways – Final Day Winner and Thanks!

We’ve come to the end of a historic two weeks on CigarCraig.com! Â A marathon of daily posts, untold thousands of dollars worth of merchandise (and postage!). Â We gave away 167 cigars, 4 cutters, 2 lighters, 2 caps, 2 cigar tubes, a cigar case, a magazine subscription, a gift certificate and a humidor! That’s a bunch of stuff! Â Also significant was the all time high numbers of unique visits, as well as comments! Â Until last week I didn’t even know if you got to 50 comments it went to a second page. Â Pretty crazy! Â In addition to everyone who came back day after dayÂ religiouslyÂ for a chance to win fabulous prizes, I want to give my sincere thanks to the cigar companies who made this madness possible! Â They are, in no particular order:

La Gloria Cubana

Villiger Stokkebye

Brothers of the Leaf, LLC

Tabacos Mata Fina USA

Oja Cigars

AJ FernandezÂ

Emilio Cigars

This was anÂ ambitiousÂ project. Â What started out with the idea of giving away a cutter here and a cap there morphed into something huge. Â The generosity of the companies listed above was amazing, as was their willingness to put up with myÂ neurotic and obsessive compulsive tendencies! Â The one other person I absolutely could not have done this without is my lovely wife, Jennifer. Â You may have noticed her mentioned in the comments here and there, seen her tweets and re-tweets, as well as handling moderating all of the comments while I was at work every day. Â Thanks for everything you’ve done for me!

Editorial

Now, before I announce the winner of the humidor fromÂ Pipes and Cigars, please take a moment to write a nasty letter to the NCAA and TheÂ OrangeÂ Bowl pointing outÂ theirÂ hypocrisy. Â David Savona sums it up perfectly in his blog on CigarAfficianado (here). Â Head on over to FaxZero.comÂ and send a fax to the OrangeBowl atÂ 305-341-4750. Â I saved Mr. Savona’s article as a PDF and faxed it to the attention of the CEO of the Orange Bowl committee. Â You can fax twice a day for free using FaxZero. Â You can also send them a tweet using @orangebowl or find them on Facebook and voice your displeasure. Â You can also e-mail Larry Wahl, VP of Communications and Community Outreach at lwahl@orangebowl.orgÂ .

Time to announce the winner! Â I have been presented with the number 41 by the Random Number Generator, which means thatÂ MarcB is the winner! Please send me your contact information! Â This concludes this year’s contests! Please visit the sponsoring companies sites and thank them for their generosity. Â Also, take a look at my advertisers sites, and join me in welcoming La Palina Cigars to the CigarCraig.com family. Â These friends help me to defray costs of doing things to write about and I deeply appreciate their support!

Merry Christmas, HappyÂ Hanukkah, Happy Holidays, to everyone. I’ll leave you with this Christmas video from Alan Bernhoft, who you may have seen in the comments over the last few days. Â Let’s give him a little Christmas present and help make his song a new Christmas classic!

httpv://youtu.be/AioTRzrMlBw

Until the next time,

CraigCraig

17 Comments

Filed under Contest, Editorial

Tagged as 12 days, aj fernandez, botl, C-Gars, cain, Camacho, CAO, cigar, Cigar Journal, cigars, Contest, Emilio, esencia, general cigars, Gurkha, La Gloria Cubana, Miami Cigar and Co, Monte Pascoal, Montecristo, Nestor Miranda, nub, Oja, oliva, orangebowl, palio, Pipes and Cigars, romeo y julieta, sancho, Villiger

by CigarCraig | December 19, 2011 · 6:55 am

CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways Day 8 : Palio and Esencia Cigars

Happy Monday! Before we get to the next fabulous item, we must once again consult with Random.org to select the winner of yesterday’s box of Oja cigars. The Random Number Generator regurgitated the number 44, which corresponds to J.A.S.! Congrats! Send me your info! And now, on with the show!

Today on CigarCraig’s 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways we have a sampler of cigars and a cutter from Brothers of the Leaf, LLC. The cigars are Esencia cigars, with sizes only available in this sampler. The cutter is the incomparable Palio cutter, emblazoned with the Esencia logo. Both the cigars and the cutter are absolute top quality! I’ve had the Esencia Lancero before and it was sublime.

Thanks go to Marc Aub of Brothers of the Leaf, LLC for providing this excellent prize!

You know what to do! Leave a comment to enter and good luck!

Until tomorrow,

CigarCraig

66 Comments

Filed under Contest

Tagged as 12 days, botl, cigar, cigars, Contest, esencia, palio

by CigarCraig | December 11, 2011 · 8:44 am

12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways Countdown! A Monte Pascoal, a My Uzi and a Cain

It’s been a busy week, I’ve been gearing up for the 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways and the weather was mild and rainy for the fist part of the week, and cold at the end. This didn’t stop me from getting in a few interesting cigars though!

Mid way through the week I took a walk with a Monte Pascoal Minuto. This Brazilian puro is a tasty little firecracker of a smoke. The cigar is 4 3/8″ x 42, with Brazilian Mata Fina wrapper and binder and Mata Fina and Mata Norte fillers. The word on the street is that the smaller sizes are stronger than the larger sizes, based on the higher wrapper to filler ratio, but I find this difficult to comprehend given that the blend is so heavily weighted toward the same tobacco variety. Perhaps I’ll ask Wes at Tabacos Mata Fina USA about this the next time I see him.

Last night it was cold. I needed to get some cash, and the nearest ATM is probably a mile and a half away, so I grabbed the 7″x 60 My Uzi Weighs A Ton pre-release sample Jonathan Drew sent me quite a few months ago. This cigar is a joint venture between Joya de Nicaragua and Drew Estate/Subculture Studio, and was released at this years IPCPR show. Certainly this monstrous cigar would last me the entire walk, and then some. There’s nothing more frustrating that finishing the cigar before the walk. Anyway, this cigar had a nice flavor, and as has been said many times by others, it’s not a killer strong cigar as the name may imply. It’s just a really nice, balanced, medium bodied cigar that was an excellent companion for the 3 mile walk!

Yesterday I felt inspired to smoke a Cain Daytona Corona after a big Olive Garden meal with my wife. I really needed a couple laps around the block to burn off the pasta! I love the Cain line, but most of them are just too strong for me. Not the Daytona! It’s another medium bodied cigar that’s packed with delicious flavors. What led me to this cigar was a meeting earlier in the day with my areas Oliva rep, Mike Staiber, who provided a terrific prize for the upcoming contest. Always nice to see Mike, and I wish we’d have had the time to sit and smoke one together.

Speaking of the contest, it starts TOMORROW! Keep any eye here bright and early each morning for the next two weeks for a fantastic parade of prizes! Leave a comment to win and check back every day for the winner and the next prize! This is a contest that is unprecedented in the history of CigarCraig.com! Many thanks to the following companies who have made this contest possible:

La Gloria Cubana

Villiger Stokkebye

Brothers of the Leaf, LLC

Tabacos Mata Fina USA

Oja Cigars

and more to come!

My deepest gratitude for everyone for helping to make this a terrific 12 days of contests!

That’s it for now, more tomorrow!

CigarCraig

13 Comments

Filed under Contest, Review, Take a Cigar For a Walk

Tagged as 12 days, c-gars ltd, cain, cigar, Cigar Journal, cigars, Contest, drew estate, esencia, general, general cigar, IPCPR, joya de nicaragua, La Gloria Cubana, Miami Cigar and Co, Monte Pascoal, Oja, oliva, palio, Pipes and Cigars, Stokkebye, tabacos mata fina usa, Take A Cigar For A Walk, Villiger

by CigarCraig | July 20, 2011 · 12:13 pm

IPCPR Show Report, Blogger Party, Marc Aub from Palio and Esencia Cigars

I’ve been quite busy running around at the IPCPR show, talking to people and collecting great information and education to present to you over the coming weeks and months. Some of the highlights have been a New Media party held by Drew Estate at the MGM Grand, which was a veritable who’s who of bloggers and journalists (and me!). Several traditional print media folks were there, including Frank Seltzer (an old friend who writes for Smoke Magazine, Cigar Weekly and many others, Thor Nielson (Cigar Press Magazine) and his crew, Stephen Boyajian (Cigar Network Magazine), Jerry and Brian from StogieReview.com, Charlie from TheCigarFeed.com, Brooks from SmokingStogie.com, Mario from CigarExplorer.com, Teresa and Tim from SmokingHotCigarChick.com, Mitch from About.com, Patrick from Examiner.com, William Cooper from Cigar-Coop.com, and I’m sure some others whom I’ll be embarrassed about omitting when they tell me I forgot to mention them! Steve Saka, Marvin Samel, Jonathan Drew and Scott Chester all were there as well as Johnny Brooke, who, along with Charlie, were instrumental in organizing the event. We all received and incredibly generous bag of smokes and had a great time schmoozing. This is another example of why I hold Drew Estate in such high regard and think of them as great friends. I also had the good fortune to meet and talk to Tom Navarro, who is the worlds biggest Drew Estate fan, a CigarCraig.com reader and a fellow Cigar Safarian. It was a wonderful night with a balcony overlooking New York, New York and Excalibur hotels with great friends new and old. Thank you to Drew Estate for hosting (even though getting all these people in one place at the same time would have given Seltzer a great opportunity to get rid of us en masse!)

Last night I had the good fortune to have attended the Cigar Journal annual awards, where at one point I was sitting between Mitchell Orchant of C-Gars Ltd. And Jose Blanco, talk about rubbing elbows with giants in teh industry! I’ll expand more on that after I’ve had a chance to go through the video and transcribe all the winners. After that I had been invited to attend General Cigar‘s party, which was held in the Tryst nightclub in the Wynne hotel. Everyone was hanging out on outside by a waterfall smoking and drinking. I again managed to sit with Frank Seltzer along with Victoria McKee, General Cigars PR Director and a great friend of CigarCraig.com, who I thank for her support, the invitation and for rolling out the red carpet once again in the trade show booth and really treating us blogger types well!

I’ve got some appointments this morning to talk to some more wonderful folks on my last day at the show. I fly home tonight after what has been a pretty long but productive and enjoyable week. I’m going to leave you with the first of many short videos I’ve been taking of exhibitors. Here’s Marc Aub, another great friend and supporter, telling us about the great products at Palio and Esencia!