Nicahabana | CigarCraig's Blog

Saturday was an absolutely stunning spring day, barely a cloud in the sky, and temps in the mid 70s. My wife had an event that she wanted to attend with one of her clients, the grand opening of Brad’s Raw Foods new facility in Pipersville, PA. Neither my wife nor I are vegetarian/vegan/raw food people, but we like to try things now and then, and I must admit I like Brad’s Leafy Kale chips to snack on from time to time, weird as it sounds. Anyway, that’s all beside the point. I dropped my wife off and back-tracked a couple miles to Doylestown, PA, where I had stumbled across the Classic Cigar Parlor last year. I wanted to get back to this shop and hang out and have a cigar, and this turned out to be the ideal opportunity. The shop is reasonably small, but it’s in the second oldest building in Doylestown, dating back to the 1700s. There are cabinet humidors lining the walls, and behind the counter is the original colonial style fireplace, and the ceiling has massive open beams. It’s a cool looking place. They have a hookah lounge upstairs, that I didn’t visit, as I just wanted to pick up a couple cigars and have a smoke. Frank was working in the store and was a pleasure to spend an hour or so chatting with. I shopped around a bit and decided to pick up a few Grimalkin toros, as I gave away my last Grimalkins a few months ago, and as I’m checking out, I see he last couple cigars in an Emilio AF1 box on the counter clearance priced at $5.00 each. Temptation got the best of me, and I had to buy them all. I fired up one of the AF1 toros and had a seat, enjoying the cigar, as well as talking with Frank and watching what the customers were purchasing. The Emilio AF1 is a favorite of mine, rich, dark and delicious! As I lit it I almost thought I was making a mistake, smoking this cigar in the afternoon, on a relatively empty stomach, but it turned out fine. It’s a nice, strong cigar, but not overwhelming. I did have to hold my tongue at one point, hearing Frank tell a customer who said he smoked Cohibas that they had the “original Cohiba family’s cigars that are involved in a trademark dispute” and showed him a box of Dominican, yellow band “Cohibas”. Can someone please introduce me to someone named “Cohiba”, or, better yet, show me a pre-embargo Cohiba? The word “cohiba” comes from the Taino Indian term for tobacco that Columbus heard them using 500 years ago, and the Dominican yellow band “Cohibas” have been a knock-off that General Cigar has been fighting with for, I’d guess, 15 years or more, and I’m surprised these still make it onto tobacconist’s shelves. I suppose I shouldn’t complain about a cigar I’ve never smoked, but I just don’t like to hear mis-information like that. In retrospect I should have tried to educate Frank after the customer left, but I’ve tried to do that in the past and it didn’t end as well as I had hoped. Still a nice visit to a cool little shop.

Earlier in the day we had met my brother-in-law for breakfast and he had just returned from a trip to Tampa, and gifted me a Robusto from Nicahabana Cigars. From what I gather from their website, they roll cigars on site, not unlike Cigar Factory New Orleans, and have a wide range of sizes and blends. This cigar was a pretty thing, with a nice, dark, oily wrapper. I probably should have let it rest in my humidor for a few weeks, but I impatiently fired it up. It was a beautiful evening and I just wanted to sit on my front porch and enjoy a cigar. Enjoy I did, although the wrapper turned out to be very fragile in the middle of the cigar and flaked away in spots. Still, the flavor had a nice zing and was pretty strong in flavor. It was rich and satisfying. Thanks to Jeff for thinking of me on his trip, it’s always fun to try a new cigar. Along the same lines, earlier in the week I had smoked another unbanded Nicaraguan maduro robusto that I picked up at my local shop, JM Cigars in Exton, PA. He had these enormous 100 count chests of cigars that I had never seen before, and Jeff, the owner, told me that they were made by J.C. Newman. It was a nice cigar, very well made and even flavored. For $3.75 it was a very nice cigar, and he said he’d been selling them like crazy.