Tag Archives: Micallef

by Craig Vanderslice | June 16, 2024 · 9:14 am

Devil In Disguise, La Lina and Micallef Blue Cigars

It’s just after 8am on Sunday, Father’s Day, and I’ve just lit up a My Father El Centurion H 2K CT corona to smoke while I write this. I love summer! I can sit on the porch on a beautiful Sunday morning and enjoy a cigar with coffee. This cigar is several years old (the price tag of $7.50 was still on it) and smoking well. Looking forward to a lovely day. Yesterday Lina and John Remer of New Tobacco Village in Whitehall, PA launched a cigar called the Devil in Disguise, a toro made by Espinosa Cigars. I believe this to be exclusive to New Tobacco Village and I’m quite sure they can be ordered through their website. I stopped in this store once and it was a really nice shop. It had a very welcoming feel, and loads of great cigars. I regret not stopping in yesterday when they launched the new cigar. The Devil in Disguise is a toro with a Habano Rosado wrapper and Nicaraguan binder and fillers. I smoked one Thursday and found it to be really quite good, it started with a pretty good dose of a citrus tang, which lessened through the smoke, but remained there. It was quite enjoyable. Burn and draw were perfect and I dug it. John and Lina are nice people, I remember the first time I met John, he was doing one of his Facebook lives from an event and was standing right next to him and commented on the post, which he read, then someone told him I was right there. It was a little funny.

Speaking of Lina, she is the proprietor of New Tobacco Village, and, I assume, who the La Lina cigar was named for. John and Lina got married at a Vegas wedding chapel at the last PCA trade show, which was attended by a star studded cast of characters. I was invited, but wasn’t in town at the time. I’ve actually had this La Lina toro in my humidor for a few years. I ran into John and Lina at a TPE show and was given this cigar. The La Lina Limited Edition is also a toro, and appears to also be available on their website. This cigar has an Ecuador Habano Oscuro wrapper, Indonesian binder and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers. I found it to have a leathery flavor, with some sweetness in the background. It was a very good cigar, and well priced for an LE. There are links above to purchase both of these cigars, not a paid ad, but the cigars were provided to me gratis. A couple cigars get you a lot here at CigarCraig.com!

I ordered some of the latest Firecrackers from 2 Guys Cigars and added a couple other cigars I wanted to try but don’t see locally often. As long as I’m paying for shipping, right? One of the cigars was the new Micallef Blue in a toro size. I really liked the Micallef Black, and who can argue with the prices of these? They are both good $8 cigars. The Blue has a Mexican San Andrés Sumatra wrapper, Ecuadorian habano binder and filler tobaccos from the Dominican Republic and Nicaragua. I smoked this soon after receiving it, but I gave it the Humidimeter check and it was ready to go. 2 Guys always does a great job fulfilling orders quickly with great communication. The predominant flavor on the Blue, to me, at least, was leather. I didn’t get any sweetness at all. I didn’t not enjoy it, I just prefer the Black in this case. It’s great that they are producing affordable cigars, especially good affordable cigars, especially when the came on the market not too many years ago with very expensive cigars. I suppose the next cigar in this line will be a claro of some variety. White would be the clichè choice, with Red for a rosado. Whatever they go with, I’m sure they will be decent cigars.

At some point today I’ll smoke my traditional Father’s Day cigar, the Esperanza Para Los Niños, which is a 25 year old cigar at this point. Thank you to my old friend Roger F. for allowing me to continue this tradition! You can search this site for the whole story, but this cigar was made by Christian Eiroa when her still owned Camacho and the blend was chosen by a group of guys from the alt.smokers.cigars usenet group. It was sold to benefit children orphaned by hurricane Mitch which devastated Honduras in October of 1998. That’s all for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as cigar, cigars, Devil in Disguise, esperanza para los ninos, La Lina, Micallef, Micallef Blue, New Tobacco Village

by Craig Vanderslice | December 17, 2023 · 10:05 am

A Micallef and Some New Cigars from Cayman Cigar Co.

Before I get into a couple cigars, check in here tomorrow morning for a special giveaway. I keep remembering back a decade ago when I was doing the 12+ days of giveaways and thinking about how much fun that was, but how many hours I spent on it! It consumed me! I have a few good giveaways up my sleeve yet, I can’t let this time of year pass without giving some stuff away! Stop by any time during the week and leave a comment on the contest post to enter! Along the holiday festive spirit lines, my Secret Santa was local and dropped off a generous package to me this week. I had a problem that I was able to solve Friday evening so I dug right into the cigars and selected the Micallef Gomez/Sanchez Family 1934 Reserva Churchill. This is a beautiful 7″ x 52 double corona, and I believe this is a the Limitada Privada that was among the first Micallef cigars to come out, carrying a higher price tag. I’m not sure if knowing this was a super expensive cigar would have changed my decision to smoke it when I did or not, I was feeling pretty celebratory, having the kitchen sink clogged all week and fixing it without calling a plumber felt pretty good. This cigar had what I call bright tobacco flavors, with some floral, almost perfuminess especially in the second half. It was medium bodied and sophisticated and complex. Quite a nice smoke, and I thank my friend with the excellent first name for the special gift. He managed to present me with a selection of cigars that were almost all new to me, no easy feat.

Last week I heard from an old friend, Anthony, who I met back in 2011 on a trip to the Dominican Republic. He was a blogger then, and has since been a broker and done some other work in the cigar industry. I feel bad that I didn’t get a chance to catch up with him during a brief time when he was living up this way, but it was during that odd time in history around 2020 when things were weird and some of us didn’t get out much. Apparently he’s working with the guys at Cayman Cigar Co. in the Cayman Islands and had them send a couple of their newest blends. Yesterday seemed like a good day for aquatic themed cigars, since I managed to break a pipe in an upstairs bathroom sink that had always been really slow to drain. It resulted in cutting out wet drywall in a downstairs ceiling to find a hole in the pipe, and a bit of a mess. My project for today is fixing that problem. I love plumbing problems…so while I was trying to get a plan together I smoked the Mariner. This cigar has a Corojo wrapper, and is 5¼ x 50. Best I can figure, this is rolled in the factory in the Cayman Islands, by Maria Delvis Hernandez, their master roller who learned her craft in the Partagas factory in Havana. This had an interesting and different tobacco flavor. I don’t often get “salty”, but I think this one had it. Maybe that was the Mariner imagery in my head, or maybe it really was salty, but it was good, and it help prepare me for wet ceiling drywall and leaky drain pipes.

The other new cigar from Cayman, and one Anthony worked with them on developing, is the Caravel. Another 5¼” x 50, this one is made at Tabacalera la Isla, Hostos Quesada’s factory, in the Dominican Republic. One of my favorite cigars, the La Sirena Mexican Mermaid is made at this factory. This Robusto has an Ecuador Connecticut wrapper which is on the darker side, it could almost be confused for a Habano. It has fillers from the DR and Nicaragua. To me, this one was loaded with a citrus tang, I found it very refreshing. I may smoke another today after I fix the plumbing. Aside: the guy at Home Depot gave me a perfect setup last night: he asked if I was handy with a torch. I said, “sure, if I’m lighting a cigar!” For the record, I shy away from sweating pipes, using a torch in proximity to 60 year old rafters and waste pipes with possibly volatile gasses gives me the willies. I digress. I suppose I smoke enough cigars to be considered jaded when it comes to deciding whether a cigar is full bodied or not, this is described as full bodied, I found it pleasantly medium. This line is a bit more financially approachable than some of their others, I suspect the manufacturing costs are higher in the Cayman Islands thank in the DR. I’d love to visit some winter and see the factory ;-).

That’s all for today. Next Sunday will be Christmas Eve, so I’ll have to write a short post, announce the contest winner, and go shopping! Just kidding. Maybe. Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as Caravel, Cayman Cigar Co., Gomez/Sanchez, Mariner, Micallef

by Craig Vanderslice | November 12, 2023 · 10:45 am

Trash Panda Connoisseur Club Over-Runs, All Saints and Micallef Cigars

I had a little different idea about how this week’s smoking was going to go. I got one each of the Connoisseur Club Over-Runs from TrashPanda, which are on sale for a ridiculously low price, by the way. These came with the caveat that they needed to be dryboxwd, as they had been sealed in the humidibags for several years. I opened them out and left them on the desk for a week (I think the house has been around 52% RH this week) thinking they would dry down sufficiently. The Foundation Lonsdales did, the Aganorsa Robustos did not, so you’ll have to wait until next week to read about that cigar and how there;s some left! I can tell you that the is quite a treat, and if you don’t go to TrashPanda.com and pick some up you’re foolish (and there’s nothing in it for me, at $25 each and buy one, get one, there’s probably not much in it for Kevin either!). the cigar is 6¼” x 46, has a Habano Nicaraguan grown wrapper, Habano Ecuador binder and fillers from Estelí and Jalapa. This is going to be a great cigar for the holiday season, because it has some really interesting warm spices, kinda like mulling spices. I thought it was very unique and delicious, and quite different from what Nick usually does. Maybe it’s close to something he’s come out with in the past two years that I haven’t gotten around to smoking? For $2.50 each you can’t go wrong, you might need to beat me to the checkout. I might note that TrashPanda is transitioning away from selling the rare and vintage cigars, and moving toward selling their own branded lines, so there are some great deals to be had all over the site. Again, nothing in it for me! (I just placed an order…as if I need more cigars…)

I’ve probably said this before, but I find that I have to talk myself into going out after a long day at work. I get home, eat dinner, and I just want to grab a cigar and retreat to the peace and quiet of my porch and enjoy that cigar for an hour and a half or thereabouts. Friday evening I had some choices to make, and I talked myself into heading to the Wooden Indian to celebrate All Saints Cigars 4th anniversary with Micky Pegg. When I arrived, Jim from Great Cigar Reviews was several hours in to his live podcast, which I assume was streaming on Youtube? Micky threw me to the wolves and sat me in front of the mic and Jim and I had a nice chat for a while. I had decided early in the day that I was in the mood for a Saint Francis Churchill, which was a motivating factor in going, I’ll admit. The cigar, as always, was delicious, it’s probably my favorite in the line. I came to be in possession of the new Solamente, which is going to be an annual release. I think I have one of the originals still in the humidor someplace. This is a 5″ x 58 cigar in the round, where the majority of the All Saints line is pressed. The Solamente comes in a box of 23, next year’s will be in a box of 24, and so on. How’s that going to work going into 2030? This is a $20 cigar, box buying is going to get a little cost prohibitive as the years progress. Anyway, I smoked it yesterday as I wanted to smoke it on a fresh palate. This. has an Ecuadorian Habano oscuro wrapper with Nicaraguan and Honduran fillers. I found this to be on the leathery side of the flavor spectrum, with some coffee notes, with a nice burn and draw. It was a fine cigar, but I’m in love with the Saint Francis and it’s hard to get me off that one right now, it suits me perfectly. It was fun hanging with Micky, I look forward to smoking the All Saints Collection Plate (my suggestion, doubt he’ll remember!). The Wooden Indian always has great events, they have a great staff and Dave, the owner is among the best guys around.

Of course, Micky Pegg wears two hats, when he isn’t a co-owner of All Saints, he’s the president of sales for Micallef Cigars, and I picked up a couple of their new toros as I’d been hearing good things about them. When it turned out that the Aganorsa Connoisseur Club cigars were still too wet to smoke, I grabbed one of the Micallef Black Toros to smoke last night. The first thing I notice when doing some background research on their website is that the have the measurements goofed up on this cigar. It’s 6″ x 52, not at all 5″ x 62 like the website says. Perhaps they should fix this. This has a San Andrés wrapper, Ecuador Habano binder and Nicaraguan fillers. This is a cigar that appeals to me. The construction was perfect, it was a good, solid maduro cigar with a nice chocolaty flavor, and it was just a good cigar at a great price. I don’t know what more to say about this that hasn’t already been said by others, I’m late to the game, but it’s good, and at $8 it’s great, can’t go wrong if you like nice, medium bodied, sweet, earthy maduro cigars.

That’s all for today. I figure I should get the temperature i n the room about doing a Secret Santa again this year. I’m fairly sure I know one person who will be interested, but who else would like to get in on a cigar exchange? Let me know in the comments. Until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as All Saints, Black, cigar, cigars, Connoisseur Club, Foundation, Lonsdale, Micallef, Saint Francis, Solamente, Trash Panda

by Craig Vanderslice | September 20, 2020 · 11:09 am

Diesel Esteli Puro Micallef A Cigars Contest Winners!

Sadly (for me, I seem to be in the minority for some reason), it’s the last Sunday of summer. I am not a fan of Autumn, or Winter, and I only tolerate Spring because it means it’s almost Summer. As I age I am far less tolerant of cold, and I just find the trees losing their leaves and everything turning brown really depressing. Lots of people love it, and that’s good for them, but I’m not a fan. The only leaves I enjoy burning are properly fermented black tobacco leaves, lovingly rolled into beautiful cigars! So kindly STFU about how great Fall is and LMTHA (to use some partial Saka acronyms).

I received some of the new Diesel Esteli Puro Samples a week or so ago from General Cigar Co., for which I’m grateful, and smoked a few this week. I posted the full press release about this here. Here are a few important points:

The wrapper was harvested from La Lilia, the binder from San José and the fillers from several plots including AJ’s celebrated San Lotano farm.

Blended by AJ Fernandez, handcrafted at Tabacalera AJ Fernandez in Estelí, Nicaragua and developed by General Cigar’s Justin Andrews.

I smoked the Robusto, as it’s General’s MO to send samples in that format. In this case, the Robusto is a generous 5¼ x 54 and comes wrapped in a cedar sleeve from the band to the foot. Warning to those with a sensitive constitution, this cigar starts off very strong! The first inch or so is a pepper blast with a load of nicotine. I’d almost call it hot. I was taken aback, honestly, and I like stronger cigars for the most part. It settled down after a while, but remained full bodied, and I really rather enjoyed the two samples I smoked. I have a couple more, I think I’ll take the cedar sleeve off of one, and revisit them in several months, smoking one that has been stored with, and one without the sleeve and see what differences I find. I often regret storing cigars long term with the cedar sleeves, and I leave them as they are out of sheer eyes laziness mostly. If you like strong cigars, this would be a good one to try! Lots of rich tobacco flavor under the pepper!

I visited a couple of my area CigarCigars shops yesterday, and I wish I had hit one more to complete the trifecta, it slipped my mind to do it. I had hoped to visit with my friend Kevin, who is retiring as manager of the Downingtown store in a week or so, but he wasn’t working, so bought some cigars, and stopped at the Frazer store on my way home and bought a few more cigars. Both stores had a mask policy, and social distance practices arranged in their lounges and were open for business. The Frazer store even had a sign on the door saying if you’re sick, stay home. Happy to see that they are taking proper pandemic precautions. The Downingtown store had good foot traffic while I was there, the register was ringing. One of the cigars I bought there was the Micallef A. I’ve even hearing a lot about this cigar recently, it was apparently a cigar that was named through a contest held among the ambassadors, of which I’m one (but I didn’t vote). You’d think they’d be able to come up with something better than “A”, but they actually settled on “Ambassador”, which makes more sense. There was a little bit of a copyright issue with that (I’m guessing Joya with L’ambassadeur?), so they just went with “A”. Now, when I think of a cigar called “A”, I expect a 9¼ x 48 cigar, but this is a 6¾ x 54 cigar with a Nicaraguan Sumatra wrapper that’s fermented to a dark Maduro. It also has a Sumatra binder and Nicaraguan and Dominican fillers and is made in their factory in Esteli by the Gomez Sanchez Family. Lotsa Sumatra there, and I like Sumatra, and the price is right at around $7.50 here in PA. I lit one up and it was good. Lots of sweet, dark coffee and cocoa notes that I like, but I couldn’t help but think there was some youth, or at least that some age could certainly be of benefit. I liked it well enough, there was just something a little bit out of balance that some humidor time will address. I’ll have no problem experimenting with this one though, the construction was perfect, and at that price, it’s a no brainer.

Contest

I almost wrapped this up without selecting winners for the CigarProp Smoke In Battle of the Bands Samplers. If you aren’t a lucky winner, or even if you are, I’d recommend going and buying one or three of these samplers, you really can’t go wrong. The only way you can justify not buying one is if you are opposed to lining Abe Dababneh’s pockets, and if that’s the case, well, I guess I can’t help. I met Abe before I ever even though about launching this site, so we go back a ways. Anyway, We need two winners. The random number generator tells me that the winners of CigarProp Smoke In Battle of the Bands Samplers are: Xolatol and Gregg Hearl! Please send me your contact info and proof that you’re of age so we can get these samplers to you!

I had to take a break from writing this to take a call from Jose Blanco, among other topics discussed, I confirmed with him that plume is, in fact, real, and will have some other theories I have related to that whole controversy verified (or disproved) in the future. That’s all for today, until the next time,

CigarCraig

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Tagged as A, Battle of the Bands, cigar, cigar store, CigarProp, cigars, Contest, diesel, Esteli Puro, Micallef, Smoke Inn

by Craig Vanderslice | September 2, 2020 · 9:48 pm

Byron 19th Century, Undercrown ShadyXX and Micallef Grande Bold Sumatra Cigars

I smoked a bunch of great cigars on my birthday weekend. After the Padron and the Unicorn on Saturday, I had to step down gradually! Sunday afternoon I selected a Byron 19th Century Grand Poemas that had spent a few years in the humidor. This cigar was a gift from David Garofalo at an IPCPR show a few years back, it had to have been 2017, as that was the last show I attended. This cigar was 6″ x 56 and I don’t believe it’s even available any more. It’s listed as a 2013 limited edition, and the blend is undisclosed. I know that it’s made in Costa Rica under the supervision of Nelson Alphonso. This was a spectacular tasting cigar, it had that hard candy sweetness that I haven’t been able to identify yet, but I love. I really need to buy a bag of old school hard candies and find that flavor, it’s one that grandma would have in her candy dish. It was perfect in burn and draw, as a cigar with a $33 price tag should be. You know me, I’m not dropping that kind of coin on a cigar, but I certainly appreciate when I have the opportunity to sit back and enjoy such a great smoke. it was truly wonderful. Later I had another wonderful cigar, as I finished the weekend, a Joya de Nicaragua Cinco Decadas El General, a large, delicious cigar.

Back to reality, I decided to sample the Drew Estate Undercrown Shady XX, a line extension to the Undercrown Maduro line that came out a few years ago and I never got around to smoking. This returns this year as a limited release in the DE Summer Takeover. It’s a 5″ x 50 box pressed belicoso, for some reason it feels a little bigger than that. Usually box pressed cigars feel smaller. Much like the Dogma, this is based on the Corona Viva blend, which has some more ligero than the run of the mill Undercrown Maduro. This was a strong cigar. I felt like the strength overpowered the blend, and it was just too spicy. Maybe it was the wrong cigar for me for how I felt that day, or whatever the case, I generally like the Corona Viva and Dogma, although it’s been a few years since I’ve smoked either, oddly enough. It’s not that it kicked my ass, it was just more spice than the usual espresso/cocoa that I enjoy in the Undercrown Maduro. I’ll smoke one again under different circumstances, but I found this to be a spicy powerful smoke.

Last night I went with one of my favorite milder cigars, the barber pole cigar from Danli Honduras Cigars, or, as they are now known, DAHOT cigars, The Clown. I always enjoy this smooth, flavorful cigar! Tonight I found a cigar that I got at the TPE show last January, back when things were normal. By the way, next years TPE show has been moved to May, which is interesting because it put is pretty close to the PCA show. I may be able to go, as I will have vacation time by then, and I wouldn’t have if it had been in January, not that there’s any guarantee that travel would be possible then anyway. Tonight’s cigar was the Micallef Grande Bold Sumatra. I would have thought I had smoked this cigar before, but I searched my own site and didn’t find a reference to it, so if I’m repeating myself, my apologies. This cigar was the 5″ x 54 and was box pressed, has a Sumatra wrapper (it would be dumb to name it “Sumatra” if it didn’t, right?), a Broadleaf binder, and Dominican and Nicaraguan fillers. I love Sumatra wrappers, and I love Broadleaf, oddly the two play nicely together making for an interesting smoke. Both qualities come through with the sweetness and some nuttiness. It wasn’t what I expected, but it was really quite good, and I enjoyed it. I think these are priced reasonable and, if I recall, are readily available, at least in my local market. The sales rep in my area is someone I’ve known for a long time, going back to the Usenet days, I seem to recall him winning an inflatable sheep at a large herf in the 90s, but perhaps that’s another story. Micallef seems to be making good cigars and doing the right things for retailers and consumers from what I can see.