A few weeks ago, you may recall, we culminated the 12 Spectacular Days of Cigar Giveaways with a special Day 13 featuring Famous Smoke Shop‘s two new proprietary Romeo y Julieta cigars, the House of Capulet and the House of Montague. Honestly, I always feel better giving away cigars I’ve smoked before and can comment on, but when they have a great pedigree and I know the folks behind them I’m OK with it. When I was shopping for the Compounds, Elements and Musings Vanadium box a couple weeks ago I decided to pay a little more than I had to and use one of the coupon codes Famous Smoke Shop provided and get a free five pack of the Romeo y Julieta House of Montague Robustos along with it. Of course, I couldn’t resist smoking one of them this week. This is a 5″ x 54 chunky robusto with a nice, Brazilian maduro wrapper, with a Dominican Olor binder and Dominican, Brazilian and Nicaraguan fillers. I found it to be a nice, well made cigar on the medium side with solid chocolate/cocoa maduro flavor. This is a cigar I would share with friends without hesitation, that is if I don’t smoke the four more myself! Here are the discount codes again, if you happen to make a purchase from Famous Smoke Shop give these a try! Also, if Mickey, the winner of This year’s day 13 wants to send me reviews, I’d be happy to include them here, he can be an honorary “Craig” for a day!
Discount codes:
CAPULET5 – Free 5-pack of Romeo y Julieta House of Capulet with any $75+ purchase
MONTAGUE5 – Free 5-pack of Romeo y Julieta House of Montague with any $75+ purchase
CAPULET20 – $20 off any $100+ purchase of Romeo y Julieta House of Capulet
MONTAGUE20 – $20 off any $100+ purchase of Romeo y Julieta House of Montague
New Years Eve I stopped in to one of my local shops, JM Cigars, for a couple cigars and walked out with a few Padrón 3000 Maduros. I would have gotten 2000s, but they didn’t have any maduros at the time. The 3000 is 5 ½ x 52 and isn’t the prettiest cigar, it’s rustic, but it’s a classic Nicaraguan puro which has been on the market for quite a while, and has remained pretty much the same. Padrón is the model of consistency, and they remain at the top of the heap in the cigar business without releasing new lines all the time. This is probably why I’ve been negligent in smoking Padrón cigars in the last few years, too many new cigars to smoke! So, after lighting this cigar Friday evening, I found myself wondering why the heck I let this happen. This is a great smoke, right in my personal wheelhouse. It’s got kind of a dry, dusty cocoa flavor, with perfect draw and burn. I must make a note to keep more of these on hand, and maybe even grab a couple of the 2000 naturals to reacquaint myself with that side of the line. As awesome as the Padrón “Thousand Series” cigars are, I know the Anniversary series are even more awesome, but I still have trouble shelling out that kind of dough for a cigar. I may have to break down and do it one of these days though. I probably haven’t smoked one of the high end Padróns since a Millenium back about ten or so years ago.
Yesterday I figured I’d try something new to me, and selected a Paul Stulac Angel out of the IPCPR sample humidor. I think I’ve smoked a Paul Stulac cigar before, I seem to recall smoking a Skull torpedo, but I really don’t remember the cigar and I didn’t include it in a blog post. This Angel is another chunky robusto (I was trying to figure out if I had a theme this time, and that theme seems to be chunky robustos, but it was strictly coincidence!) at 5″ x 58, although it didn’t really feel that fat to me. This is listed as “available in Ecuadorian or Brazilian Maduro Wrapper”, and I have no idea which one I smoked, but my guess is the Brazilian Maduro because it was pretty dark and didn’t taste to me like a Habano. It was a good smoke, well behaved and tasty to a finger burning nub. There was a flavor that was interesting, and maybe a little overwhelming, and I don’t quite know how to describe it except for perhaps mesquite, it was a savory flavor. This was definitely different from what I generally reach for, which is cool, that’s why there are so many cigars! If they all tasted the same it wouldn’t be any fun. IF the FDA gets a hold of premium cigars we can say goodbye to new and different cigars, so join Cigar Rights of America and write to your elected officials! Paul Stulac is (or was) a Canadian cigar retailer, ask him what it’s like in Canada with their regulations! Blacked out windows, no displays, no events, you can’t even look at the cigars you want to purchase. We don’t want that to happen here!
That’s all I got, until the next time,
CigarCraig
The Paul Stulac Classic Phantom is a soft box pressed torpedo measuring 6″ x 53, and comes in natural and maduro, this example was the natural wrapper. The wrapper is an Ecuador Habano, and I believe the binder and fillers to be Nicaraguan. I’ve been using a prototype cigar cutter from my friends at CigarMedics which has three holes, and used the smallest hole to takas as little as possible off of the torpedo tip. More on that cutter later, but it’s pretty cool, but takes some getting used to. The draw was perfect, as was the burn. I put the flavors in the category of woody, with some sweetness and some spice. It was medium bodied, and I have a feeling it came to me with some age, however I have no idea how old it actually was. I base this assumption on the condition of the cellophane, and the performance of the cigar, but this is really only an educated guess. This was a great cigar, I really enjoyed it, and I may have to check with the folks at Scotty’s to see if they have any more!
