It’s been a busy news week, and I think it will continue to be busy leading up to the IPCPR show. I assume there will be a lull in the news, at which time many of my colleagues who will be at the show will be pushing loads of content out from the show, so I’ll see what I can do to break up the monotony for you, maybe smoke some old timey cigars or something. I’m sure there will be a lot of great stuff coming from the show, but one recent edition of the Prime-Time podcast with Cigar Coop and Aaron Loomis featured Dion Giolito (Episode 58). Dion doesn’t do a lot of interviews and it’s a damn shame, because he’s articulate, funny, and is a triple threat of perspective as a retailer, manufacturer and consumer. In addition to the excellent interview about the Illusione line, including the re-issue of the One-Off brand, he brought unique points of view to the show’s deliberations segment at the end. It’s recommended listening (or watching, I guess. It’s available in audio and video, I only listen to stuff).
OK, lets rip through some cigar highlights of the week. This week the Mi Querida Firecracker went on sale. The Firecracker is a 2 Guys Smokeshop exclusive, last year’s was the Fratello Firecracker (I smoked one recently on the Spanish Steps in Rome for the irony of it, and it was one of the best cigars I’ve smoked all year because of the setting and it’s a fantastic blend. Before that it was the Cromagnon, also excellent. This year was the year of the Mi Querida Firecracker. Another entertaining podcast is last week’s Cigar Authority show with Steve Saka, loads of laughs, but also great information about the cigar, and how he put some extra filler in the front of the cigar to make a 3½”x 50 cigar burn a little longer. I noticed that the draw seemed a little more snug in the beginning, and I managed to get nearly an hour out of this little beauty, which is slightly stronger than it’s similarly sized Gordito. It’s very rich and has the espresso flavors I love in the Mi Qurida line, which is easily one of my favorite cigars of the last couple of years. There were 500 boxes of these produced, and the majority sold out within the first few days. I wouldn’t be surprised if these make another appearance, like the Cromagnon Firecracker is rumored to be.
Earlier this week I reported on Island Lifestyle Importers entering into a distribution agreement with Ventura Cigars, and I had some pre-release samples of one or their upcoming projects, the Island Club, so I decided it was the right time to smoke one. Island Club is an Ecuador Connecticut wrapped, Nicaraguan cigar that’s priced in the under $5 price range, which is nice, but I find slightly confusing coming from a luxury brand. They will offer it in five sizes, Robusto, Corona Gorda, Toro, Torpedo and Churchill, in bundles of 20, and if it’s a mixed fill cigar, it certainly doesn’t smoke like one. Honestly, it smoked like a much more expensive cigar, I would certainly select it over many more expensive cigars based on performance and flavor, I was that impressed with it. This is a home run for Island Lifestyle, I think, and combined with the distribution muscle of Ventura, this should give the whole brand a lot of visibility, because the Aged Reserve series cigars are all really good (and no matter what trickery I’ve employed, I can never get them to reveal what factory makes them!)
I’ve been using the Screwpop® “Chopo™” a lot recently to give it a good try, and find that it works remarkably well. It makes a nice, clean cut. It takes some work as it’s not spring-loaded, so one has to manually open it the desired amount then quickly snip the cap off the cigar, but it’s a serviceable back-up, for sure. As I’m sitting here thinking about it, unless I were sitting on an assembly line cutting cigar after cigar for hours on end, it’s not like I risk getting a repetitive stress injury from manually opening a cigar cutter once or twice a day, but one can’t argue how nice it is to flip a switch and have your Xikar, Colibri, Tommy Bahama, or similar cutter of choice snap open and be ready to snip your cigar. Anyway, the Chopo™ is a vast improvement over their last iteration of a scissors type cigar cutter, and is a worthy addition to the key ring. I used it to cut an El Borracho Toro last night that I came across buried in the humidor. This was from last year’s IPCPR show, and I’m embarrassed that this bag of cigars from Dapper Cigar Co. got overlooked. Dapper Cigar Co. 
goes into Saka-esque detail about the blends on their website, the El Borracho is made up of Wrapper: Mexico / San Andrés Natural / San Andrés de los Perros S.A. de C.V.; Binder: Nicaragua / Jalapa / Cofradía / Habano Rosado / Oliva Tobacco Co.; Fillers:, Nicaragua / Esteli / La Joya / Oliva Tobacco Co., Nicaragua / Jalapa / Cofradía / Oliva Tobacco Co., Nicaragua / Condega / gk Relleno / Oliva Tobacco Co.. That’s a lot of detail, and probably more than we need to know. One interesting thing: I think the wrapper comes from the same farm in Mexico that the binder on Saka’s Sobreamesa is from. We’ll see if anyone reading can confirm that, or I’ll go back and review the video from the 2015 IPCPR show where Steve talks about that. Anyway, this was a really tasty cigar! I didn’t find it to be particularly strong, but it was full flavored and had some cocoa but more cedary than cocoa. Very interesting cigar that held my attention. I have a couple more cigars from this company that I’ll try to get to this week. I’ll have to look into this company further.
One honorable mention this week is another pre-release cigar from Epic Cigars. This was a big Solomon with a Brazilian Cubra wrapper that is yet to be named. I’m very much looking forward to seeing these come to market as it was a really tasty cigar, although the wrapper on the sample I smoked was very delicate and the middle portion flaked off a bit. It was still a great cigar, worthy of the Epic name. That’s enough for today, Until the next time,
CigarCraig
Corona Gorda $3.95
